Put Petrol in a Diesel Car in Ifold? Don't Start It
Petrol in Diesel drains and cleans misfuelled cars where they sit, on the forecourt, by the roadside or on a driveway, throughout Ifold and the rest of West Sussex. The very first thing to do is not to turn on your engine. When the engine has not run and the fuel is still in that tank, a tank drain is nearly always all it needs, and the following few minutes settle that, not how much was put in. Call us and then our engineers can show you what happens after that before you attempt anything else.
Petrol in a diesel: what to do now
- As you drive, the pump and the fuel injectors wear down. This is why you don't start it, and why you don't believe it once it has started. The thing about petrol in a diesel in particular — the part drivers 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 damage with them. This one lets you drive on.
- Two jobs, diesel: it ignites, and on the way through it keeps your high-pressure pump and injectors greased. Petrol only manages the one. Which is why your ignition stays off as well — turn it on and you usually prime your system, and that is petrol leaving the tank for precisely those parts.
- That advice supposes a diesel fuel system copes with petrol by percentage. It won't. Put diesel on top and nothing at all is taken out; what you get is a bigger tank of the same mix. And no, the grade makes no difference — super unleaded is still petrol.
- Our team would much rather get to a difficult spot than have it started — so if you sensibly can, stay put. Nothing is quicker to deal with than a motor that hasn't shifted. On the verge on Chalk Road, that means hazards on and keep the vehicle.
- Find out where you are before ringing. A postcode starting RH14 0, and the name of whatever is closest to you. Otherwise our van circles rather than turning up.
- Call 0333 366 0103. Tell us what got in, roughly how much, and if the motor has run. These three answers settle your whole job.
Forecourt draining for petrol in a diesel
It starts at the pump, mostly. Frequently the job wraps up there as well. If you are still on the forecourt at BP, that is generally where the drain takes place — our technicians work on station forecourts regularly, with the owner's permission.
Before your engine has fired — a garage is the single place this is spotted. Fuel sucked out of your tank and through the filter, all the way to the high-pressure pump, is what occurs when your engine is fired up and the car is driven to where it is now: the car park, the drive or the lay-by, anywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush includes your filter and your lines together with your tank. That is still not a calamity, and our technicians put it right where your car stands. What determines it is whether the ignition was turned in the seconds after the receipt was read.
Move the car out of the way if the attendants suggest it, and they normally will. The next motorist gets through the pump, and that is worth doing. Cranking it just to move four vehicle lengths is not.
The tricky part is the bay, not your fuel. Vehicles either side of you, a trolley shelter behind, and occasionally a height limit on the way in that settles if our van can reach you at all — so when you ring from a car park like the one at Lidl, say how much space there is about you and which way round the car is. Those our technicians visit frequently. Should there be no room to work next to your diesel Renault Clio, it gets shifted with the motor off, and not out of fuss over a few seconds of running: priming takes place at every start, more of that mix leaves the tank for the pump, and two shunts into a better space have silently made a bigger job of what was just a car sitting still.
It will fire up. It will pull away perfectly well. That is the problem, as a diesel on a thinned tank runs generally whilst wearing down the components its fuel should be lubricating. So no, don't try the drive home from the pub in the village — leave the Peugeot 308 then phone.
Out there normal, back gutless. If that was the trip to Corner Copse, look at the tank. Diesel gets weakened by petrol, and thin fuel leaks past the tight gaps supposed to build injection pressure — so every extra mile your diesel Nissan Qashqai covered, the less pressure it held onto. Somewhere sensible, turn off, call us.
Hire car or company car? Phone them before you ring us — some agreements want the hire firm to sign off the work, and sorting that out first is a great deal faster than sorting it later. Then phone us about the Dacia Duster near Winterton Hall, and don't worry that you can't say how full your tank was. Almost nobody can, in a car they collected two days ago, and our engineers work it out there. The reason our technicians ask is that petrol in a diesel does its harm as a proportion: the same few litres in a nearly empty tank is a far stronger mixture than in a full one. Petrol is rated on how well it withstands igniting under pressure, which is the opposite of what a diesel needs — so the stronger the mixture, the more it rattles, smokes and goes flat.
Repaired and starting are not the same thing, and the difference is the system: our technicians flush it, and take your filter off where there's a working one. Compare that with the certain advice you will get — drain the vehicle, refill with new diesel. Only half right. Do exactly that to a diesel Mercedes E-Class close to Holy Trinity Church and it'll start, which is exactly why the suggestion sounds reasonable. Then your engine sucks the petrol left behind in the fuel filter, and in the feed lines, straight back through the pump, as draining a tank does nothing whatever about fuel that has already left it. Phone us instead.
Ifold plus the towns next to it
Ifold is a rural village, so our team get out to the town and to anywhere by it on the usual rounds: Loxwood, Plaistow, Alfold Bars, Upper Ifold and Mackerels Common.
