Tullos: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
Do not turn on your engine. While the fuel is still in your tank and the motor has not run, a fuel drain is nearly always all it needs — and that is settled in the following few minutes, not by how much got in. Petrol in Diesel drains and flushes wrong-fuelled vehicles where they stand, across Tullos and the rest of Aberdeen City, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a driveway. Call us and we will show you what follows next before you attempt any more.
What to do now about petrol in a diesel
- Whenever you drive, your pump and the fuel injectors wear down. This is why you don't fire it up, and why you do not trust it once it has started. The trick about petrol in a diesel in particular — the bit drivers get wrong — is that it drives off happily for the first mile or two. Diesel in a petrol motor usually cannot run at all, which stops the driver and stops the damage with them. This one lets you drive on.
- Leave your ignition be also. Diesel has two roles: it combusts, and before it combusts it protects your injection pump and its injectors. Petrol manages the first and not the second. Switching your ignition on is often all it takes to prime that system, which pulls this petrol out of the tank and into exactly those parts.
- Don't dilute it. Diesel poured on top takes out nothing, so all you have is more of what was already there, because percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol. Super unleaded? Simply petrol. The grade makes no difference.
- Stay put if it's sensible to. Hazards on, ignition off, leave it. Wherever you have stopped — the verge on Greenbank Place, anywhere — a difficult location for us trumps a started diesel, and nothing is quicker for us to sort than a motor that never moved.
- Find out where you are before calling. A postcode starting AB12 3, and the name of whatever is closest to you. Otherwise the van circles rather than showing up.
- What went in, approximately how much, and if the car has run — those three facts determine the entire job. Call 0333 366 0103 then tell us.
Removing petrol from a diesel on a forecourt
Much of this work begins at a pump, so a big portion of it is completed at one. The drain usually takes place right there. Still on the forecourt at Shell? Given the station's permission, that is a place we work, and regularly.
At the forecourt, this is stopped with your motor never fired, and nowhere else manages it. Fuel sucked out of that tank and through the filter, right to the high-pressure fuel pump, is what happens when the engine is fired up and the vehicle is driven to where it is now: the car park, the driveway or the lay-by, everywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush covers the filter and your lines together with that tank. That's still not a calamity, and our technicians deal with it where the vehicle stands. What determines it is whether the ignition was reached for in the seconds after the till receipt was read.
The attendants will usually happily wheel the vehicle out from the petrol pump so the next driver can get through. That is worth doing. Four vehicle lengths is not worth a start.
Every start primes that fuel system and draws more of that mixture out of that tank and towards your pump — which is why a car shunted twice into a better bay has silently become a harder job than one left just where it stopped. So when our technicians cannot work alongside the diesel BMW 3 Series, we move the vehicle without firing it. None of that is fuss about a few seconds of running. Car parks like the one at Lidl our technicians visit regularly, and your fuel is seldom the complicated part: that bay is. Cars either side, a trolley shelter behind, at times a height barrier at the way in determining if our van gets to you at all. Tell us how boxed in you are, and which way the car points.
Each restart primes your lines and draws more petrol through the fuel filter and into your pump. So a wrongly fuelled diesel Peugeot 308 on the zig-zags outside the local primary school is an inconvenience, whereas the same car fired up three more times to be helpful is a fuel system instead of a tank. Someone will urge you to move the vehicle out of the gateway and deal with it later. Please don't. Leave it there, let them moan, and ring us.
The parts that should be getting lubricated are wearing down instead, and the vehicle gives no sign of that: a diesel on a thinned tank fires up and drives off quite happily. Risk the trip home from The White Cockade? Not a chance. Phone then leave the Audi A4 where it is.
Rarely the issue, the location. On-street is the most common spot our technicians work, and a narrow parking space is far preferable to a vehicle that has been driven somewhere more convenient. What does help, when you call from close to Balnagask Community Centre, is three things: the side the filler is on, whether a van can pull up alongside without blocking the road, and if anything has run since you filled up. Then your Dacia Duster gets drained, the fuel filter changed where a workable one exists, the fuel lines purged and fresh fuel put through the full circuit — since by now the worst of it is in your lines, not that tank.
What takes place next is the problem. The motor at once draws the petrol left resting in the fuel 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, somebody certain will tell you — and that tip is half true, as do it to a diesel Kia Sportage parked up, Cruyff Court Neale Cooper say, and the thing starts, which is what makes it sound reasonable. Ring us instead. Our engineers flush the circuit and take your filter off where the car has a working one, and that is the difference between the vehicle being fixed and the car just starting.
Areas our vans cover around Tullos
The same journeys take us to Torry, Altens, Nigg, Balnagask and Ferryhill as well as Tullos, which is a residential suburb.
