--- title: Fuel Drain in Longside — Petrol in a Diesel Car canonical: https://www.petrolinadieselcar.co.uk/petrol-in-diesel/longside-aberdeenshire/ location: Longside county: Aberdeenshire latitude: 57.517300 longitude: -1.939740 service: Petrol in a Diesel Car updated: 2026-10-20 --- # Longside: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car? With that tank still holding the petrol and your engine not yet run, nearly every job needs only a drain, so keep the motor off. That result is determined in the minutes right after filling up, rather than by the amount that went in. Across Longside and the remainder of Aberdeenshire, Petrol in Diesel drains the vehicle and cleans it where it is, whether by a roadside, on a private drive or at a forecourt. Just one call our way is plenty: our team can explain what happens from here. Do that straight away. ## What to do first about petrol in a diesel - Whenever you drive, your pump and your injectors wear. That's why you never start it, and why you do not depend on it once it has started. The trick about petrol in a diesel specifically — the point people get wrong — is that it pulls away fine for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol motor normally can't run at all, which stops the person and stops the wear with them. This one lets you drive on. - Two things, diesel: it ignites, and on the way through it keeps your injection pump and injectors oiled. Petrol only handles the one. That is why your ignition remains off also — switch it on and you usually prime that system, and that is petrol leaving your tank for exactly those parts. - Topping up gets rid of nothing. It hands you a larger tank of the same mix, because a diesel fuel system doesn't cope with petrol by percentage the way that advice assumes — so do not tip diesel on top to dilute it. Octane is irrelevant too: super unleaded is petrol. - Stay put if it is safe to. Hazards on, engine off, leave it. Wherever you have stopped — the verge on Inn Brae, anywhere — an odd place for us is better than a started diesel, and nothing is easier for us to sort out than a vehicle that never moved. - Find out where you are before phoning. A postcode beginning AB42 4, and the name of whatever is next to you. Otherwise the van circles instead of arriving. - Dial 0333 366 0103. Let us know what went in, roughly how much, and whether the car has started. These three facts settle the whole call-out. How far you drove is what we ask about, not how long the vehicle has been standing — and here's why. Diesel does two tasks on its way through the engine: it combusts, and before burning it lubricates its high-pressure fuel pump and its injectors. Petrol manages the first only. So a fast top-up on the road in, it dawning on you somewhere around eleven, and a diesel Renault Megane sitting at the nearest station since quarter past eight shows those few miles were travelled with the pump labouring on a fuel drained of much of its protection. Ring us then keep it exactly where it sits. ## Forecourt draining for petrol in a diesel The work kicks off at a forecourt, mostly. Regularly the job wraps up on site as well. We work on garage forecourts routinely, with the owner's permission, and so if you are still at Esso that is generally where the drain happens. At a garage, it gets halted with your motor never fired, and nowhere else does that. Anywhere else — a car park, a drive, a lay-by — the car was switched on and driven to get there, which means fuel was sucked from the tank, through your filter then into your high-pressure pump. That is not a disaster, and our technicians can still deal with it where it stands. It does mean your lines and the filter need flushing as well as your tank, and that is determined by the few seconds between reading your receipt and reaching for your key. Roll the car out of the way if the attendants volunteer, and they generally will. The next driver gets by the pump, and that's worth doing. Firing it for four car lengths? No. Every start primes that fuel system and draws more of the mixture out of your tank and on to your pump — which is why a motor moved twice into a roomier spot has silently become a worse job than one left exactly where it stopped. So if our technicians cannot work alongside the diesel Volkswagen Passat, our technicians roll the vehicle without running it. None of that is fuss about a couple of seconds of running. Car parks like the one at Asda we visit all the time, and your fuel is hardly ever the tricky part: the bay is. Motors either side, a trolley shelter behind, at times a height limit at the way in deciding if a van gets to you at all. Tell us how hemmed in you are, and which way your car points. ## Service near Longside The same trips take us to Flushing, Cuttyhill, Toddlehills, Nether Kinmundy and Mintlaw along with Longside, which is a village. Not on that list? It says nothing. The names above are only the closest few, and the majority of towns across Aberdeenshire have a page of their own elsewhere on this site. Close to the boundary, or somewhere your phone gets wrong? Phone and check rather than assuming. That map shows the area the page covers. Roadside, forecourt, driveway, car park: the lot is ground our technicians work on, and none of that asks the car to come to us. Nothing tells you, as from behind the wheel there's nothing to be warned about. Your diesel BMW 3 Series will have seemed entirely ordinary on the way back from the local primary school, and they all do — which is the snag with petrol in a diesel rather than the reverse. Diesel in a petrol vehicle usually refuses to run, stopping the driver and stopping the damage with them. Petrol in a diesel fires up, idles, drives off as though nothing had happened, and all the while your pump does its work without the protection its fuel is meant to supply. Tell us approximately how far, and how hard. The harder matters more. ## Roadside breakdowns in Longside Not everybody finds a suitable place to stop. Set off, then twigged? Finished up along the verge beside Station Road, or stuck in some lay-by with the hazard lights on? That is a routine call here. Not a rare one. Okay right there? Sit with it. Not fine? Step out and away from it. Every mile a diesel obliges you for on petrol pulls that mixture further into the system — and oblige it often will, which is why your engine does not get restarted to limp somewhere safer. Our van heading to an awkward location is no problem for us, and it's far better for your car than pressing on. ## So you've driven it? Petrol