Hay-on-Wye: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
If you have not fired up the motor as yet, do not. A drain and nothing more is nearly always what a car requires while the petrol is still inside your tank and your engine has not turned over, which is why it is the next few minutes that matter, not how much was put in. Petrol in Diesel goes to the car wherever it has ended up in Hay-on-Wye or the remainder of Powys, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a driveway, and drains and flushes it there. Our engineers will tell you what the following stage will be. Phone — that comes ahead of anything else.
Petrol in a diesel: what to do next
- Whenever you drive, your pump and the fuel injectors suffer. That's why you don't start the car, and why you don't believe it once it has started. The trick about petrol in a diesel in particular — the part people get wrong — is that it drives away fine for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol engine usually can't run at all, which stops the person and stops the wear with them. This one lets you drive on.
- Diesel combusts, and before it burns it protects — the high-pressure fuel pump, those injectors. Petrol handles only the burning. So leave the ignition off as well: switching it on is usually all it takes to prime the system, and priming moves petrol from the tank into exactly those parts.
- Topping up gets rid of nothing. It gives you a fuller tank of the same blend, because a diesel fuel system won't cope with petrol by percentage as that guidance suggests — so do not tip diesel on top to thin it. Octane is irrelevant too: super unleaded is petrol.
- Stay still if it's sensible to. Hazards on, motor off, keep the car. Wherever you have stopped — the verge on High Town, anywhere — an awkward location for us is better than a started engine, and nothing is simpler for us to sort out than a motor that never moved.
- Find out where you are before ringing. A postcode beginning HR3 5, and the name of whatever is nearest to you. Otherwise our van circles instead of showing up.
- What went in, roughly how many litres, and whether the engine has started — the three replies settle your whole visit. Call 0333 366 0103 then tell us.
Pump-side draining for petrol in a diesel
Pumps are where the work usually kicks off, and where a big part of it closes. We operate on station forecourts all the time, with the site's consent, and so if you're still at Texaco that is typically where this drain takes place.
The forecourt is the single location this is stopped before your motor has fired. The few seconds between reading the till receipt and going for the keys decide how much requires flushing. Everywhere other than a forecourt — a car park, a driveway, a lay-by — your car was started and driven to get there, so fuel was drawn from the tank, through the fuel filter and into the high-pressure fuel pump. That means the fuel lines and the filter need flushing as well as the tank. It's not a calamity, and our engineers can still put it right where the car stands.
The attendants will generally help you move it out from the pump so the next customer can get past. It is worth doing. Four car lengths isn't worth a start.
The difficult part is that bay, not your fuel. Cars either side of you, a trolley shelter behind, and occasionally a height barrier on the way in that determines whether a van can reach you at all — so when you ring from a car park like the one outside Co-op Food, say how much clearance there's around you and which way round your car is. Those our technicians cover frequently. Should there be no room to work beside your diesel Skoda Octavia, it gets moved with your engine off, and not out of pedantry over a few seconds of running: priming takes place at every start, more of that blend departs that tank for your pump, and two shunts into a nicer bay have gradually made a bigger job of what was merely a car sitting still.
Nothing tells you, since from behind the wheel there is nothing to be warned about. The diesel BMW 3 Series will have seemed completely usual on the way back from Clifford Primary School, and they all do — which is the trap with petrol in a diesel rather than the reverse. Diesel in a petrol motor usually refuses to run, stopping the motorist and stopping the damage with them. Petrol in a diesel starts, ticks over, pulls away as though nothing had happened, and all the while the pump works without the lubrication its fuel is supposed to supply. Tell us about how far, and how hard. The harder counts more.
Nothing is getting worse while it sits. Whatever the diesel Dacia Duster did on the way to Brook Street Secret Walled Garden, it is doing none of it now: your pump isn't turning. So take your time — but never drive the vehicle home to buy yourself any.
Rattling, a lumpy idle, white smoke, a throttle gone soft. That's a wrongly fuelled diesel Audi A3 telling you what's wrong. Turn off where you have stopped, by The Town Hall or anywhere else, and don't start it to find a better spot.
What happens next is the trouble. The engine immediately pulls the petrol left waiting in the fuel filter and the feed lines back round through your pump a second time, as draining a tank does nothing about fuel that has already left it. Drain it then put fresh diesel in, a person confident will tell you — and that tip is only half right, because do it to a diesel Citroen C3 parked up, The Chair say, and the thing starts, which is what makes it sound sensible. Phone us instead. Our engineers flush the circuit and take the filter off where your vehicle has a working one, and that is the difference between your car being fixed and your car merely starting.
Will we serve your corner of Hay-on-Wye?
Cusop, Clyro, Llanigon, Bronydd, Archenfield — all of those on our trips that take us over to Hay-on-Wye too, a riverside town.
Our technicians still come. The names above are only the closest neighbours, and a page is there for the majority of places in Powys, so an absence from the list is not an absence from our coverage. Near the border, or anywhere your phone can't find? Call us to ask instead of presuming.
