Dunball: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
Petrol in Diesel drains and flushes misfuelled cars where they sit, on the forecourt, by the roadside or on a driveway, throughout Dunball and the remainder of Somerset. The first thing to do is not to fire up the motor. While your engine has not been started and the petrol is still sitting in that tank, a fuel drain is nearly always all it takes, and the next few minutes determine that, not how much went in. Call us and then our team shall tell you what happens from here before you do much else.
Your first five steps: petrol in a diesel
- Do not crank it. Turned on anyway? Then do not rely on it. Diesel in a petrol vehicle generally cannot run, and so the motorist stops and the wear stops with them. Petrol in a diesel? It starts. It ticks over. It pulls away normally, for several miles. Most people get that reversed. It isn't all right — that fuel system is wearing down every mile you do.
- Diesel combusts, and before it burns it protects — the injection pump, its injectors. Petrol does only the burning. So leave your ignition alone as well: switching it on is usually sufficient to prime your system, and priming carries petrol from your tank into precisely those parts.
- Don't put diesel on top to thin it. A diesel fuel system won't cope with petrol by percentage the way that guidance assumes, and topping up gets rid of nothing — it just leaves you a bigger tank of the same mix. The octane makes no difference either: super unleaded is still petrol.
- A car that has not moved is the quickest one to handle, and so remain where you are if you safely can. Stopped on the verge on Bristol Road? Hazards on, then leave it there. An awkward spot suits us better than a started motor.
- Get your position ready before you ring. A postcode that starts TA6 4 and whatever is closest to you with a label on it is the difference between a van showing up and the van circling.
- Phone 0333 366 0103. Anticipate three things — what was put in, approximately how many litres, and whether the engine has been turned over. The replies decide all that follows.
Don't drive it home. Petrol-thinned diesel has gone through that high-pressure fuel pump in real volume on the road in, and the way back would about double that for nothing at all. Call us — the platform is fine. There's no need to stand over your Volkswagen Tiguan at Bridgwater while the work happens, and we would very much rather talk to you tonight than realise on Monday.
Leave it overnight. Phone us in the morning. Nothing about a diesel Peugeot 308 sitting in the car park outside The Admirals Table worsens while it waits, tank of petrol or not, and this job stays a straightforward one right up till the moment it gets taken home. The query we bring is about that drive there: a cold engine over a short hop is where petrol combusts least well, and whatever fails to burn can get past the rings into the sump.
Pull in somewhere safe, turn off then call us. Normal on the way out to Eleven Acre Covert, sluggish on the way back? Then look at that tank. Petrol thins diesel; thinner fuel seeps past the tightly fitted components that build injection pressure; and the further your diesel Dacia Duster drove, the less of that pressure it held.
Off the forecourt, receipt read, a few hundred yards, left close to Somerset County Council-Highways Depot. For a diesel Mercedes E-Class whose engine has turned, that's about the best version there is. Call us, then let it stand with your ignition alone. Short helps, really — but a start is a start and a drive is a drive, and your filter has had diluted fuel through it, and so has the pump. Which is why your lines get purged and not just your tank cleared.
What occurs next is the trouble. The motor immediately draws the petrol still waiting in the fuel filter and the feed lines back round through the pump a second time, as draining a tank does nothing about fuel that has already left it. Drain it then put new diesel in, a person certain will tell you — and that suggestion is only half right, since do it to a diesel Ford Kuga parked up, St Michael and All Angels say, and the thing starts, which is what makes it sound plausible. Call us instead. Our engineers flush the circuit and take the filter off where the vehicle has a working one, and that's the difference between the vehicle being fixed and your car simply starting.
At the forecourt: removing petrol from the diesel
Plenty of the work starts at a pump, which means a big part of it ends up finished there. If you're still on the forecourt at BP, that's usually where this drain happens — we work on garage forecourts regularly, with the station's consent.
Nowhere else but a garage can it be spotted with your motor still unrun. The few seconds between checking the till receipt and reaching for the key settle how much requires flushing. Anywhere other than a forecourt — a car park, a private drive, a lay-by — the vehicle was switched on and driven to get there, so fuel was sucked from that tank, through the filter and into the high-pressure pump. That means your lines and your filter require flushing as well as the tank. It is not a calamity, and we can still put it right where the vehicle is.
Wheel it out of the way if the staff offer, and they usually will. The next motorist gets past the petrol pump, and that's worth doing. Firing it to roll four car lengths is not.
Can our technicians serve your end of Dunball?
As a rural hamlet, Dunball has a steady call, while the areas nearby come with it on the same run: Down End and Walpole, Puriton and Chilton Trinity, Pawlett.
Not on the list? It means nothing. The places above are simply the closest few, and most locations around Somerset have a page of their own elsewhere on this site. Close to a border, or somewhere your satnav gets wrong? Contact us to enquire instead of assuming.