in a diesel over a few miles The local M90 is the road which counts now, and it sits over 50 miles from Longside. A misfuelled diesel will often take you onto it and some way along before anything feels wrong, while the signs when they appear are usually a drop in power, a lumpy idle and smoke instead of a clean stop. Take the next exit that's safe, stop there, and do not start the vehicle to move it. On a longer trip — anything near the under 50 miles to the closest city — take it the contamination has been through the fuel filter, your pump and the fuel injectors, and mention it when you phone. It alters what our technicians bring. ## Where's Longside? Longside is a village in Aberdeenshire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 27 metres, with detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Longside lies near the villages of Flushing, Cuttyhill, and Toddlehills, and is approximately 26 miles from Aberdeen. Longside has a population of around 813 residents, who enjoy the scenic views of the surrounding countryside. Longside is also relatively distant from major cities like London, being around 421 miles away. ## What our engineers do when our technicians arrive with you in Longside - Our engineers establish what got in, how much, and if your motor has run. The answers shape the work, which is why our engineers ask before quoting. - We empty the tank of the contaminated mixture. - Fuel lines are purged through and the filter cleaned, leaving nothing in the fuel system that caused any of this. - The system gets primed, on clean diesel. - The motor is turned on and tested to be sure it runs smoothly on fresh diesel. That leaves the car ready to pull away. Our engineers do everything wherever the vehicle has ended up, which means it never needs to be taken to a workshop, and if it has been spotted quickly, it is very uncommon for there to be lasting damage. Hardly ever the issue, the location. On-street is the most common spot we work, and a cramped parking bay is far preferable to a car that has been driven somewhere more convenient. What does help, when you phone from near Longside Parish Church, is three things: the side the filler is on, whether a van can pull up alongside without blocking the road, and whether anything has run since you filled up. Then the Ford Focus gets emptied, the filter changed where a workable one exists, your lines rinsed and clean fuel put through the whole circuit — as by now the worst of that is in the lines, not your tank. ## A different matter: AdBlue in a diesel tank around Longside The problem isn't the same, though the opening rule is — don't crank it — if what was put in was AdBlue rather than petrol. The lubrication a fuel system depends on gets taken away by petrol, which dilutes your diesel. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water, and in a diesel tank it causes rust and build-up instead. Both are ours. There is a separate Longside page for AdBlue removal, with the full story on it — including the reasons it often turns out to be the worse of the two. Authorisation first, where there's a hire firm or a company behind your car — some contracts demand it, and settling that beforehand saves a great deal of time later. After that, phone us about the diesel Dacia Duster near War Memorial. You will not know how full the tank was. Scarcely anyone does, two days into a vehicle, and it gets worked out on the spot anyway. We ask since the damage petrol does in a diesel is proportional: a couple of litres in a nearly empty tank make a much stronger blend than the same few in a full one, and since petrol is engineered to resist igniting under pressure, which is exactly what a diesel relies on, the stronger it gets the more the engine rattles and smokes and flattens off. ## What a petrol-in-diesel drain will cost around Longside What changes the figure is listed below, since the job is not one job and we can't honestly put a single number on this page. - Whether your motor has been started or driven. This is the key one. - How much of the wrong fuel got in, against how much the tank takes. - The kind of fluid in the tank, petrol or AdBlue. - Where your vehicle is, and if a van can sensibly get to and work on it. Tell us what the car is, how much got in, and if your engine has run. A firm answer comes back, not a range. Motor at home, going nowhere, nothing time-critical about it — is good for that. ## Petrol in diesel queries from Longside drivers ## Can you do a fuel drain at a petrol station in Longside? Yes — forecourts are where a good portion of this gets done. Consent from the site is the condition. Given that, a forecourt like Asda is somewhere we're often enough, along with the rest of them locally — so name yours on the phone and you'll hear if working there's possible. ## How much petrol in a diesel is too much? Whether the engine has run matters much more, though the proportion matters too, rather than the litres. Five litres into an almost dry tank isn't five into a full one, no. But both land on the same query in the end: has that mix been drawn right through, or has it not? ## Already driven it with petrol in the diesel? What then? Somewhere sensible, then stop, then turn off and leave it off. Driving is what shifts the trouble from the tank into the pump and injectors — but it is recoverable far more often than motorists assume, and the single most helpful thing you can do now is not restart the car. ## Is a fuel drain going to void my warranty? It is not an alteration, and so a drain then flush carried out properly doesn't cancel a manufacturer's warranty. What is likelier to start an argument is a diesel that has been run on petrol. One more good reason for the motor to remain off. ## Can I just add two-stroke oil and drive home? No. Two-stroke oil is an old workaround for a different fault and it does not replace what petrol has diluted. Petrol stays in that tank after that, whatever else goes in, and your pump gets no reprieve from it. ## A main dealer for petrol in a diesel — needed? No. Our engineers drain and flush the vehicle wherever it is, so there's no need to take it to a dealership. ## You, and your car, still together? Shut off is the way it remains. If you have already driven the vehicle, pull over somewhere sensible, turn it off and leave it off. This is recoverable from a lot more frequently than people expect, and a still, cold vehicle is the best position to be in. Throughout Aberdeenshire and around Longside: mobile fuel draining, at home or on the forecourt or at the kerbside.