--- title: Fuel Drain in Corstorphine — Petrol in a Diesel Car canonical: https://www.petrolinadieselcar.co.uk/petrol-in-diesel/corstorphine-city-of-edinburgh/ location: Corstorphine county: City of Edinburgh latitude: 55.942540 longitude: -3.281410 service: Petrol in a Diesel Car updated: 2026-10-17 --- # Put Petrol in a Diesel Car in Corstorphine? Don't Start It Don't fire up the engine. If the fuel is still inside the tank and the motor has not turned over, a drain is nearly always all it needs — and that's determined in the coming few minutes, not by how much went in. Petrol in Diesel drains and flushes wrong-fuelled vehicles where they are, throughout Corstorphine and the rest of City of Edinburgh, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a private drive. Ring us and our engineers will show you what comes from here before you attempt anything else. ## What to try first about petrol in a diesel - While you drive, the pump and the fuel injectors suffer. That's why you never start the car, and why you do not trust it once it has started. The catch about petrol in a diesel specifically — the point motorists get wrong — is that it drives away fine for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol motor usually cannot run at all, which stops the person and stops the wear with them. This one lets you keep going. - Diesel combusts, and before it combusts it greases — the high-pressure fuel pump, its injectors. Petrol handles only the burning. So leave the car's ignition be also: switching it on is frequently enough to prime the system, and priming draws petrol from that tank into exactly those components. - Never pour diesel on top to water down it. A diesel fuel system doesn't accept petrol by percentage as that advice assumes, and topping up clears nothing — it only gives you a bigger tank of the same mix. The grade makes no difference either: super unleaded is simply petrol. - Wait where you are if you reasonably can. A motor that has never moved is the quickest one to sort, and we would much rather drive to an awkward place than have it started. If you're parked on the verge on Kirk Loan, put the hazards on and keep the vehicle there. - Have your location ready before you dial. A postcode that starts EH12 7 and whatever is closest to you with a sign on it is the difference between a van turning up and our van circling. - Dial 0333 366 0103. Anticipate three queries — what was put in, about how much, and if the motor has been turned over. Your replies determine everything that happens next. Do not take it home. The journey in has already sent a real amount of petrol-thinned diesel through your high-pressure pump of that Renault Megane, and the drive back would roughly double it for no gain at all. Call us from the platform if that's handier. We never need you hovering over the car at South Gyle while we get it done, and we would much rather hear from you tonight than realise on Monday. ## Can petrol be pumped out of your diesel on a forecourt? Most of this work begins at a pump, meaning a big portion of it ends up finished at one. If you are still at the forecourt at Tesco, that's normally where the drain takes place — we work on station forecourts routinely, with the station's agreement. At a garage, the mistake gets spotted with the engine never started, and no place else manages it. Fuel sucked out of the tank and through the fuel filter, all the way to the high-pressure fuel pump, is what happens when the motor is started and the vehicle is moved to where it is now: the car park, the private drive or the lay-by, everywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush covers the filter and your lines as well as that tank. That is still not a catastrophe, and our engineers sort it out where the vehicle sits. What settles it is whether the ignition was turned in the seconds after the receipt was read. Move the vehicle out of the way if the staff suggest it, and they normally will. The next motorist gets through the pump, and that's worth doing. Starting the car just to shift four car lengths isn't. Straightforward, these ones, and the reason is the mileage: a mile at easy throttle draws little fuel. Petrol into a diesel Volkswagen Tiguan somewhere in Corstorphine, a boot full of shopping, and you stranded at Co-op Food — phone us. Leaving the spot isn't worth another start. The tank gets drained where it stands, the fuel lines flushed, clean diesel in, and you get home. ## Do we cover your side of Corstorphine? Corstorphine is a residential suburb, so our vans go out to it and to anywhere around it on the usual journeys: Carrick Knowe, Broomhouse, The Gyle, Saughton and Clermiston. If yours is not on that list that does not mean we do not come — there are dedicated pages for most locations in City of Edinburgh, and the ones mentioned above are merely the nearest neighbours. Guessing is the thing to skip, above all on the border or anywhere a satnav gets lost. Contact us to check. That map shows the area the page covers. We work at the roadside, on forecourts, on driveways and at car parks across all of it, and the vehicle never needs to come to us. Your diesel BMW 3 Series will have seemed perfectly normal on the way back from the local primary school. They do, and that is the snag with petrol in a diesel instead of the other way round. Put diesel in a petrol motor and it generally won't run, so the person stops and the wear stops with them. Put petrol in a diesel and it starts, idles and pulls away as though nothing has happened — all while the high-pressure pump keeps working without the lubrication your fuel is supposed to be giving. Nothing warns you, because from behind the wheel there's nothing to alert you about. Ring us with approximately how far you drove and how hard you pushed it; the second one matters more than the first. ## Stuck by the kerb anywhere around Corstorphine? Not everyone finds a decent place to pull in. Set off, then twigged? Ended up along the verge beside Clermiston Road, or stuck in some lay-by with the hazard lights on? That's a routine call here. Not a rare one. Clear of the vehicle while it's not safe to sit in it, beside it if it is. Do not restart the motor to nurse it somewhere better — a