Greenway: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
With the tank still carrying the fuel and your engine not yet turned over, nearly every job needs only a drain, so leave the engine off. That result is determined in the minutes right after the fill-up, and not by the amount that was put in. All over Greenway and the rest of Somerset, Petrol in Diesel drains the vehicle and cleans it where it stands, whether by a roadside, on a driveway or at a forecourt. Our technicians shall explain what the next stage will be. Phone — this happens before anything else.
What next? Petrol in a diesel, in order
- Whenever you drive, your pump and your injectors wear. That's why you do not start it, and why you don't depend on it once it has started. The trick about petrol in a diesel specifically — the bit people get wrong — is that it drives off normally for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol motor usually won't run at all, which stops the person and stops the harm with them. This one lets you drive on.
- Two jobs, diesel: it ignites, and on the way through it keeps the high-pressure fuel pump and injectors greased. Petrol only manages the one. That is why the car's ignition remains off as well — flick it on and you often prime the system, and that's petrol leaving your tank for just those components.
- Do not pour diesel on top to dilute it. A diesel fuel system will not tolerate petrol by percentage the way that guidance suggests, and topping up clears nothing — it just leaves you a fuller tank of the same mix. The type makes no difference either: super unleaded is simply petrol.
- Stay put if it is sensible to. Hazards on, ignition off, leave the vehicle. Wherever you have stopped — the verge on Greenway Road, anywhere — an odd location for us trumps a started engine, and nothing is quicker for us to deal with than a vehicle that never shifted.
- Know where you are before phoning. A postcode starting TA4 3, and the name of whatever is nearest to you. Otherwise the technician circles rather than turning up.
- What went in, roughly how many litres, and also if the car has fired — those three replies determine the whole call-out. Ring 0333 366 0103 then tell us.
Can petrol be taken from a diesel on a forecourt?
Most of this work starts at a pump, meaning a good part of it ends up completed there. We operate on garage forecourts routinely, with the site's permission, and so if you're still at Murco that is generally where this drain takes place.
Before the engine has run — a garage is the single setting the mistake gets stopped. Fuel pulled out of the tank and through the filter, all the way to the high-pressure fuel pump, is what happens when the engine is switched on and the vehicle is driven to where it is now: the car park, the drive or the lay-by, everywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush includes the filter and your lines together with your tank. That's still not a calamity, and our technicians sort it out where the car sits. What settles it is whether the ignition was reached for in the seconds after your receipt was checked.
Staff will generally chip in pushing it out from the petrol pump, which lets the next motorist get by. Accept the help. Four vehicle lengths isn't worth a restart.
We are in car parks like the one outside ALDI all the time, and it's hardly ever the fuel that complicates them. It is the bay. Motors both sides. Trolleys stacked up behind. Sometimes a height bar at the entrance, which decides whether a van reaches you at all. So mention how boxed in you are when you ring, and which way the vehicle is facing. If there is no room to work beside your Audi A4, our technicians shift it without your engine. That's not fuss over a few seconds: starts prime things, mixture comes out of the tank towards the pump, and a car shuffled twice for a nicer space is quietly a worse job than one no one touched.
You will be told to shift it clear of that gateway and deal with it later. Do not. On the zig-zags by Bishops Lydeard Church School, a wrongly fuelled Mercedes C-Class running on diesel is in the way, and that's all it is. Crank it three more times being polite and you have turned a tank into a fuel system: every start primes your lines, every prime draws more petrol beyond the fuel filter toward the pump. Let them moan. Phone us.
Straightforward job, this one — till someone drives it home. A diesel Dacia Duster parked by The Lethbridge Arms with petrol in your tank loses nothing by sitting there overnight, and so leave the car and phone once it's light. Expect a question about that trip there, though. Short and chilly is exactly where petrol battles to burn, and what will not burn can work past the piston rings and into the engine oil.
Most of these occur somewhere unfamiliar, and the cause is mechanical instead of sloppy — almost no resistance meets a slimmer petrol nozzle entering a modern diesel filler neck. Two days into a diesel Vauxhall Astra, a fill-up by Gauge Museum Bishops Lydeard that you didn't think about? Ring us from where you are. Courtesy and hire cars go further before anyone notices it, and the further they go, the more petrol winds up at the fuel injectors.
Drain it then put fresh diesel in — that's the tip you'll get, normally from somebody certain, and it's half true. Do exactly that to a diesel Citroen C3 by Greenway Farm Hall and it would start, which is what makes the advice sound reasonable. What happens next is the problem: your engine straight away sucks the petrol left resting in the filter and the feed lines straight back through the pump, because emptying a tank does nothing about fuel that has already left it. Phone us instead. We flush the circuit and take the filter off where your vehicle has a working one, which is the difference between the vehicle being repaired and your car only starting.
Can we serve your side of Greenway?
Bishops Lydeard, Ash Priors, Cotford St Luke, East Lydeard, East Combe — each of these on the runs that carry us across to Greenway too, a residential suburb.
