Harby: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
If you have not started your engine as yet, don't. A drain and nothing else is almost always what a vehicle requires while the fuel is still inside your tank and the motor has not run, which is why it's the coming few minutes that count, not how much was put in. Petrol in Diesel travels to the vehicle wherever it has come to rest in Harby or the remainder of Leicestershire, on the forecourt, by the roadside or on a private drive, and drains and flushes it there. A single call to us is plenty: our technicians can show you what comes from here. Do it right away.
What now? Petrol in a diesel, in order
- Do not start the vehicle — and do not trust it if it starts. That is the thing drivers get wrong about petrol in a diesel specifically. A petrol engine filled with diesel usually just can't run, so the person stops and the damage halts with them. A diesel filled with petrol normally starts, idles and drives off without complaint for a couple of miles. It isn't fine. It is grinding your fuel system while you drive.
- Two things, diesel: it ignites, and on the way through it keeps the injection pump and injectors oiled. Petrol only does the one. Which is why your ignition remains off also — flick it on and you often prime that system, and that's petrol leaving that tank for precisely those components.
- Never weaken it. Diesel put on top gets rid of nothing, and so all you get is more of what was already there, because percentage is not how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol. Super unleaded? Simply petrol. The octane makes no difference.
- Stay where you are if you reasonably can. A car that has never moved is the easiest one to handle, and we would much rather drive to a tricky location than have it started. If you are stopped on the verge on Boyer's Orchard, switch those hazards on then keep the vehicle there.
- Find out where you are before calling. A postcode starting LE14 4, and the name of whatever is next to you. Otherwise the technician circles rather than turning up.
- What got in, roughly how many litres, and also whether the engine has run — those three replies determine the whole visit. Dial 0333 366 0103 and tell us.
The trip back would roughly double it, for no gain at all. One commute has already put a real load of petrol-thinned diesel through your high-pressure pump of your Volkswagen Golf. So leave the car where it is. Call us from the platform if that's handier — nobody needs you hovering over the vehicle at Aslockton whilst our engineers get on, and tonight trumps finding out on Monday.
What we'll ask about is whether that drive there was brief and chilly, because that's where petrol is least able to burn properly — and whatever doesn't burn can get past the piston rings and into the oil. Right up to the moment somebody takes it home, a diesel Mercedes E-Class parked in the car park by Nags Head carrying a tank full of petrol in it is a straightforward job. Nothing deteriorates whilst it sits, so leave the car overnight then phone in the morning.
Nothing is getting worse while it stands. Whatever the diesel Audi A3 did on the way to Hose Thorns, it is doing none of that now: your pump is not turning. So take your time — but don't drive it home to buy yourself any.
Phoning from near St Mary the Virgin? Three things help us. The filler — which side of the vehicle it is on. Room for our van alongside you, without the road being blocked. And if anything has run since the fill-up. The place itself barely matters: on-street is where we work most, and we'd far rather have a narrow spot than a motor somebody has driven somewhere easier. Then it's a drain for the BMW 5 Series, a filter change where there is one worth changing, lines rinsed, clean fuel put round the entire system. By now the worst of it is in the lines and not your tank.
Hire car or company car? Call them before you call us — some contracts want the hire firm to sign off the work, and sorting that out first is a great deal quicker than sorting it later on. Then call us about the Vauxhall Astra near Harby Village Hall, and do not worry that you can't say how full that tank was. Nearly nobody can, in a motor they picked up two days ago, and our engineers work it out on site. The reason our technicians ask is that petrol in a diesel does its damage as a proportion: the same few litres in an almost empty tank is a far stronger blend than in a full one. Petrol is rated on how well it resists igniting under pressure, which is the opposite of what a diesel needs — so the stronger that blend, the more it knocks, smokes and goes flat.
Can petrol be pumped out of your diesel on a forecourt?
Plenty of this job begins at the pump, meaning a large share of it is finished on site. Still at the nearest petrol station? Then that is normally where it gets done. Garage forecourts are normal for us, with the agreement of the owner.
At the forecourt, the mistake is spotted with the motor never started, and nowhere else manages that. The few seconds between seeing the till receipt and reaching for the key decide how much requires flushing. Everywhere other than a forecourt — a car park, a drive, a lay-by — your car was started and moved to get there, so fuel was sucked from that tank, through the filter and into the high-pressure fuel pump. That means your lines and the fuel filter need cleaning as well as the tank. It's not a calamity, and our engineers can still sort it out where the car is.
The attendants will normally offer to wheel the vehicle away from the pump so the next motorist can get past. That is worth doing. Shifting the car four lengths doesn't justify starting the engine.
Areas our vans serve around Harby
Harby is a village, and so we go out to it and to the areas near it on the usual trips: Hose, Stathern, Plungar, Eastwell and Langar.