diesel running on petrol will frequently oblige, and every mile it obliges for is pulling that mixture further into the system. However awkward the location, it is no trouble for us to get to it, and that's far better for the car than pressing on. ## Some miles on petrol in a diesel: now what? under 3 miles out of Corstorphine, your M8 is what counts here. Some distance along, and onto it in the first place: a wrongly fuelled diesel will frequently manage both before anything seems wrong. What you get then is rarely a clean stop. Power ebbs away, your idle gets lumpy, and there may be some smoke. Pull off at the next safe exit, switch off, and don't start the vehicle to move it. Assume the worst of it on a long run. Anything approaching the under 5 miles to the closest city, and the contamination has been through your filter, through the pump, through the fuel injectors. Say so when you phone. What our engineers bring changes. ## Corstorphine itself Corstorphine is a suburban area in the City of Edinburgh, situated approximately 3.6 miles west of Edinburgh's city centre. Corstorphine lies close to the Firth of Forth, at an elevation of around 53 metres, and is characterised by its predominantly flat housing stock. Corstorphine is bordered by nearby places such as Carrick Knowe, Broomhouse, and The Gyle, and is home to a population of around 6542 residents. ## The visit in Corstorphine, step by step - We find out what was put in, how much, and whether the motor has run. The answers shape the work, which is why our technicians ask before quoting. - Out goes the polluted fuel. - We rinse your fuel lines and clean your filter, and so what is left in your system isn't what caused the problem. - We put fresh diesel in and prime your system. - Our engineers fire it up and make sure it runs properly on new diesel. Your car is then ready for you to drive away. Lasting damage is very rare when it has been spotted early, and since everything is done where the vehicle is, it never has to go to a garage. We purge the lines rather than only draining the tank, and the reason is that thinned fuel has already arrived at your filter and your pump: it was a start and a drive, however short. The distance truly assists — pulled off the forecourt, receipt read, a diesel Audi A4 parked up by Corstorphine Community Centre a couple of hundred yards later is about as well as this goes once the motor has turned. Call us and leave it off. ## AdBlue in the diesel tank by mistake, in Corstorphine? AdBlue rather than petrol? Then the opening instruction is unchanged — your motor remains off — whereas the problem beneath it's a different one altogether. Petrol does two things to diesel: dilutes it, and strips out the protection your fuel system relies on. Corrosion and deposits are what a diesel tank ends up with instead, because AdBlue is urea dissolved in water. Often the more significant of the two, AdBlue — and the full story sits on its own Corstorphine page. Both are ours to deal with. Unfamiliar places are where this occurs most, and the reason is mechanical instead of sloppy: the smaller petrol nozzle slides into a newer diesel filler neck with almost no resistance at all. Topped up by Corstorphine Old Parish Church without thinking, in a diesel Mercedes E-Class you have had for two days? Call us where you are. Hire and courtesy cars usually get driven further before anyone spots it, and miles is what settles how much petrol ends up at the injectors. ## Corstorphine prices for a petrol-in-diesel drain One number wouldn't be fair here, as this isn't one job. These are the things that move it: - Started? Driven? Either answer matters more than anything else on this list. - How much of the wrong fuel went in, compared with how much that tank can hold. - The sort of liquid in the tank, petrol or AdBlue. - Whether a van can sensibly reach your vehicle and work on it, which depends on where the vehicle is. A straight answer rather than a range is what you get for telling us three things: the car, the amount, and if it has run. If it isn't urgent — the car is at home and going nowhere — is fine too. ## Corstorphine drivers ask us these about petrol in diesel ## At a petrol station in Corstorphine, can you do a fuel drain there? Yes — forecourts are where a large share of this happens. Consent from the site is the condition. Given that, a forecourt like Shell is somewhere we are frequently, along with the rest of them locally — so name yours on the phone and you'll hear if working there is possible. ## A couple of litres of petrol in a diesel — too much? Litres are not the yardstick. Ratio is, and far more than either, it counts whether anything has been run. What determines how much work is needed is whether that blend has been drawn through the system — since although five litres in a nearly empty tank is a separate case from five in a full one, either way that's the query. ## Petrol in my diesel, and I have driven it Somewhere sensible, then stop, then switch off and keep it off. Driving is what shifts the issue from your tank into the pump and injectors — but it's salvageable far more regularly than motorists assume, and the single most helpful thing you can do now isn't restart the vehicle. ## Will a fuel drain void my warranty? No. Carried out correctly, emptying and purging is no alteration at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is untouched by it. A dispute 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 Two-stroke oil solves a separate problem, and an old one at that. Nothing it does puts back what petrol thinned. No. The pump still has to put up with it, because the tank still has petrol in it afterwards. ## Main dealers and petrol in a diesel You don't need one. The vehicle is drained and cleaned wherever it is, with no need to bring it to a dealership. ## You, and your car, still together? Turned off is the way it stays. If you have already driven it, pull in somewhere sensible, switch it off then keep it off. Cold and parked, a car is in the best place available — and drivers fear this much more than the recovery rate warrants. Throughout City of Edinburgh and around Corstorphine: on-site fuel draining, at home or on the forecourt or at the kerbside.