Eddington: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
Do not turn on your engine. If the fuel is still in your tank and the engine has not yet turned over, a tank drain is nearly always all it requires — and that's decided in the coming few minutes, not by how much got in. Petrol in Diesel drains and cleans wrongly fuelled cars where they sit, all over Eddington and the rest of Kent, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a driveway. Call us and then our engineers can tell you what follows from here before you attempt much else.
What now? Petrol in a diesel, in order
- Whenever you drive, the pump and the injectors wear down. This is why you do not fire it up, and why you never believe it once it has started. The trick about petrol in a diesel in particular — the bit drivers get wrong — is that it drives off happily for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol engine usually won't run at all, which stops the person and stops the wear with them. This one lets you keep going.
- Two jobs, diesel: it burns, and on the way through it keeps that high-pressure pump and injectors oiled. Petrol only does the one. Which is why the ignition stays off also — flick it on and you commonly prime the system, and that's petrol exiting the tank for exactly those components.
- Topping up removes nothing. It leaves you a bigger tank of the same mixture, because a diesel fuel system will not accept petrol by percentage the way that guidance suggests — so never put diesel on top to dilute it. Octane is beside the point too: super unleaded is petrol.
- Wait where you are if you safely can. A car that hasn't shifted is the simplest one to deal with, and we'd rather travel to a tricky location than have it started. If you are parked on the verge on Eddington Lane, turn those hazards on and keep it there.
- Have your whereabouts prepared before you ring. A postcode that starts CT6 5 and whatever is nearest to you with a sign on it is the difference between a van arriving and a van circling.
- What was put in, roughly how many litres, and if the engine has fired — these three answers settle the full job. Dial 0333 366 0103 then tell us.
Clearing petrol from the diesel on a forecourt
Forecourts are where the job often starts, and where a big share of that closes. If you are still at the forecourt at Esso, that is usually where the drain takes place — our technicians work on station forecourts routinely, with the site's permission.
Before the engine has fired — the forecourt is the single place the mistake is caught. We can still sort it out where it stands, even away from the pumps. In a car park, on a driveway or in a lay-by, your car has been started and driven there, and that pulled fuel through the fuel filter then into your high-pressure pump, right from your tank. None of that is a disaster, but the flush then has to reach past that tank to your lines and the fuel filter, and the few seconds between reading your receipt and reaching for the keys are what settle that.
Away from the pump, the next customer can get by — so yes, let the attendants help you wheel it. Worth it. Cranking the car for four car lengths? Don't.
The awkward part is that bay, not your fuel. Motors either side of you, a trolley shelter behind, and from time to time a height barrier on the way in that settles whether our van can reach you at all — so when you ring from a car park like the one outside Tesco Express, mention how much clearance there is about you and which way round your car is. Those our engineers cover frequently. Should there be no space to work beside your diesel Peugeot 308, it gets rolled with the motor off, and not out of fuss over a few seconds of running: priming takes place at every start, more of the mix exits that tank for the pump, and two shunts into a nicer bay have gradually made a worse job of what was just a motor sitting still.
Do not risk it. The drive home from The Heron is entirely possible, which is exactly the problem — a weakened tank doesn't stop a diesel starting or pulling away, it just wears the parts your fuel is supposed to lubricate. Call us, and let the Dacia Duster stay where it sits.
Sitting still, it gets no worse. The pump isn't turning, so whatever occurred on the way to Memorial Park in that diesel Audi A3 is finished happening. Time is yours. Just do not take it home on the engine to find more of that.
Rattling? Ragged idle? White smoke, throttle gone dead? That is your misfilled Volvo XC60, a diesel, saying what's wrong with it. Stop wherever you happen to be, possibly by Beach Creative, and leave the restarting alone.
What occurs next is the problem. The engine immediately draws the petrol still resting in your filter and the feed lines back round through the pump a second time, since emptying a tank does nothing about fuel that has already left it. Drain it then put clean diesel in, a person confident will tell you — and that advice is half true, as do it to a diesel Citroen C4 Picasso parked up, The Salvation Army say, and the thing starts, which is what makes it sound plausible. Ring us instead. We flush your circuit and take the fuel filter off where your vehicle has a working one, and that is the difference between the car being repaired and the vehicle only starting.
Areas we cover near Eddington
As a coastal village, Eddington gets a frequent call, whilst the villages round about go along on the same journey: Greenhill and Herne Bay, Lower Herne and Hunters Forstal, Bullockstone.
There are pages for the majority of locations across Kent, and the ones listed above are simply the immediate neighbours — so yours being missing from that list means nothing at all about if our engineers come. Ring us to check rather than presuming, above all when you are on the boundary or somewhere your satnav struggles with.
