Pilmuir: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
If you have not turned on the engine yet, don't. A drain and nothing else is nearly always what a vehicle needs while the petrol is still sitting in that tank and the motor has not turned over, which is why it's the coming few minutes that count, not how much was put in. Petrol in Diesel travels to your car wherever it has ended up in Pilmuir or the rest of Moray, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a private drive, and drains and cleans it there. Ring us so we can tell you what follows from here before you do anything else.
Your next five minutes: petrol in a diesel
- While you drive, your pump and your injectors suffer. This is why you do not crank it, and why you don't trust it once it has started. The thing about petrol in a diesel specifically — the point motorists get wrong — is that it drives off fine for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol engine usually can't run at all, which stops the motorist and stops the damage with them. This one lets you keep going.
- Diesel ignites, and before it ignites it protects — your high-pressure fuel pump, the injectors. Petrol does only the burning. So leave the ignition be too: flicking it on is commonly enough to prime the system, and priming pulls petrol from your tank into just those components.
- Topping up removes nothing. It hands you a bigger tank of the same blend, since a diesel fuel system doesn't handle petrol by percentage the way that advice suggests — so do not pour diesel on top to water down it. Octane is immaterial too: super unleaded is petrol.
- Sit tight if it's wise to. Hazards on, engine off, leave the vehicle. Wherever you have stopped — the verge on Balnageith Rise, anywhere — an odd place for us is better than a started engine, and nothing is quicker for us to deal with than a vehicle that never moved.
- Know where you are before calling. A postcode beginning IV36 2, and the name of whatever is next to you. Otherwise our van circles rather than showing up.
- Call 0333 366 0103. Expect three questions — what was put in, about how much, and if the motor has been run. Your responses decide all that happens next.
Can petrol be drained from your diesel on a forecourt?
It starts at a forecourt, usually. Frequently the work ends there too. Still at Esso? Then that is generally where it takes place. Garage forecourts are normal for us, with the agreement of the site.
At a forecourt, it is halted with the engine never started, and no place else manages it. Fuel sucked out of that tank and through the fuel filter, all the way to the high-pressure pump, is what occurs when your engine is started and the car is moved to where it is now: the car park, the driveway or the lay-by, anywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush covers the fuel filter and your lines together with your tank. That's still not a calamity, and our engineers deal with it where the vehicle is. What settles it is whether the key was turned in the seconds after the till receipt was read.
Wheel the vehicle out of the way if the attendants offer, and they normally will. The next motorist gets past the petrol pump, and that is worth doing. Moving the car four spaces does not warrant firing the engine.
Parts our team reach in Pilmuir
Pilmuir is a residential suburb, and our technicians head out to it and to the villages by it on the usual journeys: Thornhill, Mundole, Red Craig, Forres and Broom of Moy.
Not on that list? It means nothing. The names above are only the closest few, and nearly all locations in Moray have a page of their own elsewhere on the site. Guessing is the habit to skip, above all on a border or anywhere the satnav gets lost. Phone and check.
Use our map for the patch included here. We work at the roadside, at forecourts, on driveways and at car parks over all of it, and the car doesn't need to travel to us.
Stuck by the kerbside around Pilmuir
Some people get no safe spot to stop whatsoever. Set off, then twigged? Finished up by the verge on Balnageith Gardens, or parked in some lay-by with the hazard lights going? That's a normal call here. Not a rare one.
Safe right there? Remain by it. Not okay? Move out and clear of it. It will usually oblige. A diesel running on petrol limps along perfectly willingly, and that's the trouble: fire it up to reach somewhere safer and that blend goes further into the system with every mile covered. A van driving to an awkward location is no bother for us, and it's far better for the car than carrying on.
Park it overnight. Phone us first thing. Nothing about a diesel Ford Focus sitting in the parking area by Thistle Bar deteriorates while it sits, tank of petrol or not, and this job remains a straightforward one right up until the moment it gets driven home. The question we arrive with is about the drive there: a cold engine over a short distance is where petrol burns least well, and whatever fails to burn can get past the rings into the oil.
None of that is your engine failing. That is the part worth hearing, and it's why the ordinary Logie Park call ends better than it sounds: a diesel Mercedes C-Class drives out there without a murmur, comes back with the power gone, the idle uneven and maybe a little smoke, and the cause is your fuel no longer behaving like diesel. Diesel has to be thick enough to seal the precision parts it passes through; petrol weakens it; and a diesel injection system is hydraulic as much as chemical, needing your fuel to hold pressure instead of only to burn. So pressure that should build and stay built bleeds past tolerances, delivery turns up poorer and later and less even than built, and all of that stops once your fuel is sorted.
Three things help when you ring from close to Forres Flood Scheme Opening Memorial: which side the filler is on, whether our van can pull up next to without blocking the road, and whether the motor has run since you filled up. On-street is the most common spot our engineers work, and so the spot itself is hardly ever the trouble — we'd much rather deal with a tight parking spot than with a motor that has been driven to somewhere more handy. We will drain your BMW 1 Series, change the fuel filter where there's a serviceable one, flush your lines then put fresh fuel through the whole circuit, as by this point the worst of it is sitting in the fuel lines rather than in that tank.
