Bendooragh: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
If you have not started the motor as yet, don't. A drain and nothing else is almost always what a vehicle requires while the fuel is still in that tank and the engine has not yet been started, which is why it is the next few minutes that count, not how much went in. Petrol in Diesel goes to your car wherever it has stopped in Bendooragh or the remainder of County Antrim, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a drive, and drains and cleans it there. Ring us and our technicians can show you what happens next before you attempt anything else.
The first five minutes: petrol in a diesel
- Never fire it up. Started anyway? Then don't rely on it. Diesel in a petrol vehicle usually will not run, so the motorist stops and the damage halts with them. Petrol in a diesel? It starts. It idles. It drives off fine, for several miles. People get that muddled. It's not all right — your fuel system is wearing every mile you drive.
- Leave the car's ignition be too. Diesel performs two jobs: it combusts, and before it combusts it greases the injection pump and those injectors. Petrol does the first and not the second. Turning the car's ignition on is often enough to prime that system, which draws the petrol out of that tank and into precisely those parts.
- Do not put diesel on top to thin it. A diesel fuel system will not accept petrol by percentage as that advice suggests, and topping up takes out nothing — it just hands you a fuller tank of the same mix. The octane makes no difference either: super unleaded is still petrol.
- Our team would sooner get to a difficult location than have it started — so if you sensibly can, sit tight. Nothing is simpler to sort than a vehicle that has not moved. On the verge on Wallace Cottages, that means hazards on and keep the vehicle.
- Find out where you are before phoning. A postcode that starts BT53 7, and the name of whatever is next to you. Otherwise the technician circles instead of turning up.
- Three details settle your whole job: the liquid you poured in, the approximate quantity of it, and whether anything has been turning since. The number is 0333 366 0103.
At a forecourt: removing petrol from your diesel
Most of this job begins at a forecourt, so a big share of that ends up completed on site. Still at the nearest petrol station? Then that's generally where it takes place. Station forecourts are routine for us, with the permission of the owner.
At the forecourt, this is spotted with the motor never fired, and no place else does it. Everywhere else — a car park, a drive, a lay-by — the vehicle was fired up and driven to get there, which means fuel was sucked from that tank, through your filter then into the high-pressure fuel pump. That is not a catastrophe, and our engineers can still deal with it where it sits. It does mean the lines and the filter need rinsing as well as the tank, and that is decided by the few seconds between checking the till receipt and reaching for the key.
Roll it out of the way if the attendants suggest it, and they normally will. The next motorist gets by the pump, and that's worth doing. Cranking the car for four car lengths? Don't.
We're in car parks like the one at the local shops often, and it's almost never the fuel that complicates them. It is that bay. Motors both sides. Trolleys stacked up behind. At times a height barrier at the entrance, which settles if our van gets to you at all. So tell us how penned in you are when you ring, and which way the car is facing. If there's no room to work alongside that Skoda Octavia, we shift it without your engine. That isn't fuss over a handful of seconds: starts prime things, blend comes out of the tank toward the pump, and a vehicle moved twice for a better bay is silently a bigger job than one nobody touched.
You'll be urged to shift the car clear of the gateway and sort it out later. Don't. On the zig-zags by the local primary school, a misfuelled BMW 3 Series running on diesel is in the way, and that's all it is. Fire it up three more times being polite and you have turned a tank into a fuel system: every start primes the fuel lines, every prime draws more petrol through your filter on to the pump. Let them complain. Phone us.
Here is the full mechanism. Diesel needs enough body to seal the fine gaps it goes through, and petrol takes that away. That's it. Which accounts for the normal the green space at the edge of the village call — a diesel Ford Focus, out there without a murmur and back down on power, uneven at idle, maybe a bit of smoke. Injection systems work hydraulically as well as chemically, and so your fuel has to hold pressure and not just burn; diluted, it leaks past those clearances instead of building, and delivery comes poorer, later, less even than the motor was engineered about. Not a failing motor, though. Fuel that has stopped behaving like diesel. Put that right and it stops.
About as well as this goes, once the motor has turned: away from the pumps, receipt read, and the diesel Mercedes E-Class parked near the centre hardly two streets on. Phone us, and leave the vehicle off. A short drive does truly help. It was still a start and still a drive, though, and so your filter and your pump have had weakened fuel through them — hence cleaning the fuel lines rather than only emptying that tank.
A throttle gone dead, white smoke, an uneven idle, knocking: that's a misfuelled diesel Audi A6 telling you what is wrong. Do not start it to find a better place — switch off where you have stopped, near a street just off the centre or anywhere else.
Bendooragh plus the towns next to it
Bendooragh is a small village, and our technicians go out to the town and to the areas by it on the same trips: Balnamore, Ballymoney, Finvoy, Aghadowey and Ballybogy.
