Put Petrol in a Diesel Car in Highnam? Don't Start It
With your tank still carrying the petrol and the motor not yet run, nearly every job takes only a drain, so leave the motor off. That outcome is settled in the minutes immediately after the fill-up, and not by the amount that went in. Across Highnam and the rest of Gloucestershire, Petrol in Diesel drains the vehicle and flushes it where it stands, whether by a roadside, on a private drive or at a forecourt. Phone before anything else happens, so you'll learn what happens from there.
What next? Petrol in a diesel, in turn
- Give a petrol motor diesel and it will normally fail to run at all, so the person stops there and so does the damage. Feed a diesel petrol and the thing starts, it idles, it pulls away — fine for several miles. Drivers have that backwards, which is the bit they get wrong about petrol in a diesel especially. So don't crank it. And if started, do not trust it: the fuel system is grinding whenever you drive.
- Switching the ignition on often primes your system, and priming is what draws petrol out of that tank and into the pump and injectors. Those are the components diesel keeps greased on its way through, before it burns. Petrol handles the burning and none of the protecting. Leave the car's ignition be.
- Topping up removes nothing. It hands you a fuller tank of the same mixture, since a diesel fuel system will not handle petrol by percentage the way that guidance presumes — so don't put diesel on top to water down it. Octane is beside the point too: super unleaded is petrol.
- A motor that has never moved is the quickest one to sort, and so wait where you are if you safely can. Pulled up on the verge on Lassington Lane? Hazards on, then keep the car there. An awkward location suits us better than a started engine.
- The van arriving rather than circling hinges on two things: a postcode beginning GL2 8, and whatever is next to you with a label on it. Have both prepared before you ring.
- Ring 0333 366 0103. Let us know what went in, about how many litres, plus if the motor has fired. These three facts settle the entire call-out.
Removing petrol from your diesel at a forecourt
Most of this work starts at the pump, meaning a good portion of it gets completed at one. Still at BP? Then that's usually where it happens. Garage forecourts are routine for us, with the agreement of the station.
Nowhere else other than the forecourt can it be caught with your motor still unstarted. Fuel drawn out of the tank and through your filter, all the way to the high-pressure pump, is what happens when the motor is started and your car is moved to where it is now: the car park, the driveway or the lay-by, everywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush includes the fuel filter and the fuel lines as well as your tank. That is still not a catastrophe, and our technicians deal with it where the vehicle is. What determines it is whether the ignition was reached for in the seconds after the till receipt was read.
The staff will usually help you push the car out from the petrol pump so the next motorist can get through. That's worth doing. Cranking the car just for four vehicle lengths? No.
Areas our vans serve around Highnam
The same rounds get us to Highnam Green, Lassington, Maisemore, Rudford and Over besides Highnam, which is a rural village.
If yours isn't on the list it does not mean we don't come — there are dedicated pages for nearly all locations around Gloucestershire, and the ones named above are just the nearest neighbours. Guessing is the mistake to resist, especially on a border or somewhere a satnav fails. Contact us to enquire.
That map is the patch this page spans. Kerbside, forecourt, drive, car park: the lot is ground we cover, and none of that requires your vehicle to travel to us.
Nothing warns you, since from behind the wheel there's nothing to be warned about. The diesel Skoda Octavia will have seemed entirely ordinary on the way back from Highnam CofE Primary Academy, and they all do — which is the trap with petrol in a diesel and not the reverse. Diesel in a petrol vehicle usually refuses to run, stopping the driver and stopping the harm with them. Petrol in a diesel fires up, ticks over, moves off as though nothing had happened, and all the while the pump keeps working without the protection its fuel is supposed to supply. Tell us about how far, and how hard. The harder matters more.
Do not risk it. The journey home from the pub in the village is entirely possible, which is precisely the problem — a thinned tank does not stop a diesel starting or pulling away, it just wears down the components the fuel is meant to lubricate. Phone us, then let the BMW 3 Series stay where it is.
Standing still, it gets no worse. The pump isn't turning, and so whatever occurred on the way to Rodway Hill Golf Club in that diesel Peugeot 3008 is finished happening. Time is yours. Just do not take it home on your engine to find more of it.
A throttle gone soft, white smoke, an uneven idle, rattling: that's a misfilled diesel Audi A3 telling you what's wrong. Don't start it to find a better location — turn off where you have stopped, near Holy Innocents or anywhere else.
A few streets, then it stopped. Throttle dead, idle lumpy, and the diesel Kia Sportage is parked up near Highnam Court. The motor is not giving up — that deadness is fuel that will not build pressure. There is no light on the dash for it, and so cars like yours normally get driven a second time before anyone picks up the phone. Don't. Off, then phone us.
