Abbeyhill: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
Don't start the motor. If the petrol is still in your tank and your engine has not yet been started, a drain is nearly always all it needs — and that gets settled in the following few minutes, not by how much was put in. Petrol in Diesel drains and cleans misfuelled cars where they stand, across Abbeyhill and the remainder of City of Edinburgh, on the forecourt, by the roadside or on a private drive. Contact us before everything else begins, so you will learn what follows after that.
Petrol in a diesel: what to try now
- Don't crank it. Fired up regardless? Then do not believe it. Diesel in a petrol vehicle normally can't run, and so the motorist stops and the wear halts with them. Petrol in a diesel? It starts. It idles. It pulls away fine, for several miles. People get that confused. It isn't all right — your fuel system is wearing every mile you cover.
- Two things, diesel: it combusts, and on the way through it keeps the high-pressure fuel pump and injectors lubricated. Petrol only manages the one. Which is why the ignition stays off as well — switch it on and you frequently prime the system, and that is petrol exiting the tank for exactly those parts.
- Topping up clears nothing. It hands you a fuller tank of the same mix, because a diesel fuel system will not accept petrol by percentage as that guidance presumes — so don't put diesel on top to thin it. Octane is beside the point too: super unleaded is petrol.
- Our team would sooner drive to an odd spot than have it started — so if you safely can, stay put. Nothing is easier to sort than a car that hasn't moved. On the verge on London Road, that means hazards on then leave the vehicle.
- Before you phone, gather your position. Anything closest to you with a label on it, plus a postcode that starts EH7 5 — that is what determines whether the technician turns up or circles.
- Ring 0333 366 0103. Tell us what got in, roughly how many litres, and also whether the car has run. Those three details determine your whole job.
Your high-pressure pump spent that morning run labouring on a fluid that had given up a great deal of the protection it is built around. Diesel lubricates that pump, and the injectors with it, before any of your fuel burns; petrol does the burning and none of the protecting. So imagine a diesel Volkswagen Golf, filled at quarter past eight, driven in to work, and parked sitting outside Edinburgh Waverley until it dawns on you close to eleven. Three hours of sitting have altered nothing about it. The couple of miles before that altered plenty, which is why the thing we put to you is about miles instead of hours. Call us. Leave the car exactly where it stands.
The call our engineers want goes like this: diesel Renault Megane, a few litres of unleaded, run a couple of miles, now shut off at Lidl. What we're truly asking is how much fuel your pump has drawn — not how long ago it was.
Your diesel Skoda Octavia will have felt completely ordinary on the way back from the local primary school. They all do, and that is the catch with petrol in a diesel instead of the other way round. Put diesel in a petrol vehicle and it mostly will not run, so the person stops and the wear stops with them. Put petrol in a diesel and it fires up, idles and pulls away as though nothing has happened — all the while the high-pressure pump keeps working without the lubrication your fuel is meant to be providing. Nothing alerts you, because from the driver's seat there's nothing to caution you about. Ring us with roughly how far you travelled and how hard you pushed it; the second one matters more than the first.
Injection pressure is the part being lost. Petrol thins diesel, and thinner fuel leaks past the precision parts that are meant to build that pressure, and so the farther a diesel Mercedes C-Class travelled, the less well it held. Happy on the way out and flat on the way back is how that run to Bothwell Street Gardens went, then, and your tank is the place to look. Stop somewhere sensible, switch off and call us.
Seldom the problem, the spot. On-street is the usual location our engineers work, and a cramped parking spot is far preferable to a car that has been driven somewhere more convenient. What does help, when you phone from near KBC Pilates, is three things: the side the filler is on, whether a van can pull up alongside without blocking the road, and if anything has run since you filled up. Then your Ford Kuga gets cleared, your filter changed where a serviceable one exists, your lines cleaned and fresh fuel put through the entire system — as by now the worst of that is in the lines, not your tank.
Can petrol be pumped from your diesel at a forecourt?
The work begins at the pump, usually. Often enough the job wraps up there as well. Still at JET? Then that's usually where it gets done. Station forecourts are everyday for us, with the consent of the station.
Nowhere but the forecourt can the mistake be halted with your engine still untouched. Fuel drawn out of that tank and through the fuel filter, all the way to the high-pressure fuel pump, is what happens when your engine is started and the vehicle is driven to where it is now: the car park, the drive or the lay-by, anywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush covers the filter and the fuel lines together with that tank. That is still not a calamity, and our engineers put it right where the vehicle is. What determines it is whether the key was reached for in the seconds after the receipt was read.
Clear of the petrol pump, the next motorist can get past — so yes, let the staff help you wheel the car. Worth doing. Four car lengths is not worth a start.
Will we serve your side of Abbeyhill?
Calton, Sunnybank, Hillside, Canongate, Lochend — each of these on the rounds that take us out to Abbeyhill as well, a residential suburb.
There are separate pages for most locations across City of Edinburgh, and the ones named above are merely the closest neighbours — so yours being missing from this list means nothing whatsoever about whether our technicians come. Ring us to check instead of guessing — boundaries above all, and anywhere the satnav tends to struggle with.