The map outlines the area this page includes. Our technicians work at the roadside, on forecourts, on driveways and at car parks across all of that, and your vehicle doesn't need to move to us.
Broken down at the kerbside near Eddington
A chance to pull in somewhere safe does not come to everybody. If you noticed after setting off and finished up along the verge beside Eddington Way, or at a lay-by somewhere with your hazards flashing, that is a normal call for us rather than a rare one.
Whether you wait beside the car or keep clear of it depends on whether staying there looks wise. Do not fire it up to reach a safer place. It'll go — a diesel on petrol usually obliges — and each mile of obliging pulls that mix deeper into the fuel system. Carrying on does the vehicle far more harm than a technician coming out to an awkward place, and that is no problem for us.
So you've run it? Petrol in a diesel after a few miles
This is where your M2 matters, under 10 miles out of Eddington. Some distance along, and onto it in the first place: a misfuelled diesel will usually manage both before anything feels wrong. What you get then is seldom a tidy stop. Power drains away, your idle turns lumpy, and there may be smoke.
Take the next exit that is sensible, pull up there, and don't start the vehicle to move it. On a longer drive — anything close to the under 10 miles to the closest city — take it the petrol has been through the fuel filter, your pump and your injectors, and tell us when you phone. It alters what we bring.
About Eddington
Eddington is a small village in Kent, situated near the coast and close to the towns of Herne Bay and Canterbury. Eddington has a population of around 1897 people and is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock. Eddington sits at a low elevation of approximately 7 metres above sea level, near the villages of Greenhill and Lower Herne.
What happens when our technicians reach you around Eddington
- We find out what went in, how much, and if the motor has run. The replies alter the work, which is why our technicians ask before giving a price.
- Your tank is emptied of it.
- What is remaining in the system should not be what created the trouble, and so the fuel lines get rinsed and your filter cleaned.
- Our engineers put new diesel in and prime the system.
- It's fired up with fresh diesel in it, and our technicians check that it's running smoothly.
That has it ready to pull away. Our engineers do everything wherever the vehicle has stopped, which means it never has to go to a garage, and when it has been spotted soon, it is very uncommon for there to be permanent damage.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Eddington is a distinct problem
AdBlue instead of petrol? Then the first instruction is unchanged — your engine remains off — while the problem under it is a separate one altogether. Petrol does two things to diesel: weakens it, and strips out the lubrication the system relies on. Rust and deposits are what a diesel tank gets instead, since AdBlue is urea in water.
Frequently the more significant of the two, AdBlue — and the details sits on its own Eddington page. Both are ours to deal with.
Paying for a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain around Eddington
Our technicians can't put one figure on this page truthfully, because the job isn't one job. What shifts it:
- Started? Driven? Either answer matters more than anything else on this list.
- The tank's capacity, set against how much of the wrong fuel got into it.
- AdBlue or unleaded, whichever went in.
- Access: the car's position, and whether working on it there is safe for a technician.
A firm answer rather than a range is what you get for telling us three things: the vehicle, the quantity, and whether it has run. If it's not urgent — the vehicle is at home and going nowhere — works too.
Petrol in diesel: frequent questions in Eddington
Fuel drains on a Eddington petrol station forecourt
Plenty of what our engineers do takes place nowhere else. So yes. Tell us which one you're at when you ring and we will tell you whether our engineers can work there. With the station's consent we visit Texaco and the other forecourts around town regularly.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
Litres aren't the yardstick. Proportion is, and much more than either, it counts if anything has been run. An almost empty tank with five litres in it, against a full one with the same five: distinct scenarios, of course. Either way, the work required comes down to one thing, which is whether the system has had that blend sucked through it.
Already driven it with petrol in your diesel? Now what?
Stop sensibly. Off. Nothing after that. Driving is what shifts the issue from the tank into the pump and injectors — but it's fixable far more frequently than drivers fear, and the single most useful thing you can do now isn't restart the vehicle.
Fuel drains and manufacturer warranties
A drain and flush carried out properly is not a modification and does not void a manufacturer's warranty. A disagreement 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
No. It belongs to a different fault from a separate era, and petrol has diluted something no oil of that kind puts back. Your tank still has petrol in it later on, and the pump still has to live with it.
Main dealers and petrol in a diesel
Not at all. Our technicians drain and clean your car wherever it is, so there's no need to take it to a franchised dealer.
You, and your car, still together?
Shut off is how the car stays.
Already driven it? Then pull over somewhere safe, switch off, and let it stay that way. This is recoverable from much more frequently than people assume, and a parked, cold motor is the best place to be in.
Throughout Kent and around Eddington: on-site fuel draining, at home or on the forecourt or at the kerbside.