Put Petrol in a Diesel Car in Hungerford? Don't Start It
With the tank still holding the fuel and your engine not yet started, almost every job needs only a drain, so keep the motor off. That result is decided in the minutes right after the fill-up, rather than by the amount that got in. Throughout Hungerford and the rest of Berkshire, Petrol in Diesel drains your car and flushes it where it sits, whether by a roadside, on a drive or at a forecourt. Phone before anything else starts, and you will see what comes from there.
Your first five minutes: petrol in a diesel
- As you drive, your pump and the injectors wear. That is why you never fire it up, and why you don't depend on it once it has started. The thing about petrol in a diesel especially — the point most people get wrong — is that it pulls away happily for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol engine typically will not run at all, which stops the driver and stops the harm with them. This one lets you drive on.
- Leave the ignition off too. Diesel does two tasks: it ignites, and before it ignites it protects your injection pump and those injectors. Petrol handles the first but not the second. Turning your ignition on is often enough to prime that system, which pulls that petrol out of your tank and into exactly those parts.
- Topping up takes out nothing. It gives you a fuller tank of the same mixture, because a diesel fuel system doesn't cope with petrol by percentage as that advice implies — so do not add diesel on top to dilute it. Grade is irrelevant too: super unleaded is petrol.
- A motor that hasn't shifted is the simplest one to sort, so remain where you are if you sensibly can. Pulled up on the verge on Park Street? Hazards on, and leave the vehicle there. A difficult spot works for us better than a started motor.
- The van arriving rather than circling rests on two things: a postcode that starts RG17 0, and whatever is closest to you with a label on it. Have both ready before you phone.
- Phone 0333 366 0103. Prepare for three queries — what went in, roughly how many litres, and whether the car has been started. Your answers shape whatever happens next.
On the forecourt: clearing petrol from your diesel
A large chunk of the job ends up completed at a pump, since that is where it mostly kicks off. We work on station forecourts all the time, with the owner's permission, so if you're still at Asda that is usually where this drain happens.
At a garage, the mistake is caught with your engine never fired, and no place else does that. Fuel sucked out of that tank and through the filter, all the way to your high-pressure pump, is what occurs when the engine is started and the car is driven to where it is now: the car park, the drive or the lay-by, everywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush covers the filter and the fuel lines together with the tank. That's still not a calamity, and our technicians deal with it where the vehicle is. What determines it is whether the key was turned in the seconds after your receipt was checked.
Staff will normally pitch in pushing it out from the petrol pump, which lets the next customer get by. Welcome the offer. Cranking it to move four vehicle lengths is not.
If you've put petrol in the diesel Skoda Octavia around Hungerford and you are now sat outside Tesco with a boot full of shopping, call us. Never crank it again to exit that bay. We will come out to you, empty the tank, clean those fuel lines then put new diesel in so you can drive away. A mile or so at light throttle uses very little of it, which is why such jobs are often the easy cases.
Twenty to nine. By Hungerford Primary School. Late already, and the till receipt in your hand says unleaded. Put your hazards on, leave your motor alone, and phone. You might think three miles is nothing, in the BMW 3 Series or anything else — except that fuel is delivered to demand, and a dash taken in a rush demands a great deal of that.
Park it overnight. Ring us first thing. Nothing about a diesel Nissan Qashqai parked in the parking area outside The Plume degrades while it waits, tank of petrol or not, and this job remains an easy one right up till the moment it gets taken home. The query our technicians arrive with is about the run there: a cold motor over a short run is where petrol combusts least well, and whatever fails to burn can find its way past the rings into the sump.
Your pump is not turning, so whatever the diesel Ford Focus did on the way to Hungerford Club - garden, none of it is happening now. Nothing is getting worse whilst it waits. Take your time over this — but do not drive the vehicle home to buy any.
Drain it and put new diesel in — that is the suggestion you'll get, usually from somebody sure of themselves, and it is half right. Do precisely that to a diesel Kia Sportage near Hungerford Library and it would start, which is what makes the suggestion sound sensible. What occurs next is the trouble: the engine immediately draws the petrol left sitting in the fuel filter and the feed lines straight back through your pump, as emptying a tank does nothing about fuel that has already left it. Ring us instead. Our engineers flush the system and take the fuel filter off where the car has a serviceable one, which is the difference between the car being fixed and the vehicle simply starting.
Service in Hungerford
Those same rounds get us to Eddington, Leverton, Sanham Green, Chilton Foliat and Anvilles along with Hungerford, which is a riverside town.
There are dedicated pages for the majority of towns around Berkshire, and the ones named above are simply the immediate neighbours — so yours being absent from that list tells you nothing about if our engineers come. On a border, or anywhere the satnav gets wrong? Contact us and check rather than guessing.
