Put Petrol in a Diesel Car in St Cyrus? Don't Start It
If you have not started your engine as yet, don't. A drain and nothing else is almost always what a vehicle needs while the petrol is still sitting in that tank and the engine has not yet turned over, which is why it's the following few minutes that count, not how much went in. Petrol in Diesel travels to the vehicle wherever it has ended up in St Cyrus or the rest of Aberdeenshire, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a drive, and drains and flushes it there. Our engineers will tell you what the following stage will be. Ring us — this comes before anything else.
Your next five minutes: petrol in a diesel
- Do not start the car — and do not depend on it when it does start. That is the thing people have wrong about petrol in a diesel specifically. A petrol engine filled with diesel normally just cannot run, and so the motorist stops and the damage ends with them. A diesel filled with petrol typically starts, idles and moves off quite happily for a few miles. It's not okay. It's eating into that fuel system as you drive.
- Diesel ignites, and before it combusts it lubricates — your high-pressure fuel pump, the injectors. Petrol handles only the burning. So leave the car's ignition off also: turning it on is often enough to prime your system, and priming pulls petrol from that tank into exactly those components.
- Topping up gets rid of nothing. It hands you a fuller tank of the same blend, because a diesel fuel system won't cope with petrol by percentage the way that guidance assumes — so never put diesel on top to weaken it. Octane is beside the point too: super unleaded is petrol.
- A motor that has never moved is the easiest one to sort out, and so wait where you are if you sensibly can. Stopped on the verge on A92? Hazards on, then leave the vehicle there. An odd location works for us better than a started engine.
- Have your position prepared before you ring. A postcode beginning DD10 0 and whatever is closest to you with a sign on it is the difference between our van showing up and a van circling.
- What got in, about how many litres, plus if the car has fired — the three details shape the whole call-out. Dial 0333 366 0103 and tell us.
Can petrol be taken out of your diesel at a forecourt?
Forecourts are where the work usually begins, and where a large share of that closes. The drain normally takes place on the spot. Still on the forecourt at Asda? Given the site's agreement, that is a spot we work, and often.
A forecourt is the one spot the mistake is halted before your motor has run. Anywhere else — a car park, a private drive, a lay-by — the vehicle was fired up and driven to get there, which means fuel was sucked from the tank, through the filter then into the high-pressure pump. That's not a catastrophe, and we can still put it right where it stands. It does mean your lines and your filter need flushing as well as the tank, and that's decided by the few seconds between checking the till receipt and reaching for the keys.
The staff will usually happily wheel it away from the petrol pump so the next customer can get by. That is worth doing. Cranking it for four vehicle lengths? Don't.
The difficult part is the bay, not your fuel. Motors either side of you, a trolley shelter behind, and now and then a height limit on the way in that settles if a van can get to you at all — so when you call from a car park like the one outside Lidl, say how much room there is around you and which way round the car is. Those we cover frequently. Should there be no space to work beside the diesel Ford Focus, it gets rolled with the engine off, and not out of fuss over a couple of seconds of running: priming happens at every start, more of the mixture departs the tank for your pump, and two shunts into a nicer bay have quietly made a worse job of what was merely a motor standing still.
Move it out of the gateway and sort it out later — that's what somebody will say, and it is wrong. Parked on the zig-zags outside the local primary school, a misfuelled diesel Mercedes C-Class is a nuisance and nothing worse. Started three more times for politeness, it is no longer a tank issue but a fuel system one, because priming occurs with every start and more petrol goes through the fuel filter on to the pump. Let them grumble. Give us a call.
Park it there overnight. Phone in the morning. Nothing about a diesel Dacia Duster parked in the parking area outside Great Scot degrades as it sits, tank of petrol or not, and this job stays a straightforward one right up till the moment it gets taken home. The question our technicians come with is about the drive there: a cold motor over a short hop is where petrol burns least well, and whatever fails to burn can find its way past the rings into the sump.
Never drive it home to buy yourself time. You already have it: nothing gets worse while the car stands, since a diesel BMW 5 Series left at St Cyrus National Nature Reserve is doing none of what it did on the way there. Your pump has stopped turning.
Why we're direct about not driving on: your pump rests ahead of the injectors, so whatever a wearing pump loses moves downstream with the fuel. Leave the Peugeot 2008 close to St Cyrus Public Hall and ring us.
Parts we serve around St Cyrus
St Cyrus is a coastal village, and so our vans go out to the town and to anywhere by it on the same trips: Kirkton, Roadside, Burnhead, Lochside and Bush.
Our technicians still come. Those names above are just the nearest neighbours, and a page exists for the majority of places in Aberdeenshire, and so an absence from the list isn't an absence from our coverage. Ring us and enquire rather than presuming, especially when you're on the boundary or somewhere your satnav struggles with.
The area the page includes sits on our map. Roadside, forecourt, private drive, car park: all of that is territory we cover, and none of that requires the car to travel to us.
