Put Petrol in a Diesel Car in Greenbank? Don't Start It
With your tank still carrying the fuel and the engine not yet turned over, almost every job requires only a drain, so leave the motor off. That outcome is determined in the minutes right after filling up, and not by the amount that went in. Across Greenbank and the remainder of City of Edinburgh, Petrol in Diesel drains your car and flushes it where it is, whether at a roadside, on a driveway or at a forecourt. Ring us before all else happens, and you will see what follows from there.
What to do next about petrol in a diesel
- Do not fire it up. Fired up anyway? Then do not trust it. Diesel in a petrol car generally cannot run, and so the motorist stops and the harm ends with them. Petrol in a diesel? It starts. It ticks over. It pulls away happily, for several miles. People get that confused. It is not okay — that fuel system is wearing every mile you cover.
- Leave the car's ignition be as well. Diesel has two tasks: it burns, and before it burns it greases that high-pressure fuel pump and its injectors. Petrol does the first but not the second. Turning the ignition on is often all it takes to prime that system, which pulls this petrol out of your tank and into just those components.
- That advice assumes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It will not. Pour diesel on top and nothing at all is removed; what you have is a fuller tank of the same blend. And no, the grade makes no difference — super unleaded is still petrol.
- Sit tight if it is wise to. Hazards on, motor off, keep the vehicle. Wherever you have stopped — the verge on Greenbank Park, anywhere — a tricky location for us is better than a started diesel, and nothing is easier for us to sort than a car that never moved.
- Have your location ready before you call. A postcode beginning EH10 5 and whatever is nearest to you with a sign on it is the difference between our van turning up and our van circling.
- Dial 0333 366 0103. Say what was put in, roughly how much, plus whether your car has started. Those three facts settle the whole visit.
Don't run it home. Petrol-thinned diesel has passed through that injection pump in real quantity on the drive in, and the drive back would about double that for nothing at all. Ring us — the platform is okay. There's no need to stand over that Volkswagen Passat at Slateford while the work goes on, and our team would much rather hear from you tonight than discover on Monday.
Twenty to nine. By the local primary school. Late already, and the receipt in your hand says unleaded. Put the hazards on, leave the motor alone, then call us. You may think three miles is nothing, in the Nissan Qashqai or anything else — except that fuel is metered to demand, and a run taken in a hurry asks for a great deal of that.
Here's the whole mechanism. Diesel needs enough body to seal the tight tolerances it goes through, and petrol takes that away. That's it. Which accounts for the usual Braidburn Valley Park call — a diesel Ford Focus, out there without fuss and back down on power, rough at idle, perhaps a bit of smoke. Injection systems work hydraulically as well as chemically, and so your fuel has to hold pressure and not just burn; thinned, it leaks past those clearances and not building, and delivery comes poorer, later, less even than the motor was engineered around. Not a failing motor, though. Fuel that has stopped behaving like diesel. Put that right and it stops.
Leave the BMW 5 Series close to Open Air Theatre and phone us. We are blunt about not driving on since a worn pump loses, and what it loses moves onward with your fuel to your injectors downstream.
Purged, not cleared — that's what a diesel Peugeot 208 which got as far as Greenbank Church needs. Running a diesel puts the blend into your filter, the lines, your pump and its rail, none of which empties with your tank, so by now that tank holds the smaller part of the problem.
Pump-side draining for petrol in a diesel
Much of this job starts at a forecourt, which means a large part of it ends up done there. Still at Shell? Then that's generally where it takes place. Garage forecourts are routine for us, with the agreement of the site.
Nowhere but the forecourt can this be caught with the motor still unrun. Fuel sucked out of the tank and through your filter, all the way to the high-pressure fuel pump, is what occurs when the engine is switched on and your car is driven to where it is now: the car park, the private drive or the lay-by, anywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush takes in the fuel filter and the fuel lines along with your tank. That is still not a catastrophe, and our engineers deal with it where your car sits. What decides it is whether the ignition was reached for in the seconds after the till receipt was read.
Clear of the petrol pump, the next motorist can get through — so yes, let the staff help you move it. Well worth it. Cranking the car just to move four vehicle lengths isn't.
Will our engineers serve your end of Greenbank?
Greenbank is a residential suburb, and our vans are out to the town and to the areas by it on those same runs: The Braids, Morningside, Colinton Mains, Oxgangs and Craiglockhart.
If yours isn't on that list it does not mean we don't come — there are pages for most locations in City of Edinburgh, and the ones listed above are merely the immediate neighbours. Ring us to enquire rather than guessing — county lines especially, and anywhere your phone may get wrong.
Look at our map for the ground included here. The lot is ground our technicians cover: a roadside, a forecourt, a private drive, a car park. You do not drive the car anywhere.