Our technicians do come. Those names above are just the nearest neighbours, and a page exists for most places around Somerset, and so an absence from the list isn't an absence from the coverage. Ring us to ask instead of guessing, above all if you're on the boundary or anywhere the satnav gets wrong.
See our map for the area included here. Your vehicle doesn't need to come to us. Our technicians work throughout all of that — roadside, forecourts, driveways, car parks.
Kerbside stops across Greenway
Not everyone gets the chance to pull over somewhere suitable. If you worked it out after setting off and landed by the verge beside Station Green, or at a lay-by somewhere with your hazards flashing, that is a common call for us instead of a rare one.
Remain by your car if it is wise to be there, and clear of the vehicle when it is not. Do not start it up to get to a better spot. It'll go — a diesel on petrol usually obliges — and each mile of obliging draws the mixture deeper into your fuel system. We'll bring our van to a tricky place without any bother, and for your car that's much better than carrying on.
Some miles on petrol in a diesel: now what?
The local M5 is the road that counts here, and sits under 10 miles from Greenway. A drop in power, a lumpy idle, some smoke: those are the signs when they appear, instead of a tidy stop — and a misfuelled diesel will often take you onto it and some distance along before anything seems wrong at all.
Take the first junction that is safe, stop there, and never start it to reposition. On a longer drive — anything approaching the under 50 miles to the nearest city — assume the mixture has been through your filter, your pump and the fuel injectors, and say so when you phone. It changes what our technicians bring.
Greenway itself
Greenway is a suburban area situated on the riverside in Somerset, with a relatively low elevation of 57 metres. Greenway lies near several small villages, including Bishops Lydeard and Ash Priors, and is within commuting distance of the city of Wells. Greenway has a population of around 796 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Greenway is also located a significant distance from London, at around 136 miles away.
What our technicians do when our engineers arrive with you in Greenway
- We find out what went in, how much, and whether the motor has run. The answers alter the work, which is why our technicians ask before giving a price.
- The contaminated mixture comes from that tank.
- We rinse your fuel lines and clear your filter, and so what is left in the fuel system isn't what caused the issue.
- New diesel goes in, and then your system gets primed.
- Our technicians start it and check it runs correctly on fresh diesel.
That has the car ready to drive away. There is no need to go to a garage at any point, because the work is all done where the car is, and when it's caught early, permanent damage is very uncommon.
Greenway AdBlue removal is a separate job
AdBlue rather than petrol? Then the opening step is unchanged — your engine stays off — while this problem under it is a separate one altogether. Petrol does two things to diesel: dilutes it, and strips out the protection your fuel system relies on. AdBlue? Urea dissolved in water. Put that in with the diesel and you get rust instead, plus build-up.
Our engineers handle both, and AdBlue removal around Greenway has its own page with the full story — including why it's usually the more significant of the two.
Greenway pricing for a petrol-in-diesel drain
Our engineers cannot put one number on this page honestly, as this job isn't one job. What changes it:
- Has it been run or driven? Nothing else matters for as much.
- The tank's capacity, set against how much of the wrong fuel got into it.
- Whether it's petrol or AdBlue.
- Where is it? And can a van get to it and work there safely?
A clear answer instead of a range is what you get for telling us three things: your car, the amount, and if it has run. Not time-critical, with the vehicle at home and going nowhere? Then does the job.
Things we hear about petrol in diesel around Greenway
At a petrol station around Greenway, can you do a fuel drain there?
Yes, and it's where a large share of this work happens. Tell us which one you're at when you ring and we will tell you whether we can work there. With the site's agreement our engineers work at another forecourt nearby and the other forecourts locally regularly.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
Whether your engine has run counts far more, though the proportion counts too, instead of the litres. What determines how much work is required is if that mixture has been sucked through your fuel system — since even though five litres in a nearly empty tank is a different case from five in a full one, either way that's the question.
I drove the vehicle after putting petrol in my diesel. What now?
Somewhere sensible, then stop, then switch off and keep it off. Driving moves the issue along — out of that tank, into your pump and injectors. Drivers fear it a good deal more than the recovery rate warrants, mind. The one truly useful thing left to you is not restarting it.
Fuel drains and manufacturer warranties
A drain then flush carried out properly is not an alteration and does not cancel a manufacturer's warranty. Running a diesel on petrol is the thing likelier to cause an argument with one, which is another good reason to leave the vehicle turned off.
Can I just add two-stroke oil and drive home?
What petrol has thinned isn't put back by two-stroke oil, which is an old remedy for a different fault. So no. Petrol stays in that tank after that, whatever else goes in, and the pump gets no reprieve from it.
A main dealer for petrol in a diesel — necessary?
Wherever the car is, our engineers drain and flush it there, so a drive to the main dealer doesn't come into it.
Still with the car?
Leave the engine turned off.
If you have already driven it, pull in somewhere safe, switch it off and keep it off. Cold and still, a vehicle is in the best place available — and motorists fear this a lot more than the recovery rate warrants.
On-site fuel draining around Greenway and throughout Somerset — at the roadside, on the forecourt or at home.