The ground this page covers sits on this map. We work roadside, on forecourts, on driveways and at car parks across all of that, and your vehicle doesn't need to come to us.
Abbeyhill: stranded where you stopped
Some people get no sensible spot to pull in whatsoever. A normal call for us and not a rare one: realised after setting off, landed on the verge beside Abbey Street or at a lay-by with your hazards on.
Clear of the vehicle if it isn't safe to wait there, by it when it is. It will usually oblige. A diesel running on petrol limps along quite willingly, and that is the problem: fire it up to get to somewhere safer and the mix goes further into the system with every mile covered. A technician driving to an awkward place is no problem for us, and it's much better for your car than pressing on.
Some miles on petrol in a diesel: what now?
This is where your M8 matters, under 10 miles out of Abbeyhill. Some way along, and onto it in the first place: a wrongly fuelled diesel will often do both before anything feels wrong. What you get then is seldom a neat stop. Power drains away, the idle turns uneven, and there may be some smoke.
Take the next junction that's safe, pull up there, and don't start it to move it. Long drive? Anything approaching the under a mile to the closest city and you should presume the lot — filter, pump, injectors, all of it got to by the contamination. Say that on the call, since it affects what goes in our van.
A bit about Abbeyhill
Abbeyhill is a suburban area located on the coast in the City of Edinburgh, sitting at an elevation of approximately 40 metres. Abbeyhill is situated close to the city centre of Edinburgh, being only 0.8 miles away, and is near other areas such as Calton, Sunnybank, and Hillside. Abbeyhill is predominantly composed of flat-type housing, which accommodates its population of around 15344 residents.
What our technicians do when our engineers arrive with you in Abbeyhill
- Our engineers ask first, price after. What went in? How much? Has the engine run? Those answers change what the work actually is.
- We drain that tank of the contaminated mixture.
- Our engineers purge your fuel lines and clear your filter, and so what is left in the fuel system isn't what started the issue.
- Our engineers put new diesel in and prime the fuel system.
- It is run with fresh diesel in it, and we make sure that it is running smoothly.
The vehicle is then ready for you to drive away. Our technicians do everything wherever the car has come to a stop, which means it never needs to be taken to a garage, and when it has been noticed quickly, it is very unusual for there to be lasting damage.
AdBlue in the diesel tank by mistake, in Abbeyhill?
If what was put in was AdBlue instead of petrol, the opening instruction is unchanged — never crank it — but the problem isn't. The lubrication a fuel system relies on gets taken away by petrol, which thins your diesel. Corrosion and residue are what a diesel tank ends up with instead, because AdBlue is urea in water.
AdBlue removal in Abbeyhill has a page of its own with the details on it, including why it's often the more significant of the two. Our engineers handle both.
What a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain will cost in Abbeyhill
One figure would not be honest here, as this isn't one job. These are the things that move it:
- Has it been run or driven? Nothing else matters for as much.
- Wrong fuel in, against what that tank takes — that proportion.
- AdBlue or petrol, whichever went in.
- Whether a van can sensibly get to the car and work on it, which rests on where your car is.
Tell us your car, the amount and if it has run, and you will get a firm answer rather than a range. For the car at home that is going nowhere and isn't urgent, is fine too.
Petrol in diesel: everyday questions in Abbeyhill
Can you do a fuel drain at a petrol station in Abbeyhill?
A good share of this work gets done there, so yes. Permission from the site is the condition. Given that, a forecourt like Morrisons is somewhere we're regularly, along with the rest of them locally — so name yours on the phone and you will hear whether working there is possible.
A few litres of petrol in a diesel — too much?
Whether your engine has run matters much more, though the proportion counts too, instead of the litres. Five litres into a nearly dry tank is not five into a full one, no. But both land on the same query in the end: has that mix been pulled right through, or has it not?
I put petrol in my diesel and drove the car. Now what?
Stop safely. Off. Nothing after that. Driving is what moves the issue from your tank into your pump and injectors — but it is fixable much more often than people assume, and the single most helpful thing you can do now is not restart the car.
Will a fuel drain void my warranty?
A drain and flush carried out properly is not an alteration and does not invalidate a manufacturer's warranty. Running a diesel on petrol is the thing likelier to cause a disagreement with one, which is another good reason to leave the vehicle switched off.
Can I just add two-stroke oil and drive home?
No. It belongs to a distinct fault from a separate era, and petrol has diluted something no oil of that kind puts back. Later? Still petrol in that tank, and a pump that has to live with the stuff.
A main dealer for petrol in a diesel — necessary?
Wherever the vehicle is, we drain and flush it there, so a visit to the main dealer doesn't come into it.
You, and your car, still together?
Switched off is how it remains.
Already driven it? Then pull in somewhere sensible, turn off, and let the car remain that way. Cold, still, going nowhere: that's the best position to be in. Drivers fear this much more than they need to.
On-site fuel draining in Abbeyhill and across City of Edinburgh — at the roadside, on the forecourt or at home.