Not on that list? That means nothing. The names above are only the nearest few, and the majority of places across Leicestershire have a page of their own elsewhere on this site. Call us and ask instead of assuming — boundaries particularly, and wherever a satnav might misread.
The map shows the ground the page includes. The car does not need to move to us. We operate across all of that — kerbside, forecourts, driveways, car parks.
Broken down on the roadside around Harby
Not everyone finds a suitable spot to pull over. If you realised after setting off and finished up by the verge beside Burden Lane, or in a lay-by somewhere with the hazards flashing, that is a common call for us and not a rare one.
Safe there? Stay by it. Not safe? Move out and away from it. Never fire up the engine to limp the vehicle somewhere handier — a diesel running on petrol will often oblige, and every mile it obliges for is pulling that mix further into the fuel system. Our van heading to a tricky spot is no problem for us, and it is much better for the car than pressing on.
A few miles on petrol in a diesel: what next?
under 25 miles from Harby, your M1 is what matters here. A misfilled diesel will usually take you onto it and some way along before anything seems wrong, while the symptoms when they appear are normally lost power, an uneven idle and smoke rather than a tidy stop.
Get off at the next sensible junction, switch off, and do not start it to reposition. Presume the worst of it on a long drive. Anything approaching the under 15 miles to the closest city, and the contamination has been through the filter, through your pump, through your injectors. Mention it when you call. What we bring differs.
A bit about Harby
Harby is a village in Leicestershire, situated on the banks of the River Devon, with a low elevation of around 58 metres. Harby lies near the villages of Hose, Stathern, and Plungar, and is approximately 12 miles from Nottingham. Harby has a population of around 963 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Harby is located in the East Midlands region, about 100 miles north of London.
Once our engineers reach you around Harby: what follows
- We ask first, price after. What went in? How much? Has the engine run? Those responses change what the work really is.
- Our technicians clear your tank of the tainted fuel.
- Fuel lines are flushed through and the filter cleaned, leaving nothing in the system that caused any of this.
- Bleeding your system follows, once fresh diesel is in.
- The motor is started and tested to make sure it runs correctly on clean diesel.
The car is then ready for you to pull away. Permanent damage is very uncommon when it has been noticed quickly, and because everything is done where the car is, it never has to go to a workshop.
AdBlue in the diesel tank instead, in Harby?
AdBlue rather than petrol? Then the first rule is unchanged — your motor remains off — whereas this fault under it's a different one altogether. The protection a fuel system relies on gets stripped away by petrol, which thins your diesel. Corrosion and deposits are what a diesel tank gets instead, as AdBlue is urea in water.
Both are ours. There's a separate Harby page for AdBlue removal, with the full story on it — including the reasons it often turns out to be the worse of the two.
How much is a petrol-in-diesel drain around Harby?
We cannot put one figure on this page honestly, because this job isn't one job. What shifts it:
- Has it been started or driven? Nothing else counts for as much.
- Wrong fuel in, against what the tank holds — that proportion.
- Which went in: petrol or AdBlue.
- Whether our van can sensibly reach your vehicle and work on it, which hinges on where the vehicle is.
The vehicle, the quantity, whether it has run — give us those and the answer comes back straight rather than as a range. Car at home, going nowhere, nothing urgent about it — is fine for that.
Harby motorists ask us these about petrol in diesel
Fuel drains on a Harby petrol station forecourt
A big share 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 station's agreement our engineers attend another forecourt nearby and the other forecourts locally routinely.
How much petrol is too much for a diesel?
Litres aren't the yardstick. Proportion is, and far more than either, it matters if anything has been run. A nearly empty tank with five litres in it, against a full one with the same five: separate situations, of course. Either way, the work required comes down to one thing, which is if the system has had that mix drawn through it.
I put petrol in my diesel and drove it. What now?
Stop somewhere safe, switch off, then keep it off. Driving shifts the issue along — out of that tank, into the pump and injectors. Drivers fear it a good deal more than the recovery rate warrants, mind. The one genuinely useful thing left to you is not restarting the vehicle.
Fuel drains and manufacturer warranties
It is not a change, so a drain and flush carried out properly doesn't void a manufacturer's warranty. An argument over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it switched off.
Could I put some two-stroke in and just drive?
Two-stroke oil solves a separate problem, and an old one at that. Nothing it does puts back what petrol thinned. No. Petrol remains in that tank after that, whatever else goes in, and your pump gets no respite from it.
Main dealers and petrol in a diesel
There's no need to take it to a main dealer, since our engineers drain and clean the car wherever it is.
Standing next to it?
Keep it turned off.
Turn it off somewhere safe and keep it off, if you have already driven it. Cold and stationary, a vehicle is in the best place available — and people fear this far more than the recovery rate warrants.
Throughout Leicestershire and around Harby: call-out fuel draining, at home or on the forecourt or at the roadside.