Use our map for the ground included on this page. Roadside, forecourt, private drive, car park: all of that is territory our technicians work on, and none of that needs your vehicle to come to us.
Stuck by the roadside anywhere in Dunball?
Some people find no suitable spot to stop at all. A routine call for us instead of a rare one: worked out after setting off, finished up on the verge on Dunball Industrial Estate or at a lay-by with your hazards going.
Wait by your car while it is sensible to sit there, and out of the car when it's not. Do not fire it up to get to a better spot. It'll go — a diesel on petrol generally obliges — and each mile of obliging draws the mixture deeper into the system. Pressing on causes the car far more harm than a van driving out to an awkward place, and that is no trouble for us.
A couple of miles on petrol in a diesel: now what?
under a mile out of Dunball, the M5 is what matters now. A wrongly fuelled diesel will often take you onto it and some distance along before anything seems wrong, while the symptoms when they arrive are generally a drop in power, an uneven idle and smoke instead of a clean stop.
Never start it to reposition. Get off at the next sensible junction and switch off. Long trip? Anything approaching the under 25 miles to the closest city and you should suppose the lot — filter, pump, injectors, all of that reached by the contamination. Say that on the phone, since it alters what goes in the van.
Where is Dunball?
Dunball is a small coastal hamlet in Somerset, situated near the mouth of the River Parrett and close to the M5 motorway. Dunball lies at a low elevation of around 7 metres, and its detached houses are a common feature of the local landscape. Dunball is located near other small settlements such as Down End and Puriton, and is within commuting distance of the city of Wells. Dunball is also relatively close to the Somerset Levels, an area of flat wetland terrain,
Our job in Dunball, step by step
- The responses alter the work, which is why our engineers ask before giving a price: what was put in, how much of it, and whether your engine has run.
- The contaminated mixture is drawn out of the tank.
- Lines rinsed, filter cleared. Whatever is left after that is not the thing that started the issue.
- Our technicians pour fresh diesel in and bleed the system.
- The motor is fired up and tested to be sure it runs properly on new diesel.
From that point, you are ready to pull away. Long-term damage is very rare when it has been noticed soon, and because all of this is done where the vehicle is, it never needs to go to a workshop.
AdBlue in the diesel tank by mistake, in Dunball?
The problem is not the same, though the opening rule is — do not start it — if what went in was AdBlue instead of petrol. Diluted diesel, and no lubrication left for the system that depends on it. That's petrol. AdBlue? Urea dissolved in water. Tip that in with the diesel and you get rust instead, plus build-up.
Our engineers cover both, and AdBlue removal in Dunball has its own page with the details — including why it is usually the more serious of the two.
What a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain will cost around Dunball
What shifts the price is laid out below, because this job is not one job and our engineers cannot truthfully put a single price on this page.
- Started? Driven? Either answer counts more than anything else on this list.
- How much of the wrong fuel went in, compared with how much your tank can hold.
- Which went in: petrol or AdBlue.
- Where the vehicle is, and whether a van can safely reach and work on it.
A clear answer rather than a range is what you get for telling us three things: your car, the quantity, and if it has run. Vehicle at home, going nowhere, nothing pressing about it — is ideal for that.
Dunball motorists ask us these about petrol in diesel
I'm on a forecourt around Dunball. Can you drain the car on the spot?
Yes, and it is where a big part of this work gets done. Routinely, provided the site agrees: Shell, plus every other forecourt nearby. Say on the phone where exactly you have stopped. Whether we can work in that spot is something our technicians answer on the spot.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
Whether the motor has run counts far more, though the ratio matters too, rather than the litres. What settles how much work is needed is if that mix has been drawn through the fuel system — because though five litres in an almost empty tank is a distinct situation from five in a full one, either way that's the question.
Petrol in my diesel, and I have driven the car
Stop safely. Off. Nothing after that. Driving takes the trouble along — out of the tank, into the pump and injectors. Motorists fear it a good deal more than the recovery rate warrants, mind. The one genuinely valuable thing left to you isn't restarting it.
Is a fuel drain going to void my warranty?
A manufacturer's warranty withstands a drain then flush done to a proper standard, which is no change at all. Running a diesel on petrol is the thing more likely to cause a dispute with one, which is another reason to leave the vehicle switched off.
Could I put some two-stroke in and just drive?
What petrol has diluted is not restored by two-stroke oil, which is an old remedy for a distinct issue. So no. Afterwards? Still petrol in your tank, and a pump that has to live with the stuff.
A main dealer for petrol in a diesel — necessary?
You don't need one. The vehicle is drained and cleaned wherever it is, with no need to bring it to a dealership.
Standing next to it?
The motor stays off.
Driven it already? Then somewhere sensible, stop, turn off, and no restarting the car afterwards. This is recoverable from far more regularly than people assume, and a parked, cold motor is the best position to be in.
At the roadside, on the forecourt or at home — call-out fuel draining around Dunball and throughout Somerset.