Grimes Hill: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
Don't start the engine. If the petrol is still sitting in the tank and the engine has not yet run, a drain is almost always all it takes — and that's decided in the coming few minutes, not by how much was put in. Petrol in Diesel drains and cleans wrong-fuelled vehicles where they are, all over Grimes Hill and the remainder of Worcestershire, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a driveway. A single ring our way will be sufficient: we can show you what happens after this. Try that straight away.
Your first five minutes: petrol in a diesel
- While you drive, your pump and your injectors wear down. This is why you never crank it, and why you don't depend on it once it has started. The trick about petrol in a diesel especially — the point people get wrong — is that it pulls away normally for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol motor typically cannot run at all, which stops the person and stops the damage with them. This one lets you carry on.
- Leave your ignition alone too. Diesel has two roles: it ignites, and before it combusts it lubricates your high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors. Petrol manages the first but not the second. Switching your ignition on is often all it takes to prime that system, which draws the petrol out of the tank and into exactly those parts.
- Topping up clears nothing. It leaves you a larger tank of the same mix, since a diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage the way that advice suggests — so don't tip diesel on top to dilute it. Octane is immaterial too: super unleaded is petrol.
- Our team would sooner drive to a difficult location than have it started — so if you reasonably can, stay put. Nothing is simpler to deal with than a car that has not moved. On the verge on Burnham Road, that means hazards on then keep the vehicle.
- Get your whereabouts prepared before you phone. A postcode beginning B47 6 and whatever is next to you with a label on it is the difference between our van showing up and the van circling.
- What went in, about how much, and also if your car has run — these three details decide the entire call-out. Phone 0333 366 0103 then tell us.
The drive back would about double it, for no purpose at all. One commute has already sent a real quantity of petrol-thinned diesel through the high-pressure pump of your Renault Megane. So keep the vehicle where it is. Call us from the platform if that is easier — no one needs you standing over the vehicle at Wythall whilst our technicians get on, and tonight trumps finding out on Monday.
How far, and how hard? The second of those matters more than the first, and so have both ready. Your BMW 3 Series will have seemed completely normal on the way back from Meadow Green Primary School — they all do, and that's the catch. Diesel into a petrol motor mostly won't run at all: the person stops, and so does the damage. Petrol into a diesel starts, ticks over, moves off like nothing happened, while your high-pressure pump gets on with its work minus the lubrication your fuel should be giving it. No warning appears, as behind the wheel nothing seems wrong.
What we will want to know is whether the drive there was brief and chilly, since that's where petrol is least likely to burn correctly — and whatever doesn't burn can slip past the piston rings and into the engine oil. Right up to the moment someone takes it home, a diesel Peugeot 308 parked in the parking area at The Packhorse holding a tank full of petrol in it is an easy job. Nothing deteriorates as it stands, so leave the car there overnight and phone us in the morning.
Pulled off the forecourt, read the till receipt, and left your diesel Dacia Duster up near Hollywood Christian Life Centre a few hundred yards later? That is about as well as this goes once the engine has turned. Ring us and leave it off. The short hop truly helps, but it was still a start and a drive, so diluted fuel has reached the fuel filter and your pump — which is why our technicians flush the fuel lines instead of only draining the tank.
Drain it then put clean diesel in — that's the tip you'll get, generally from somebody confident, and it is half true. Do precisely that to a diesel Ford Kuga close to St Mary's and it would start, which is what makes the suggestion sound sensible. What occurs next is the trouble: the motor immediately draws the petrol still resting in the fuel filter and the feed lines straight back through the pump, as draining a tank does nothing about fuel that has already left it. Ring us instead. We flush your circuit and take the filter off where the car has a working one, which is the difference between the car being repaired and your car simply starting.
Pump-side draining for petrol in a diesel
It kicks off at a pump, typically. Regularly the job finishes at one as well. Still at Esso? Then that's typically where it takes place. Garage forecourts are routine for us, with the agreement of the station.
Nowhere else but a forecourt can this be caught with the engine still unrun. Anywhere else — a car park, a private drive, a lay-by — the vehicle was fired up and moved to get there, which means fuel was sucked from the tank, through your filter and into your high-pressure pump. That is not a disaster, and our engineers can still deal with it where it sits. It does mean the fuel lines and the filter need cleaning as well as the tank, and that's settled by the few seconds between reading your receipt and going for your key.
Push the vehicle out of the way if the staff volunteer, and they generally will. The next motorist gets by the petrol pump, and that's worth doing. Starting the car to roll four car lengths isn't.
Coverage near Grimes Hill
Grimes Hill is a small village, and so our technicians are out to the town and to the places around it on those same runs: Shawbrook, Wythall, Tanners Green, Drakes Cross and Inkford.
Not on that list? It tells you nothing. The names above are only the nearest few, and most places around Worcestershire have a page of their own somewhere on the site. Ring us and ask rather than assuming, above all if you're on the boundary or anywhere the satnav can't find.
