The Grange: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
With your tank still carrying the petrol and your engine not yet started, nearly every job needs only a drain, so keep the motor off. That outcome is decided in the minutes immediately after filling up, rather than by the amount that got in. All over The Grange and the rest of City of Edinburgh, Petrol in Diesel drains the car and flushes it where it sits, whether by a roadside, on a private drive or at a forecourt. Our team will explain what the following move will be. Contact us — that happens ahead of anything else.
Your first five steps: petrol in a diesel
- Do not start the vehicle — and never trust it if it starts. Here is the thing motorists have wrong about petrol in a diesel especially. A petrol motor filled with diesel typically just can't run, so the person stops and the damage stops with them. A diesel filled with petrol usually starts, ticks over and moves off without complaint for a couple of miles. It's not all right. It's eating into that fuel system whenever you drive.
- Turning your ignition on often primes the system, and priming is what carries petrol out of the tank then into your pump and injectors. Those are the parts diesel keeps lubricated on its way through, before it burns. Petrol handles the burning and none of the lubricating. Leave the ignition be.
- That guidance supposes a diesel fuel system copes with petrol by percentage. It doesn't. Tip diesel on top and nothing at all is taken out; what you end with is a fuller tank of the same blend. And no, the grade makes no difference — super unleaded is just petrol.
- Stay where you are if you reasonably can. A motor that has never moved is the easiest one to sort out, and we would sooner come to an odd place than have it started. If you're parked on the verge on Hope Terrace, switch the hazards on and keep it there.
- The van showing up instead of circling hinges on two things: a postcode that starts EH9 2, and whatever is nearest to you with a name on it. Keep both ready before you dial.
- Ring 0333 366 0103. Expect three things — what went in, approximately how much, and whether your car has been run. The answers determine all that comes after.
Quarter past eight. A rushed fill on the trip in. Around eleven it hits you, and by then the diesel Volkswagen Golf has sat at Haymarket for three hours. Phone and leave the car where it stands. What counts is the trip in, as diesel both ignites and — before that — greases your pump and the injectors, whereas petrol only ever ignites. Those couple of miles worked the pump on a fuel drained of most of its protection, and no quantity of sitting in a car park adds any of that back. Hence the question about mileage instead of hours sitting, and hence the instruction to leave the keys be until our technicians get there.
Your diesel BMW 1 Series will have seemed entirely normal on the way back from the local primary school. They all do, and that is the trap with petrol in a diesel instead of the other way round. Put diesel in a petrol car and it usually won't run, and so the driver stops and the wear stops with them. Put petrol in a diesel and it starts, idles and drives off as though nothing has happened — meanwhile your high-pressure pump keeps working without the lubrication your fuel is meant to be providing. Nothing alerts you, since from the driver's seat there is nothing to alert you about. Phone us with approximately how far you went and how hard you worked it; the second one matters more than the first.
Standing still, it gets no worse. Your pump is not turning, and so whatever occurred on the way to Carlton Cricket Club in that diesel Audi A6 is finished happening. Time is yours. Just do not take it home on the motor to find more of that.
Seldom the problem, the spot. On-street is the commonest place our technicians work, and a cramped parking space is far preferable to a motor that has been driven somewhere more convenient. What does help, when you call from close to Marchmont St Giles Parish Church, is three things: the side the filler is on, whether a technician can stand alongside without blocking the road, and whether anything has run since you filled up. Then your Ford Kuga gets emptied, the fuel filter changed where a usable one exists, the fuel lines cleaned and clean fuel put through the whole circuit — since by now the worst of it is in your lines, not the tank.
A person certain will tell you to drain the car then put fresh diesel in. Half right, that. Try it on a diesel Citroen C3 by Saint Catherine's Argyle and the engine will start — which is exactly why it sounds like sense. Here is the problem: there's petrol left in the fuel filter and the feed lines, and the first thing the motor does is pull it back through the pump a second time. Draining a tank achieves nothing about fuel that already left that tank. Phone us. Your circuit gets flushed, the fuel filter comes off where there is one worth removing, and that's what separates a fixed motor from one that only starts.
Forecourt drains for petrol in a diesel
A big part of this job ends up completed at a pump, as that's where it mostly starts. Still at BP? Then that's generally where it gets done. Petrol station forecourts are everyday for us, with the permission of the station.
Before the engine has fired — a garage is the one place it gets halted. We can still put it right where it is, even away from the forecourt. In a car park, on a private drive or in a lay-by, the vehicle has been fired up and driven there, and that drew fuel through the fuel filter and into your high-pressure pump, all the way from that tank. None of that is a catastrophe, although the flush then has to go past that tank to the lines and your filter, and the few seconds between seeing your receipt and reaching for your key are what decide that.
Clear of the petrol pump, the next driver can get through — so yes, let the attendants help you move the vehicle. Well worth doing. Rolling the car four spaces doesn't warrant firing it.
The Grange plus the towns next to it
As a residential suburb, The Grange sees a frequent visit, and the villages round about come with it on the same journey: Marchmont and Grange Park, Sciennes and Bruntsfield, Blackford.