The map shows the patch the page includes. Every bit of that is territory our engineers serve: a kerbside, a forecourt, a drive, a car park. You do not bring your vehicle anywhere.
Stranded on the kerbside anywhere in Hungerford?
A chance to pull in somewhere sensible doesn't fall to everyone. If you worked it out after setting off and finished up along the verge of High Street, or at a lay-by somewhere with the hazards going, that's a common call for us instead of a rare one.
Out of your car if it isn't safe to sit inside, beside it when it is. Don't fire it up to reach a safer location. It will go — a diesel on petrol normally obliges — and each mile of obliging pulls the blend deeper into the fuel system. However difficult the spot, it's no problem for us to get to it, and that is far better for the car than carrying on.
Petrol in a diesel, but the motor has travelled
Here is where your M4 counts, under 3 miles from Hungerford. A loss of power, an uneven idle, some smoke: those are the symptoms when they arrive, rather than a tidy stop — and a wrongly fuelled diesel will frequently take you onto it and some distance along before anything seems wrong at all.
Don't restart it to reposition. Get off at the first safe exit then switch off. It alters what our technicians bring, and so tell us when you ring: on a longer run — anything near the under 50 miles to the closest city — take it the petrol has been through your filter, the pump and the fuel injectors.
A little about Hungerford
Hungerford is a small town situated on the River Kennet in Berkshire, with a population of around 5870 people. Hungerford sits at an elevation of 104 metres, surrounded by nearby places such as Eddington, Leverton, and Sanham Green. Hungerford has a mix of housing types, with semi-detached homes being predominant. Hungerford is located approximately 60 miles from London and 25 miles from Oxford, making it a commuter town with good transport links.
What follows when our technicians reach you in Hungerford
- We check what went in, how much, and if the engine has run. The answers alter the work, which is why our engineers ask before quoting.
- The contaminated fuel comes out of that tank.
- Fuel lines are cleaned through and your filter cleaned, leaving nothing in the fuel system that caused any of this.
- Fresh diesel goes in, and then your system gets primed.
- Our technicians turn it on and check it runs correctly on fresh diesel.
From that point, you're ready to drive away. Our engineers do all of it wherever the car has stopped, which means it never needs to be taken to a garage, and when it has been spotted quickly, it's very unusual for there to be long-term damage.
A separate matter: AdBlue in a diesel tank around Hungerford
The issue is not the same, though the first instruction is — don't crank it — if what got in was AdBlue instead of petrol. Petrol dilutes your diesel and removes the protection the system depends on. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water, and in a diesel tank it causes corrosion and deposits in its place.
Both are ours. There is a separate Hungerford page for AdBlue removal, with the details on it — including the reasons it usually turns out to be the worse of the two.
Budgeting for a petrol-in-diesel drain around Hungerford
We can't put one figure on this page frankly, because the job is not one job. What shifts it:
- This is the big one: whether your engine has been run, or driven.
- How much of the wrong fuel went in, set against how much your tank can hold.
- Whether it is unleaded or AdBlue.
- Access: the car's position, and if working on it there's sensible for a technician.
A firm answer rather than a range is what you get for telling us three things: the car, the quantity, and if it has run. For your car at home that is going nowhere and is not time-critical, works too.
Petrol in diesel queries from Hungerford motorists
At a petrol station around Hungerford, can you do a fuel drain there?
Plenty of what our technicians do happens nowhere else. So yes. We visit Shell and the other forecourts around town all the time, with the owner's permission — tell us which one you are at when you call and we will tell you if our engineers can work there.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
Litres are not the yardstick. Ratio is, and far more than either, it matters if anything has been run. Five litres into a nearly dry tank is not five into a full one, no. But both land on the same query in the end: has that blend been pulled right through, or has it not?
Petrol in my diesel, and I have driven it
Somewhere safe, then stop, then turn off and keep it off. It's fixable far more commonly than motorists assume, even though driving is what shifts the issue from the tank into your pump and injectors — and the single most helpful thing you can do now isn't restart it.
My warranty — does a fuel drain void it?
A drain and flush carried out correctly isn't a change and does not cancel a manufacturer's warranty. An argument over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it turned off.
Could I put some two-stroke in and just drive?
What petrol has weakened is not restored by two-stroke oil, which is an old fix for a separate problem. So no. Later on? Still petrol in your tank, and a pump that has to cope with the stuff.
A main dealer for petrol in a diesel — essential?
You don't need one. Your car is drained and cleaned wherever it is, with no need to take it to a main dealer.
You, and the vehicle, still together?
Never switch the engine back on.
Driven it already? Then somewhere sensible, stop, turn off, and no restarting the vehicle afterwards. Cold and still, a motor is in the best place available — and drivers fear this much more than the recovery rate warrants.
Emptying wrongly fuelled vehicles, Hungerford and the rest of Berkshire, wherever they are. Roadside. Forecourt. Home.