Stopped at the kerb anywhere around St Cyrus?
Some drivers get no sensible place to pull over at all. If you realised after setting off and finished up on the verge beside Davidson Place, or in a lay-by somewhere with the hazards going, that is a routine call for us and not an odd one.
Whether you remain by the motor or move clear of it turns on whether being in it looks wise. Every mile a diesel obliges you for on petrol pulls that mix further into your fuel system — and oblige it often will, which is why the engine does not get restarted to limp somewhere safer. We will bring our van to a tricky spot without any trouble, and for your car that is much better than carrying on.
A few miles on petrol in a diesel: what next?
This is where your M90 comes in, under 50 miles out of St Cyrus. It will frequently get you onto it, and some way along, before you spot a thing. Then it's smoke, an uneven idle and power falling away — not a tidy stop. Wrongly fuelled diesels seldom give you one of those.
The next sensible exit is the one to take. Turn off there, then leave the restarting alone. Presume the worst of that on a long run. Anything near the under 50 miles to the nearest city, and the petrol has been through the fuel filter, through the pump, through the injectors. Tell us when you ring. What our engineers bring differs.
A bit about St Cyrus
St Cyrus is a small coastal village in Aberdeenshire, situated near the mouths of the North Esk River, with St Cyrus being one of the villages that make up the wider coastal community. St Cyrus sits at an elevation of around 74 metres, looking out over the North Sea, and is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock. St Cyrus is located near other small settlements such as Kirkton and Roadside, and is within commuting distance of Aberdeen, which is around 28 miles away.
What follows when our technicians reach you in St Cyrus
- Our technicians check what was put in, how much, and whether the engine has run. The replies change the work, which is why our technicians ask before giving a price.
- The tainted mixture comes from that tank.
- Lines flushed, filter cleared. Whatever remains later is not the thing that started the problem.
- Priming follows, once new diesel is in.
- It is started with clean diesel in it, and our technicians check that it is running smoothly.
The vehicle is then ready for you to pull away. Lasting damage is very unusual when it has been noticed quickly, and because everything is done where the vehicle is, it never needs to go to a workshop.
AdBlue in your diesel tank instead, in St Cyrus?
AdBlue instead of petrol? Then the opening instruction is unchanged — your motor remains off — while this problem under it is a separate one altogether. Thinned diesel, and no lubrication left for your fuel system that relies on it. That's petrol. Urea dissolved in water, AdBlue, and in a diesel tank that leads to rust and deposits.
Both are ours. There is a separate St Cyrus page for AdBlue removal, with the detail on it — including the reasons it frequently turns out to be the worse of the two.
How much is a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain around St Cyrus?
What shifts the price is laid out below, as the job is not one job and our technicians can't honestly put a single number on this page.
- This is the main one: whether your motor has been started, or driven.
- How much of the wrong fuel got in, compared with how much the tank can hold.
- Which got in: petrol or AdBlue.
- Where is it? And can a van get to it and work there safely?
Tell us your vehicle, the amount and if it has run, and you'll get a straight answer rather than a range. For the vehicle at home that is going nowhere and isn't pressing, is fine too.
St Cyrus motorists ask us these about petrol in diesel
Fuel drains on a St Cyrus petrol station forecourt
Yes, and it is where a fair portion of this work gets done. Tell us which one you're at when you call and we'll tell you if our engineers can work there. With the site's consent we work at another forecourt nearby and the other forecourts locally regularly.
A couple of litres of petrol in a diesel — too much?
Whether your motor has run counts far more, though the proportion counts too, rather than the litres. Five litres into a nearly dry tank isn't five into a full one, no. But both land on the same question in the end: has that mix been pulled right through, or has it not?
I drove the vehicle after putting petrol in my diesel. What next?
Stop somewhere safe, switch off, then leave it off. Driving is what takes the trouble from the tank into the pump and injectors — but it's recoverable much more regularly than drivers fear, and the single most helpful thing you can do now is not restart it.
Fuel drains and manufacturer warranties
It isn't an alteration, so a drain then flush carried out properly does not void a manufacturer's warranty. An argument over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it switched off.
Two-stroke oil in that tank, and then home?
No. It belongs to a separate fault from a separate era, and petrol has weakened something no oil of that kind replaces. Petrol remains in that tank later, whatever else goes in, and your pump gets no reprieve from it.
Does petrol in a diesel have to go to a main dealer?
There is no need to take it to a main dealer, because our engineers drain and clean your car wherever it is.
Is the vehicle still with you?
Switched off is the way the car stays.
Already driven it? Then pull in somewhere safe, turn off, then let it stay that way. Cold and stationary, a car is in the best position available — and people fear this much more than the recovery rate warrants.
At the roadside, on the forecourt or at home — on-site fuel draining in St Cyrus and throughout Aberdeenshire.