crwys

I grabbed a gas can from a friends and put some gas in my car. Little did I know it was diesel. Now my p0330 code has popped up. I have added 2 things of gas treatment so far, cleared the code, but it is still coming back on.
Is it possible that adding diesel to my car has ruined my knock sensor and I need to replace it?
My car has been running fine, besides it won't shift into overdrive because of the knock sensor.
I'm going to be waiting longer to see if some more gas and fuel treatments solves the problem.
I am curious though if this has ruined my knock sensor.

PFB

Don't Add anymore gas treatments. You'll make things much worse. You should immediatley drain the gas that's left in the tank and put in a fresh full tank of fuel, drive for about 50 Miles or so and than reset the code.

Hopefully all should be OK. You may have to reset the code one more time if it comes on.

crwys

Thanks for the reply, i'll fill the tank, drive for a bit and report back.
I've been doing a lot of research on the knock sensor and I read somewhere else that someone who used fuel treatments solved the problem. (Although it could have been a coincidence)
May I ask why fuel treatments are going to do more harm than good in this situation?

PFB

Overusing fuel treatments, or using the wrong one even once can ruin your catalytic converter.

The diesel fuel, is probably not doing your catalytic converter any good either, as it's not combusting in your engine, permitting raw fuel through the Cat converter. That's why it's important to drain it out.

LeX2K

You should really drain the tank completely, but at the very least fill up with gas and go for a 30 minute drive. The CEL might go out by itself, if it doesn't then reset and hope nothing was damaged by the diesel. Probably not but it's possible.

Mythotical

I have a friend like that. I had a red gas can marked "JET A" that I used for cleaning parts and starting my fire pit. He put the whole 5 gallons in his Subaru! What a mess, needless to say he drove it home and did not make it. Next time he asked first however no harm done, all he had to do was drain it out, then fill with gasoline and the car is fine. Don't ever add gasoline to a diesel tho, that is catastrophic.

P.S. now I have a yellow fuel can marked "JET A".

crwys

Well I hope this will be the case with my car. I drove about 100 miles today, car still won't go into overdrive. Cleared the code, came back on. I notice my car will go into overdrive when its running cold. Going to clear the code tomorrow and see if it is fixed. I might be replacing the knock sensor though :/

LeX2K

The diesel fuel will not damage the knock sensors. But it could damage the oxygen sensors. What code(s) are you getting, same?

crwys

Yea the only code I have is p0330. And it came on after I added the diesel fuel. I have cleared it probably 6 times in the past couple days. Maybe once I go through this whole tank of gas it will be ok?

It never goes from pending fault code to confirmed fault code either. It goes straight to confirmed
(I have a code reader in my car)
.

LeX2K

Yea you need to drive the car until the tank is near empty then fill, drive until that tank is empty and see what happens. Unfortunately with that code the engine is in limp mode and will use more fuel, won't hurt the engine though.

I really can't see how the knock sensor could be damaged unless the engine somehow had really severe detonation and that caused the sensor to go bad. Hopefully that's not the case the knock sensors are a fair bit of work to replace and are expensive parts.

PuReChaos

You have quite the odd code reader then. Pending codes will not trip a CEL. Your code is definitely confirmed. Maybe not by how your scanner reads, but its a single trip DTC meaning it does not require a second detection period (pending) to throw the code.

As everyone said, remove all the diesel mixed fuel, add fresh fuel, then run it through the tank. Unfortunately if the code comes back immediate after clearing, I think your knock sensor is toast.

crwys

Well I am going to clear it tomorrow and see what happens, will report back.
I'll keep this thread up to date.
What is the CEL? Is that a light?

My scanner is the OBDLink lx, with Torque Pro (android app) on the samsung galaxy tab 2 10.1

I only added probably .5 to 1 gallons of diesel. I never drained anything though just filled the tank. I tried google'ing where the drain plug was for the 1999 lexus es300 for the gas tank but couldn't find one. (if there even is one)
I'm at 181k so I'm due for a water pump and belt pretty soon, so maybe i'll do the knock sensor while I'm at it, if it comes to that. Hope it doesn't because I don't have a lot of money :P

Maybe another important note is, even when I clear the code, turn the car off, turn it on, it still won't go into over drive. Even though there are no pending or confirmed codes at the time.

01LEXPL

iTrader: (10)

crwys

Cleared the check engine light. It took a while for it to go into over drive going about 50, it finally did.
Took it on the highway, check engine light came on about 9 miles later (counting the miles I left from my house)
Stayed in overdrive, took it off the highway, back on, no more overdrive.
It will be a while before I go through 2 full tanks of gas, but I will report back eventually.
Thanks for the input everyone.

For anyone curious I attached a log of my car which records every second of, mph, rpms, coolant temp.
It also records a lot of other data such as gravity, altitude, gps speed, gps coordinates and other stuff. I had to remove a lot of it though since this forum only supports 200kb of xls file types.

jayclapp

You can't make any sense of data while scanning over 1300 data points. You need to plot it in order to properly evaluate it.