Highnam: stuck wherever you stopped
Some drivers have no suitable place to stop at all. If you worked it out after setting off and landed along the verge beside Cornflower Way, or at a lay-by somewhere with the hazard lights going, that is a routine call for us instead of an odd one.
Out of the motor while it is not sensible to wait in it, beside it if it is. It will usually oblige. A diesel running on petrol limps along perfectly willingly, and that is the problem: fire it up to get to somewhere safer and that blend goes further into the fuel system with every mile travelled. However tricky the location, it's no trouble for us to come to it, and that is far better for the car than pressing on.
A couple of miles on petrol in a diesel: what next?
Here is where your M5 comes in, under 10 miles out of Highnam. It will often take you onto it, and some way along, before you spot a thing. Then it is smoke, a rough idle and power ebbing away — not a clean stop. Misfuelled diesels rarely give you one of those.
Don't restart it to reposition. Come off at the first sensible exit and turn off. It changes what our engineers bring, and so mention it when you call: on a longer trip — anything near the under 3 miles to the closest city — assume the petrol has been through your filter, the pump and your injectors.
About Highnam
Highnam is a village in Gloucestershire, situated near the city of Gloucester and surrounded by other small settlements like Highnam Green and Lassington. Highnam sits in a low-lying area of the county, with an elevation of around 30 metres, and is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock. Highnam is located close to the River Severn and is part of the wider Gloucester urban area, while still maintaining its own distinct identity as a separate village.
Once we arrive with you in Highnam: what follows
- The responses change the work, which is why our technicians ask before quoting: what got in, how much of it, and if the engine has run.
- Away flows the tainted mixture.
- What is remaining in the fuel system should not be what caused the issue, and so the fuel lines get purged and the filter cleared.
- Bleeding the system follows, once fresh diesel is in.
- After it's started, our technicians confirm it runs properly on fresh diesel.
From that point, you are ready to pull away. There's no need for a workshop at any stage, because the work is all done where your car is, and when it is noticed early, permanent damage is very uncommon.
AdBlue in your diesel tank instead, in Highnam?
AdBlue instead of petrol? Then the opening rule is unchanged — your motor stays off — whereas the fault under it is a distinct one altogether. Petrol does two things to diesel: thins it, and strips out the lubrication your fuel system depends on. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water, and in a diesel tank it brings rust and build-up instead.
Frequently the more significant of the two, AdBlue — and the detail lives on its own Highnam page. Both are ours to deal with.
What a petrol-in-diesel drain costs around Highnam
What shifts the price is listed below, since the job isn't one job and our technicians can't honestly put a single figure on this page.
- Whether your engine has been started or driven. This is the main one.
- How much of the wrong fuel went in, set against how much that tank takes.
- AdBlue or petrol, whichever got in.
- Where is it? And can a van get to it and work there safely?
Tell us what your vehicle is, how much got in, and whether the engine has run. A clear answer comes back, not a range. Not urgent, with the car at home and going nowhere? Then works.
Highnam motorists ask us these about petrol in diesel
I'm on a forecourt around Highnam. Can you drain it on the spot?
Plenty of what our technicians do gets done nowhere else. So yes. Our engineers visit M. B. Holder & Sons Ltd and the other forecourts around town all the time, with the station's agreement — tell us which one you're at when you call and we will tell you if our engineers can work there.
How much petrol is too much for a diesel?
Litres are not the measure. Proportion is, and far more than either, it counts if anything has been run. Five litres in a nearly empty tank is a separate case from five in a full one — but either way, the thing that settles how much work is required is whether that mix has been drawn through the fuel system.
I drove the car after putting petrol in my diesel. What next?
Somewhere safe, then stop, then turn off and keep it off. It is fixable a lot more regularly than motorists expect, even though driving is what takes the trouble from that tank into your pump and injectors — and the single most useful thing you can do now isn't restart it.
Will a fuel drain void my warranty?
No. Carried out correctly, emptying and flushing is no modification at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is untouched by it. Another reason to leave it turned off: running a diesel on petrol is the thing likelier to cause a dispute with one.
Can I just add two-stroke oil and drive home?
Two-stroke oil solves a different problem, and an old one at that. Nothing it does puts back what petrol weakened. No. Petrol remains in that tank later on, whatever else goes in, and your pump gets no reprieve from it.
Does petrol in a diesel have to go to a main dealer?
You do not need one. The vehicle is drained and flushed wherever it is, with no need to bring it to a dealership.
You, and your car, still together?
Keep the car turned off.
Driven it already? Then somewhere safe, stop, turn off, and no restarting it afterwards. Cold and still, a car is in the best place available — and people fear this much more than the recovery rate warrants.
At the kerbside, on the forecourt or at home — call-out fuel draining around Highnam and across Gloucestershire.