If yours is not on the list it doesn't mean we never come — there are pages for nearly all places across City of Edinburgh, and the ones mentioned above are just the immediate neighbours. Near the boundary, or somewhere a satnav gets wrong? Ring us to check rather than presuming.
The patch this page includes is on our map. All of that is ground we serve: a roadside, a forecourt, a private drive, a car park. You don't move the vehicle anywhere.
The Grange: stranded wherever you stopped
Not everybody gets the opportunity to stop anywhere suitable. Set off, then realised? Finished up along the verge on Dick Place, or stuck in some lay-by with your hazards on? That's a normal call here. Not an odd one.
Out of your car when it isn't wise to be in it, with it if it is. It will frequently oblige. A diesel running on petrol limps along quite willingly, and that's the problem: restart the car to get to somewhere safer and that mixture goes further into the system with every mile driven. Our van driving to a difficult location is no bother for us, and it is far better for your car than driving on.
Driven it already? Pull in, then check this
This is where your M8 matters, under 5 miles out of The Grange. Some way along, and onto it in the first place: a wrongly fuelled diesel will often do both before anything feels wrong. What you get then is rarely a tidy stop. Power falls away, your idle goes uneven, and there may be smoke.
Don't restart it to reposition. Pull off at the next sensible exit and turn off. It affects what we bring, and so say so when you ring: on a longer drive — anything approaching the under 3 miles to the nearest city — take it the petrol has been through the filter, the pump and the fuel injectors.
All about The Grange
The Grange is a suburban area in the City of Edinburgh, situated near the coast and approximately 1.4 miles from Edinburgh city centre. The Grange is characterised by its predominantly flat-type housing and is close to nearby places such as Marchmont and Grange Park. The Grange sits at an elevation of around 97 metres, overlooking the surrounding area. The Grange is a relatively densely populated area, with a population of around 11,064 residents.
When we get to you in The Grange: what happens
- Three things get established before any price — your fuel that was put in, the quantity, and if anything has been run since. Each answer changes the work.
- Out flows the tainted fuel.
- Lines purged, filter cleaned. Whatever is left later is not the thing that started the issue.
- New diesel goes in, and then the system gets primed.
- It's started with clean diesel in it, and our technicians confirm that it is running properly.
From that point, you're ready to pull away. All of this is done where the car is, so it never needs to be taken to a workshop, and when it has been caught early, long-term damage is very rare.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in The Grange is a distinct problem
Don't crank it: that opening instruction holds whether what went in was AdBlue or petrol. What differs is this problem itself. Weakened diesel, and no lubrication left for the system that relies on it. That is petrol. AdBlue? Urea dissolved in water. Pour that in with your diesel and you get rust instead, plus build-up.
Frequently the more significant of the two, AdBlue — and the full story lives on its own The Grange page. Both are ours to deal with.
What a petrol-in-diesel drain will cost in The Grange
We can't put one number on this page honestly, since the job isn't one job. What shifts it:
- Started? Driven? Either answer matters more than anything else on this list.
- How much of the wrong fuel went in, judged against how much the tank holds.
- Which went in: unleaded or AdBlue.
- Access: the vehicle's position, and whether working on it there's safe for a technician.
The vehicle, the amount, whether it has run — give us those and the answer comes back firm rather than as a range. Motor at home, going nowhere, nothing urgent about it — is good for that.
The Grange motorists ask us these about petrol in diesel
At a petrol station around The Grange, can you do a fuel drain there?
A big share of this work gets done there, so yes. Tell us which one you are at when you ring and we'll tell you whether our engineers can work there. With the station's agreement our engineers visit JET and the other forecourts around town routinely.
Is there a safe quantity of petrol in a diesel?
Whether your engine has run counts far more, though the proportion matters too, rather than the litres. A nearly empty tank with five litres in it, against a full one with the same five: distinct scenarios, definitely. Either way, the work required comes down to one thing, which is whether the fuel system has had that blend pulled through it.
I put petrol in my diesel and drove the car. What now?
Switch off somewhere sensible, and keep it that way after you stop. It's fixable far more often than drivers expect, even though driving is what shifts the problem from the tank into the pump and injectors — and the single most useful thing you can do now isn't restart it.
My warranty — does a fuel drain void it?
A drain then flush carried out correctly isn't a change and does not invalidate a manufacturer's warranty. Running a diesel on petrol is the thing likelier to cause a disagreement with one, which is another good reason to leave the vehicle turned off.
Could I put some two-stroke in and just drive?
No. It belongs to a distinct issue from a bygone era, and petrol has thinned something no oil of that kind puts back. The pump still has to put up with it, as your tank still has petrol in it later.
Does petrol in a diesel have to go to a main dealer?
Wherever the car is, our technicians drain and clean it there, so a trip to the main dealer does not come into it.
You, and your vehicle, still together?
Do not turn the engine back on.
Driven it already? Then somewhere safe, stop, turn off, and no restarting it after that. Cold and parked, a motor is in the best position available — and people fear this far more than the recovery rate warrants.
At the kerbside, on the forecourt or at home — mobile fuel draining around The Grange and throughout City of Edinburgh.