Switch off where you have stopped, and do not start it to find somewhere better — close to 19 OTU Forres War Memorial or anywhere at all. Rattling, a lumpy idle, white smoke and a dead throttle are a misfilled diesel Vauxhall Astra telling you what is wrong.
What occurs next is the trouble. Your engine at once pulls the petrol left waiting in the filter and the feed lines back round through the pump a second time, since draining a tank does nothing about fuel that has already left it. Drain it and put fresh diesel in, someone certain will tell you — and that advice is half true, as do it to a diesel Audi Q5 parked up, The Nicholson Building say, and the thing starts, which is what makes it sound plausible. Phone us instead. We flush your circuit and take the filter off where the car has a serviceable one, and that is the difference between your car being put right and the car only starting.
Petrol in a diesel, but the vehicle has moved
Here is where your M90 comes in — over 50 miles from Pilmuir. It will usually take you onto it, and some way along, before you feel a thing. Then it's some smoke, a rough idle and power falling away — not a clean stop. Wrongly fuelled diesels seldom give you one of those.
Take the first exit that's safe, stop there, and don't restart the car to move it. On a longer run — anything approaching the under 25 miles to the closest city — take it the petrol has been through the filter, the pump and your injectors, and mention it when you ring. It affects what our engineers bring.
Where's Pilmuir?
Pilmuir is a coastal suburban area in Moray, situated near the shores of the Moray Firth, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Pilmuir sits at a low elevation of around 18 metres, looking out towards the North Sea. Pilmuir is located near several small settlements, including Thornhill and Mundole, and is within commuting distance of Inverness, the nearest city. Pilmuir has a population of approximately 3454 residents.
Once our engineers get to you around Pilmuir: what happens
- The replies alter the work, which is why our technicians ask before quoting: what went in, how much of that, and whether your motor has run.
- Away goes the polluted mixture.
- Fuel lines are purged through and the fuel filter cleared, leaving nothing in the fuel system that started any of this.
- Bleeding the system follows, once new diesel is in.
- Your engine is started and checked to make sure it runs correctly on fresh diesel.
At that point it's ready to set off. There is no need for a garage at any point, since the work is all done where the vehicle is, and when it's caught early, permanent damage is very uncommon.
Pilmuir AdBlue removal is a separate problem
AdBlue instead of petrol? Then the opening rule is unchanged — your engine stays off — while this problem under it is a distinct one altogether. The protection a fuel system depends on is stripped away by petrol, which thins your diesel. Rust and residue are what a diesel tank gets instead, since AdBlue is urea dissolved in water.
Both are ours. There is a separate Pilmuir page for AdBlue removal, with the details on it — including the reasons it frequently turns out to be the worse of the two.
Pilmuir costs for a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain
One price wouldn't be honest here, because this is not one job. These are the things that move it:
- Started? Driven? Either answer counts more than anything else on this list.
- How much of the wrong fuel was put in, set against how much that tank takes.
- The type of fluid in the tank, petrol or AdBlue.
- Whether a van can sensibly get to the car and work on it, which hinges on where your vehicle is.
Tell us the vehicle, the quantity and if it has run, and you'll get a firm answer rather than a range. If it is not time-critical — the car is at home and going nowhere — is fine too.
Questions our engineers hear about petrol in diesel around Pilmuir
I am on a forecourt in Pilmuir. Can you drain it here?
Plenty of what our engineers do gets done nowhere else. So yes. We visit Sea Park Filling Station and the other forecourts locally routinely, with the station's agreement — tell us which one you're at when you ring and we'll tell you if we can work there.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
Whether your motor has run matters far more, though the proportion matters too, instead of the litres. What determines how much work is required is whether that blend has been pulled through your fuel system — because though five litres in a nearly empty tank is a separate case from five in a full one, either way that is the query.
Petrol in my diesel, and I have driven it
Somewhere safe, then stop, then switch off and keep it off. Driving is what takes the problem from that tank into your pump and injectors — but it's recoverable much more commonly than motorists assume, and the single most useful thing you can do now is not restart it.
My warranty — does a fuel drain void it?
No. Carried out correctly, clearing and rinsing is no alteration at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is unaffected by it. An argument over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it switched off.
Adding two-stroke oil, then driving home
Two-stroke oil solves a different issue, and an old one at that. Nothing it does puts back what petrol thinned. No. Later? Still petrol in the tank, and a pump that has to live with the stuff.
Do I need a main dealer for petrol in a diesel?
Wherever the car is, our technicians drain and clean it there, so a trip to the main dealer doesn't come into it.
You, and your car, still together?
Do not switch it back on.
Driven it already? Then somewhere safe, stop, turn off, and no restarting the car afterwards. Cold, stationary, going nowhere: that is the best place to be in. People fear this much more than they need to.
At the roadside, on the forecourt or at home — mobile fuel draining in Pilmuir and throughout Moray.