Put Petrol in a Diesel Car in Fintry? Don't Start It
If you have not fired up the motor as yet, do not. A fuel drain and nothing more is almost always what a vehicle requires while the fuel is still in that tank and your engine has not run, which is why it's the next few minutes that count, not how much went in. Petrol in Diesel comes to the car wherever it has come to rest in Fintry or the remainder of Dundee City, on the forecourt, by the roadside or on a drive, and drains and flushes it there. We can show you what the next move is. Contact us — it comes before everything else.
What to do next about petrol in a diesel
- Give a petrol engine diesel and it will typically refuse to run at all, and so the person stops there and so does the harm. Give a diesel petrol and the engine starts, it ticks over, it drives off — fine enough for several miles. Motorists have that reversed, which is the bit they get wrong about petrol in a diesel specifically. So don't fire it up. And having started, never rely on it: that fuel system is wearing while you drive.
- Leave your ignition alone also. Diesel has two jobs: it combusts, and before it burns it greases the injection pump and those injectors. Petrol handles the first and not the second. Turning your ignition on is often sufficient to prime the system, which carries this petrol out of that tank and into precisely those parts.
- Do not pour diesel on top to thin it. A diesel fuel system won't tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice suggests, and topping up removes nothing — it simply leaves you a larger tank of the same mixture. The type makes no difference either: super unleaded is still petrol.
- Our team would much rather get to a difficult spot than have it started — so if you sensibly can, stay still. Nothing is quicker to sort out than a car that has never moved. On the verge on Fintry Drive, that means hazards on and keep the vehicle.
- Before you ring, work out your whereabouts. Anything nearest to you with a sign on it, plus a postcode starting DD4 9 — that is what settles whether our van turns up or circles.
- Call 0333 366 0103. Say what went in, approximately how many litres, and also whether the car has fired. Those three answers determine the whole visit.
Draining petrol from a diesel on a forecourt
The work begins at the pump, generally. Quite often it ends at one too. Still at JET? Then that is usually where it takes place. Station forecourts are everyday for us, with the agreement of the owner.
At the forecourt, this is spotted with your motor never fired, and nowhere else does that. The few seconds between checking the receipt and going for the keys decide how much requires cleaning. Anywhere other than the forecourt — a car park, a driveway, a lay-by — the vehicle was started and driven to get there, so fuel was pulled from the tank, through the filter and into your high-pressure pump. That means the lines and your filter need rinsing as well as the tank. It's not a disaster, and we can still sort it out where the car sits.
Attendants will usually pitch in pushing it out from the pump, which lets the next motorist get past. Take the help. Starting it over four car lengths? No.
The complicated part is that bay, not your fuel. Vehicles either side of you, a trolley shelter behind, and occasionally a height limit on the way in that settles whether our van can get to you at all — so when you call from a car park like the one at Morrisons, mention how much space there's about you and which way round your car is. Those we cover frequently. Should there be no space to work next to the diesel Renault Clio, it gets shifted with your engine off, and not out of fussiness over a couple of seconds of running: priming occurs at every start, more of the blend departs the tank for the pump, and two shunts into a better spot have gradually made a harder job of what was simply a motor standing still.
Nothing tells you, because from behind the wheel there's nothing to be warned about. Your diesel Ford Focus will have seemed entirely ordinary on the way back from the local primary school, and they all do — which is the trap with petrol in a diesel and not the reverse. Diesel in a petrol motor mostly refuses to run, stopping the driver and stopping the wear with them. Petrol in a diesel starts, ticks over, drives off as though nothing had happened, and all the while the pump works without the lubrication its fuel is meant to supply. Tell us about how far, and how hard. The harder counts more.
Don't chance it. The journey home from The Dolphin is entirely possible, which is exactly the issue — a diluted tank does not stop a diesel starting or pulling away, it just wears down the components your fuel is meant to lubricate. Phone us, and let the Mercedes C-Class stay where it is.
Knocking, an uneven idle, white smoke, a throttle gone dead. That's a misfuelled diesel Audi A6 telling you what's wrong. Turn off where you have stopped, close to Our Lady of Sorrows or anywhere else, and never restart it to find a better location.
Repaired and starting are not the same thing, and the difference is the circuit: our technicians flush it, and take the filter off where there is a working one. Compare that with the confident tip you'll get — drain the car, refill with clean diesel. Half right. Do precisely that to a diesel Citroen C3 near Finmill Centre and it will start, which is exactly why the advice sounds plausible. Then your engine draws the petrol left behind in the fuel filter, and in the feed lines, straight back through the pump, as emptying a tank does nothing whatever about fuel that has already left it. Call us instead.
Do our engineers serve your end of Fintry?
As a residential suburb, Fintry gets a steady visit, and the places close by go along on the same trip: Linlathen and South Powrie, Claverhouse and Middleton, Whitfield.