We do come. Those names above are just the immediate neighbours, and a page exists for most locations in County Antrim, and so an absence from the list is not an absence from the coverage. Close to the border, or somewhere your phone gets wrong? Ring us and check instead of guessing.
That map is the patch this page covers. Roadside, forecourt, drive, car park: the lot is territory our technicians cover, and none of it needs your vehicle to travel to us.
Stranded at the kerbside in Bendooragh
The chance to pull over somewhere suitable does not fall to everyone. Hazards on at a lay-by somewhere, or stopped on the verge beside Dunaverty Court as you noticed after setting off — our engineers take that call regularly enough that it is the ordinary kind.
Stay beside your car if it is wise to wait inside, and out of it when it is not. Every mile a diesel obliges you for on petrol drags that mix further into your fuel system — and oblige it usually will, which is why your engine doesn't get restarted to limp somewhere safer. Carrying on does your car far more harm than a technician driving out to an inconvenient place, and that is no bother for us.
A few miles on petrol in a diesel: what now?
Here is where your M77 comes into it — over 50 miles away from Bendooragh. It will often take you onto it, and some way along, before you notice a thing. Then it's smoke, an uneven idle and power ebbing away — not a tidy stop. Wrongly fuelled diesels rarely give you one of those.
Pull off at the first sensible exit, switch off, and never restart the car to reposition. It alters what we bring, and so tell us when you call: on a longer drive — anything close to the under 50 miles to the closest city — assume the contamination has been through the filter, your pump and your injectors.
Where is Bendooragh?
Bendooragh is a small locality in County Antrim, situated inland at an elevation of approximately 30 metres. Bendooragh lies near the towns of Ballymoney and Balnamore, and is within commuting distance of Derry. Bendooragh has a population of around 554 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing. Bendooragh is located about 360 miles northwest of London, in the northern part of Northern Ireland.
What follows when we get to you in Bendooragh
- Three things get asked before any price — the fuel that got in, the quantity, and if anything has been run since. Each answer alters the work.
- Our technicians empty the tank of the polluted mixture.
- Fuel lines are purged through and the filter cleaned, leaving nothing in your system that started any of this.
- We put fresh diesel in and bleed the system.
- It is started with clean diesel in it, and our technicians make sure that it's running smoothly.
That has your car ready to drive away. All of it is done where the vehicle is, so it never has to go to a workshop, and when it has been spotted early, lasting damage is very rare.
AdBlue in your diesel tank by mistake, around Bendooragh?
The issue is not the same, though the opening instruction is — never fire it up — if what went in was AdBlue rather than petrol. Weakened diesel, and no protection left for the fuel system that depends on it. That's petrol. Urea in water, AdBlue, and in a diesel tank that brings rust and residue.
Often the more serious of the two, AdBlue — and the detail sits on its own Bendooragh page. Both are ours to deal with.
Paying for a petrol-in-diesel drain around Bendooragh
Our engineers can't put one price on this page honestly, as this job isn't one job. What changes it:
- This is the main one: whether your engine has been started, or driven.
- The tank's capacity, set against how much of the wrong fuel got into it.
- The kind of liquid in the tank, petrol or AdBlue.
- Access: the vehicle's position, and whether working on it there's safe for our van.
Tell us what the vehicle is, how much got in, and if the engine has run. A firm answer comes back, not a range. Car at home, going nowhere, nothing time-critical about it — is ideal for that.
Petrol in diesel questions from Bendooragh drivers
Fuel drains on a Bendooragh petrol station forecourt
Yes — forecourts are where a fair share of this takes place. Regularly, provided the site consents: another forecourt nearby, plus every other forecourt nearby. Say on the phone where precisely you have stopped. Whether our engineers can work in that spot is something our engineers answer on the spot.
How much petrol is too much for a diesel?
Whether the motor has run matters far 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 blend been pulled right through, or has it not?
Petrol in my diesel, and I have driven the vehicle
Switch off somewhere safe, then keep it that way after you stop. Driving shifts the issue along — out of the tank, into the pump and injectors. Drivers fear it a good deal more than the recovery rate warrants, mind. The one truly useful thing left to you is not restarting the vehicle.
Will a fuel drain void my warranty?
It is not an alteration, and so a drain and flush carried out correctly doesn't invalidate a manufacturer's warranty. An argument over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it turned off.
Adding two-stroke oil, then driving home
What petrol has thinned is not put back by two-stroke oil, which is an old remedy for a separate problem. So no. That tank still has petrol in it afterwards, and your pump still has to cope with it.
Does petrol in a diesel have to go to a main dealer?
Not at all. We drain and flush the vehicle wherever it is, so there is no need to take it to a franchised dealer.
Is your vehicle still with you?
Your engine stays off.
Switch it off somewhere safe then keep it off, if you have already driven it. Cold, stationary, going nowhere: that is the best place to be in. Motorists fear this far more than they need to.
Throughout County Antrim and around Bendooragh: call-out fuel draining, at home or on the forecourt or at the roadside.