Not on this list? It means nothing. The names above are only the nearest few, and nearly all places across West Sussex have a page of their own elsewhere on this site. Contact us to enquire instead of guessing — boundaries particularly, and anywhere the satnav tends to get wrong.
This map shows the ground this page includes. We operate at the roadside, on forecourts, on driveways and at car parks across all of it, and your car never needs to travel to us.
Ifold: stranded where you pulled up
Not everybody gets the opportunity to pull in anywhere sensible. Hazards flashing at a lay-by somewhere, or pulled onto the verge on Ifoldhurst because you worked it out after setting off — our engineers take that call so often that it is the usual kind.
Whether you remain by the vehicle or keep clear of it hangs on if being there seems wise. Never fire up your engine to limp the vehicle somewhere handier — a diesel running on petrol will usually oblige, and every mile it obliges for is pulling that mix further into the system. Driving on does the vehicle far more harm than our van coming out to a tricky location, and that's no problem for us.
A few miles on petrol in a diesel: what next?
The local M23 is the one that matters here, and it sits under 15 miles from Ifold. Some distance along, and onto it in the first place: a wrongly fuelled diesel will usually do both before anything feels wrong. What you get then is seldom a clean stop. Power drains away, your idle gets lumpy, and there may be some smoke.
Pull off at the first sensible junction, switch off, and don't restart it to reposition. On a longer trip — anything near the under 25 miles to the closest city — take it the contamination has been through your filter, your pump and the injectors, and tell us when you phone. It alters what our engineers bring.
A little about Ifold
Ifold is a small village in West Sussex, situated inland at an elevation of around 35 metres. Ifold lies near the Surrey border, close to the villages of Loxwood and Plaistow, and is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock. Ifold is also within commuting distance of London, being approximately 35 miles from the capital. Ifold remains a quiet, rural community with a population of around 824 residents.
What our engineers do when our technicians get to you around Ifold
- The answers change the work, which is why we ask before pricing: what got in, how much of it, and if your engine has run.
- The tank gets emptied of it.
- What is remaining in the system should not be what caused the trouble, and so the fuel lines get rinsed and the fuel filter cleaned.
- Priming follows, once fresh diesel is in.
- The engine is turned on and checked to make sure it runs smoothly on clean diesel.
Then it is ready to drive away. Our engineers do everything wherever your car has ended up, which means it never has to go to a garage, and when it has been noticed early, it's very rare for there to be long-term damage.
Ifold AdBlue removal is a different problem
The issue is not the same, though the first instruction is — do not start it — if what was put in was AdBlue rather than petrol. Petrol weakens the diesel and takes away the lubrication the system depends on. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water, and in a diesel tank it causes corrosion and residue in its place.
AdBlue removal in Ifold has a page of its own with the detail on it, including why it's usually the more significant of the two. We cover both.
How much is a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain around Ifold?
One number wouldn't be honest here, since this is not one job. These are the things that move it:
- This is the big one: whether the engine has been started, or driven.
- The tank's capacity, set against how much of the wrong fuel went into it.
- Which got in: unleaded or AdBlue.
- Whether a technician can sensibly reach your car and work on it, which rests on where the vehicle is.
The car, the quantity, whether it has run — give us those and the answer comes back straight instead of as a range. For the car at home that's going nowhere and isn't time-critical, works too.
Petrol in diesel: everyday questions in Ifold
At a petrol station in Ifold, can you do a fuel drain there?
A fair share of this work takes place there, so yes. Permission from the site is the condition. Given that, a forecourt like Scammell's Garage is somewhere we're regularly, along with the rest of them locally — so name yours on the call and you will hear if working there is possible.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
It rests on the proportion rather than the litres, and far more on whether your motor has run. Five litres into an almost dry tank isn't five into a full one, no. But both land on the same question in the end: has that blend been sucked right through, or has it not?
Already driven it with petrol in your diesel? What now?
Somewhere safe, then stop, then turn off and keep it off. It's recoverable a lot more commonly than motorists assume, even though driving is what shifts the issue from your tank into the pump and injectors — and the single most valuable thing you can do now is not restart it.
Fuel drains and manufacturer warranties
No. Carried out properly, emptying and flushing is no modification at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is unaffected by it. A dispute 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?
No. It belongs to a different issue from a bygone era, and petrol has diluted something no oil of that kind replaces. Your tank still has petrol in it later, and the pump still has to put up with it.
Does petrol in a diesel have to go to a main dealer?
Not at all. We drain and clean the vehicle wherever it is, so there is no need to take it to a dealership.
Still with the car?
Turned off is the way the car remains.
Driven it already? Then somewhere sensible, stop, turn off, and no restarting the vehicle later. Cold and parked, a car is in the best place available — and motorists fear this much more than the recovery rate warrants.
At the kerbside, on the forecourt or at home — mobile fuel draining in Ifold and throughout West Sussex.