That map outlines the ground the page covers. Kerbside, forecourt, driveway, car park: all of it is territory we serve, and none of it needs the vehicle to travel to us.
Kerbside breakdowns in Hay-on-Wye
The opportunity to pull over somewhere safe doesn't fall to everyone. Set off, then realised? Landed along the verge of Town Square, or stuck in some lay-by with the hazards flashing? That's a common call here. Not an odd one.
Safe right there? Wait beside it. Not okay? Get out and clear of it. It will usually oblige. A diesel running on petrol limps along very willingly, and that is the problem: fire it up to reach somewhere handier and that mix goes further into your fuel system with every mile travelled. Our van coming to a tricky spot is no problem for us, and it's much better for your car than driving on.
Petrol in a diesel, and the vehicle has moved
This is where the M50 comes into it — under 50 miles from Hay-on-Wye. A loss of power, an uneven idle, smoke: those are the symptoms when they come, rather than a clean stop — and a misfuelled diesel will often get you onto it and some distance along before anything seems wrong at all.
Pull off at the next safe exit, switch off, and do not start the vehicle to reposition. Long run? Anything near the under 25 miles to the nearest city and you should assume the lot — filter, pump, injectors, all of it arrived at by the contamination. Say that on the phone, because it affects what goes in the van.
All about Hay-on-Wye
Hay-on-Wye is a small town situated on the River Wye in Powys, Wales, with a population of around 2065 people. Hay-on-Wye sits at an elevation of 105 metres, close to the English border and near the towns of Cusop, Clyro, and Llanigon. Hay-on-Wye has a mix of housing types, but terraced houses are particularly prevalent in the town. Hay-on-Wye is located 17.4 miles from Hereford and 134 miles from London.
Our call-out around Hay-on-Wye, step by step
- We ask first, quote after. What went in? How much? Has the engine run? Those replies change what the work actually is.
- Our technicians empty your tank of all the contaminated fuel.
- Fuel lines are purged through and the fuel filter cleaned, leaving nothing in the system that created any of this.
- Priming follows, once clean diesel is in.
- It's started with fresh diesel in it, and our engineers check that it's running smoothly.
That has the car ready to set off. There's no need to go to a garage at any stage, because the work is all done where the car is, and when it is noticed soon, lasting damage is very uncommon.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Hay-on-Wye is a different matter
AdBlue rather than petrol? Then the first step is unchanged — the motor stays off — while this issue beneath it is a distinct one altogether. Weakened diesel, and no lubrication left for the fuel system that relies on it. That's petrol. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water, and in a diesel tank it leads to corrosion and deposits instead.
We cover both, and AdBlue removal around Hay-on-Wye has its own page with the details — including why it's frequently the more significant of the two.
Hay-on-Wye costs for a petrol-in-diesel drain
Our technicians can't put one number on this page honestly, since the job is not one job. What shifts it:
- This is the big one: whether the engine has been run, or driven.
- How much of the wrong fuel went in, against how much your tank can hold.
- The sort of liquid in the tank, petrol or AdBlue.
- Access: the vehicle's position, and if working on it there is safe for a technician.
Tell us the car, the quantity and whether it has run, and you will get a firm answer instead of a range. Vehicle at home, going nowhere, nothing pressing about it — is good for that.
Petrol in diesel queries from Hay-on-Wye drivers
Fuel drains on a Hay-on-Wye petrol station forecourt
A fair portion of this work gets done there, so yes. Routinely, provided the site consents: Gulf, plus every other forecourt nearby. Say on the phone where exactly you have stopped. Whether we can work in that spot is something our engineers answer there and then.
Is there a safe quantity of petrol in a diesel?
It depends on the ratio rather than the litres, and much more on whether your engine has run. Five litres in a nearly empty tank is a different case from five in a full one — but either way, the thing that settles how much work is needed is whether that mixture has been sucked through the fuel system.
I drove the vehicle after putting petrol in my diesel. What now?
Stop somewhere safe, turn off, and keep the vehicle off. Driving moves the problem along — out of that tank, into the pump and injectors. Motorists fear it a good deal more than the recovery rate warrants, mind. The one genuinely valuable thing left to you isn't restarting it.
Will a fuel drain void my warranty?
It is not a change, and so a drain then flush carried out properly does not invalidate a manufacturer's warranty. A disagreement 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 distinct problem, and an old one at that. Nothing it does puts back what petrol thinned. No. Later on? Still petrol in your tank, and a pump that has to live with the stuff.
Do I need a main dealer for petrol in a diesel?
You don't need one. The car is drained and flushed wherever it is, with no need to take it to a dealership.
Still with the car?
Shut off is the way it remains.
If you have already driven the car, pull over somewhere safe, turn it off then keep it off. Cold, parked, going nowhere: that's the best position to be in. Drivers fear this far more than they need to.
Across Powys and in Hay-on-Wye: mobile fuel draining, at home or on the forecourt or at the roadside.