Broken down on the kerbside near Greenbank
The opportunity to stop anywhere sensible does not fall to everybody. A common call for us and not an odd one: worked out after setting off, ended up on the verge of Greenbank Grove or at a lay-by with the hazard lights on.
Clear of the motor while it is not safe to wait in it, beside it when it is. It will often oblige. A diesel running on petrol limps along perfectly willingly, and that is the catch: fire it up to reach somewhere handier and that mixture goes further into the fuel system with every mile travelled. However inconvenient the location, it is no bother for us to come to it, and that's a lot better for the vehicle than driving on.
Petrol in a diesel, but the car has gone
Here is where your M8 comes into it — under 5 miles away from Greenbank. Lost power, a rough idle, some smoke: those are the signs when they come, instead of a neat stop — and a wrongly fuelled diesel will often get you onto it and some way along before anything seems wrong at all.
Take the next junction that is safe, pull up there, and don't start it to move it. Long trip? Anything close to the under 3 miles to the nearest city and you should presume the lot — filter, pump, injectors, all of it arrived at by the petrol. Say that on the phone, because it alters what goes in the van.
About Greenbank
Greenbank is a suburban area in the City of Edinburgh, situated near the River Almond and close to the Pentland Hills. Greenbank sits at an elevation of around 121 metres, with views of the surrounding countryside and the nearby city of Edinburgh. Greenbank is characterized by its predominantly flat-type housing and its proximity to nearby places such as The Braids, Morningside, and Colinton Mains.
Our visit in Greenbank, step by step
- The replies shape the work, which is why we ask before giving a price: what got in, how much of that, and if the motor has run.
- The contaminated fuel is drawn out of that tank.
- Fuel lines are rinsed through and your filter cleared, leaving nothing in the system that caused any of this.
- Priming follows, once new diesel is in.
- It is fired up with new diesel in it, and our engineers make sure that it's running properly.
The vehicle is then ready for you to pull away. All of this is done where the vehicle is, so it never needs to go to a garage, and when it has been noticed soon, permanent damage is very uncommon.
Greenbank AdBlue removal is a separate job
AdBlue rather than petrol? Then the first rule is unchanged — your motor stays off — while this issue underneath it's a separate one altogether. Weakened diesel, and no lubrication left for the system that depends on it. That's petrol. Urea in water, AdBlue, and in a diesel tank that causes corrosion and residue.
Our engineers deal with both, and AdBlue removal in Greenbank has its own page with the details — including why it is often the more significant of the two.
What a petrol-in-diesel drain will cost in Greenbank
We can't put one number on this page truthfully, since this job isn't one job. What changes it:
- Has it been run or driven? Nothing else counts for as much.
- Wrong fuel in, against what your tank takes — that proportion.
- AdBlue or petrol, whichever went in.
- Where your car is, and whether a van can sensibly reach and work on it.
Tell us your vehicle, the amount and if it has run, and you'll get a straight answer instead of a range. If it isn't time-critical — your car is at home and going nowhere — works too.
Greenbank drivers ask us these about petrol in diesel
At a petrol station in Greenbank, can you do a fuel drain there?
Yes — forecourts are where a large part of this gets done. Tell us which one you're at when you call and we will tell you whether our technicians can work there. With the owner's consent we attend Tesco and the other forecourts locally all the time.
How much petrol is too much for a diesel?
Whether your engine has run matters far more, though the ratio counts too, instead of the litres. Five litres in an almost empty tank is a separate case from five in a full one — but either way, the thing that determines how much work is required is whether that mix has been pulled through the fuel system.
I drove it after putting petrol in my diesel. What next?
Somewhere safe, then stop, then turn off and keep it off. Not restarting it is the single most useful thing available to you now. Driving does shift the problem out of the tank then into the pump and injectors, yes, and it stays recoverable far more often than people assume.
My warranty — does a fuel drain void it?
No. Carried out correctly, clearing and purging is no alteration at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is unaffected by it. Running a diesel on petrol is the thing likelier to cause an argument with one, which is another good reason to leave the vehicle switched off.
Adding two-stroke oil, then driving home
No. It belongs to a separate fault from a bygone era, and petrol has diluted something no oil of that kind replaces. Petrol remains in that tank after that, whatever else goes in, and the pump gets no break from it.
Main dealers and petrol in a diesel
Wherever the vehicle is, our engineers drain and clean it there, so a drive to the main dealer doesn't come into it.
You, and the car, still together?
The motor stays off.
If you have already driven it, pull over somewhere sensible, turn it off then keep it off. Cold, stationary, going nowhere: that's the best place to be in. People fear this far more than they need to.
At the kerbside, on the forecourt or at home — call-out fuel draining in Greenbank and throughout City of Edinburgh.