Look at our map for the ground shown on this page. Your car doesn't need to come to us. Our technicians work throughout every bit of that — kerbside, forecourts, driveways, car parks.
Kerbside stops around Grimes Hill
Not everyone gets the opportunity to pull in anywhere suitable. Set off, then twigged? Finished up along the verge on Wilfred Mews, or sat in some lay-by with your hazards going? That is a normal call here. Not an unusual one.
Wait by your car when it's sensible to be in it, but out of the car if it's not. Do not restart your engine to limp the car somewhere handier — a diesel running on petrol will frequently oblige, and every mile it obliges for is pulling that mix further into the fuel system. However awkward the place, it is no problem for us to get to it, and that's a lot better for the vehicle than driving on.
A few miles on petrol in a diesel: what now?
This is where the M42 comes in, under 3 miles out of Grimes Hill. Some distance along, and onto it in the first place: a misfilled diesel will often do both before anything seems wrong. What you get then is seldom a tidy stop. Power drains away, your idle gets uneven, and there may be smoke.
Pull off at the next safe junction, switch off, and do not restart the vehicle to move it. On a longer trip — anything close to the under 10 miles to the closest city — take it the mixture has been through the fuel filter, the pump and the fuel injectors, and say so when you phone. It changes what our technicians bring.
A bit about Grimes Hill
Grimes Hill is a locality in the West Midlands region of England, situated approximately 7 miles south of Birmingham. Grimes Hill sits at an elevation of 161 metres, surrounded by other nearby places such as Shawbrook, Wythall, and Tanners Green. Grimes Hill is characterised by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock, reflecting the area's residential nature. Grimes Hill is located about 95 miles northwest of London, making it a commuter-friendly location.
Once we reach you around Grimes Hill: what happens
- Our technicians ask first, price after. What was put in? How much? Has your engine run? Those answers alter what the work really is.
- We empty your tank of the polluted fuel.
- What is left in the system shouldn't be what created the issue, and so your fuel lines get rinsed and the fuel filter cleaned.
- Priming follows, once fresh diesel is in.
- Once it's started, our technicians confirm it runs properly on clean diesel.
After that it's ready to drive away. We do everything wherever the car has ended up, which means it never needs to go to a workshop, and when it has been spotted early, it is very rare for there to be permanent damage.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Grimes Hill is a different job
AdBlue instead of petrol? Then the opening instruction is unchanged — the motor remains off — whereas this fault under it is a distinct one altogether. Petrol weakens your diesel and strips the lubrication the system relies on. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water, and in a diesel tank it brings corrosion and deposits instead.
We deal with both, and AdBlue removal in Grimes Hill has its own page with the full story — including why it is frequently the more serious of the two.
What a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain will cost in Grimes Hill
One figure wouldn't be honest here, because this isn't one job. These are the things that change it:
- Has it been run or driven? Nothing else matters for as much.
- How much of the wrong fuel went in, judged against how much the tank can hold.
- Whether it was unleaded or AdBlue.
- Where is it? And can a technician get to it and work there safely?
Tell us what your vehicle is, how much got in, and whether the motor has run. A clear answer comes back, not a range. Car at home, going nowhere, nothing time-critical about it — is ideal for that.
Grimes Hill motorists ask us these about petrol in diesel
Fuel drains on a Grimes Hill petrol station forecourt
A fair portion of this work gets done there, so yes. Tell us which one you're at when you call and we'll tell you whether we can work there. With the site's consent our technicians visit JET and the other forecourts nearby all the time.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
Ratio decides it rather than litres — and more than either, whether your engine has run. Five litres into an almost dry tank is not five into a full one, no. But both land on the same query in the end: has that mixture been drawn right through, or has it not?
I drove the car after putting petrol in my diesel. Now what?
Somewhere sensible, then stop, then turn off and leave it off. It's recoverable far more regularly than drivers expect, even though driving is what moves the trouble from the tank into the pump and injectors — and the single most helpful thing you can do now is not restart it.
Is a fuel drain going to void my warranty?
No. Carried out properly, clearing and purging is no modification at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is untouched by it. An argument over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it turned off.
Can I just add two-stroke oil and drive home?
No. It belongs to a different issue from a different era, and petrol has thinned something no oil of that kind replaces. Later on? Still petrol in the tank, and a pump that has to live with the stuff.
Does petrol in a diesel have to go to a main dealer?
No. We drain and clean the car wherever it is, so there is no need to take it to a main dealer.
Standing next to it?
Turned off is how it stays.
Switch it off somewhere sensible then keep it off, if you have already driven it. This is recoverable from a lot more regularly than people assume, and a parked, cold car is the best position to be in.
On-site fuel draining around Grimes Hill and throughout Worcestershire — at the kerbside, on the forecourt or at home.