There are pages for the majority of towns around Dundee City, and the ones mentioned above are merely the nearest neighbours — so yours being absent from the list means nothing whatsoever about if our technicians come. Contact us and check instead of presuming — boundaries especially, and anywhere your satnav may struggle with.
The area this page spans is on this map. The car never needs to come to us. We work over the lot — kerbside, forecourts, driveways, car parks.
Broken down at the kerbside around Fintry
Some drivers find no safe spot to pull over whatsoever. A normal call for us and not a rare one: worked out after setting off, landed by the verge on Findowrie Street or in a lay-by with the hazards going.
Whether you wait beside the motor or keep clear of it hangs on if staying in it looks safe. It will often oblige. A diesel running on petrol limps along very willingly, and that's the trouble: restart the vehicle to get to somewhere safer and that mixture goes further into your fuel system with every mile driven. Driving on does your car far more harm than a van coming out to a tricky place, and that's no trouble for us.
Driven it already? Stop, and check below
Here is where the local M90 comes into it — under 25 miles from Fintry. It will usually get you onto it, and some way along, before you spot a thing. Then it is smoke, an uneven idle and power ebbing away — not a clean stop. Wrongly fuelled diesels seldom give you one of those.
Take the next exit that is safe, stop there, and never start it to reposition. Presume the worst of that on a long run. Anything close to the under 3 miles to the nearest city, and the petrol has been through your filter, through your pump, through the injectors. Mention it when you phone. What our technicians bring alters.
A bit about Fintry
Fintry is a suburban area located on the outskirts of Dundee, situated near the coast in eastern Scotland. Fintry sits at an elevation of 71 metres, with views out to the North Sea, and is characterized by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock. Fintry is close to nearby places such as Linlathen, South Powrie, and Claverhouse, and is approximately 2.5 miles from the city centre of Dundee.
What follows when our technicians arrive with you in Fintry
- Three things get checked before any quote — the fuel that went in, the amount, and if anything has been run since. Each answer changes the work.
- Out flows the polluted fuel.
- Our technicians rinse the lines and clear your filter, and so what's remaining in your system is not what caused the trouble.
- Fresh diesel goes in, and then the system gets primed.
- The engine is fired up and tested to confirm it runs properly on clean diesel.
That leaves your car ready to set off. We do all of this wherever your car has ended up, which means it never has to be taken to a garage, and if it has been noticed early, it is very rare for there to be lasting damage.
AdBlue in your diesel tank by mistake, in Fintry?
AdBlue rather than petrol? Then the first instruction is unchanged — the motor remains off — whereas this fault underneath it is a distinct one altogether. Petrol thins your diesel and strips the lubrication the fuel system relies on. Rust and build-up are what a diesel tank ends up with instead, because AdBlue is urea dissolved in water.
AdBlue removal around Fintry has a page of its own with the full story on it, including why it's often the more serious of the two. Our technicians deal with both.
Paying for a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain around Fintry
One figure wouldn't be honest here, because this is not one job. These are the things that shift it:
- Whether your engine has been started or driven. This is the big one.
- How much of the wrong fuel was put in, against how much your tank takes.
- AdBlue or unleaded, whichever went in.
- Access: the car's position, and whether working on it there's safe for our van.
The vehicle, the amount, whether it has run — give us those and the answer comes back firm rather than as a range. Not pressing, with your car at home and going nowhere? Then is fine.
Fintry motorists ask us these about petrol in diesel
At a petrol station in Fintry, can you do a fuel drain there?
A good share of this work happens there, so yes. Tell us which one you're at when you phone and we will tell you if our engineers can work there. With the owner's consent our technicians visit Morrisons and the other forecourts around town all the time.
How much petrol is too much for a diesel?
It hinges on the ratio instead of the litres, and a lot more on whether the engine has run. What determines how much work is needed is whether that mix has been drawn through the system — since although five litres in a nearly empty tank is a distinct situation from five in a full one, either way that is the question.
Already driven it with petrol in your diesel? What then?
Somewhere sensible, then stop, then switch off and keep it off. Driving is what moves the problem from that tank into your pump and injectors — but it's fixable much more regularly than people expect, and the single most valuable thing you can do now is not restart the vehicle.
Will a fuel drain void my warranty?
A manufacturer's warranty outlasts a drain and flush done to a correct standard, which is no modification at all. A dispute over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it switched off.
Adding two-stroke oil, then driving home
What petrol has weakened isn't put back by two-stroke oil, which is an old fix for a distinct fault. So no. Afterwards? Still petrol in the tank, and a pump that has to cope with the stuff.
A main dealer for petrol in a diesel — essential?
No. Our engineers drain and clean the vehicle wherever it is, so there is no need to take it to a main dealer.
You, and the car, still together?
Turned off is how it remains.
If you have already driven it, stop somewhere sensible, switch it off then keep it off. This is recoverable from far more commonly than drivers fear, and a still, cold motor is the best place to be in.
Emptying wrongly fuelled motors, Fintry and the rest of Dundee City, wherever they are. Kerbside. Forecourt. Home.