If yours isn't on the list that does not mean we don't come — there are separate pages for nearly all places around Aberdeen City, and the ones mentioned above are merely the nearest neighbours. Contact us to enquire rather than guessing, especially when you're on the boundary or anywhere a satnav can't find.
That map shows the area this page spans. All of it is ground our engineers work: a roadside, a forecourt, a driveway, a car park. You do not bring your car anywhere.
Stuck at the roadside anywhere around Tullos?
Some people find no suitable spot to pull in at all. If you realised after setting off and landed along the verge beside Greenbank Road, or at a lay-by somewhere with the hazards flashing, that's a common call for us instead of an odd one.
Safe right there? Remain beside it. Not fine? Step out and clear of it. Never start it up to get to a safer place. It'll go — a diesel on petrol normally obliges — and each mile of obliging draws the mixture deeper into the fuel system. Pressing on does the vehicle far more harm than our van heading out to a difficult spot, and that is no problem for us.
Run it already? Stop, and see this
over 50 miles from Tullos, the local M90 is what matters here. A drop in power, a rough idle, smoke: those are the signs when they come, instead of a neat stop — and a misfilled diesel will often get you onto it and some way along before anything seems wrong at all.
The first sensible exit is the one to take. Turn off there, and leave the restarting alone. On a longer trip — anything approaching the under 3 miles to the nearest city — assume the contamination has been through the fuel filter, your pump and your injectors, and mention it when you phone. It changes what our technicians bring.
Where's Tullos?
Tullos is a coastal suburban area in Aberdeen City, situated approximately 1.7 miles from Aberdeen city centre. Tullos has a relatively low elevation of 26 metres and is close to nearby places such as Torry, Altens, and Nigg. Tullos is predominantly composed of flat-type housing, which is common in many Scottish urban areas. Tullos is home to a population of around 1857 residents.
What comes next when we reach you around Tullos
- The replies alter the work, which is why we ask before quoting: what got in, how much of it, and whether the engine has run.
- The contaminated mixture is drawn from the tank.
- Our engineers rinse the lines and clean the fuel filter, and so what's left in your system isn't what created the trouble.
- The fuel system gets primed, on new diesel.
- The engine is fired up and checked to be sure it runs correctly on fresh diesel.
The vehicle is then ready for you to drive away. There is no need for a workshop at any point, as the work is all done where the vehicle is, and when it's noticed early, long-term damage is very uncommon.
A separate problem: AdBlue in a diesel tank around Tullos
The fault is not the same, though the first step is — do not crank it — if what got in was AdBlue rather than petrol. The lubrication a fuel system relies on is taken away by petrol, which dilutes the diesel. Urea dissolved in water, AdBlue, and in a diesel tank that causes corrosion and build-up.
AdBlue removal in Tullos has a page of its own with the detail on it, including why it is usually the more serious of the two. Our technicians handle both.
How much is a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain around Tullos?
Honestly, no single price belongs on a page like this. This job differs. Here is what changes it:
- This is the main one: whether your engine has been run, or driven.
- Wrong fuel in, against what the tank takes — that ratio.
- AdBlue or unleaded, whichever was put in.
- Whether a van can safely reach your vehicle and work on it, which rests on where your vehicle is.
Tell us what your car is, how much got in, and if your motor has run. A firm answer comes back, not a range. For the car at home that's going nowhere and is not urgent, is fine too.
Tullos motorists ask us these about petrol in diesel
At a petrol station in Tullos, can you do a fuel drain there?
A large portion of this work takes place there, so yes. Often, provided the site agrees: BP, plus every other forecourt nearby. Say on the phone where precisely you have stopped. Whether we can work in that location is something our technicians answer there and then.
How much petrol is too much for a diesel?
Proportion settles it instead of litres — and more than either, whether your motor has run. A nearly empty tank with five litres in it, against a full one with the same five: different scenarios, of course. Either way, the work needed comes down to one thing, which is whether the system has had that mixture sucked through it.
I drove it after putting petrol in my diesel. What next?
Stop safely. Off. Nothing after that. Driving is what shifts the issue from the tank into your pump and injectors — but it is salvageable much more often than motorists assume, and the single most valuable thing you can do now isn't restart the vehicle.
My warranty — does a fuel drain void it?
No. Carried out properly, clearing and rinsing is no modification at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is untouched by it. A dispute over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it turned off.
Can I just add two-stroke oil and drive home?
No. It belongs to a different problem from a bygone era, and petrol has diluted something no oil of that kind restores. The pump still has to live with it, as that tank still has petrol in it later on.
A main dealer for petrol in a diesel — necessary?
There is no need to bring it to a franchised dealer, since our technicians drain and flush your car wherever it is.
Standing next to it?
Do not turn it back on.
Already driven it? Then pull in somewhere safe, turn off, and let the vehicle remain that way. Cold, stationary, going nowhere: that is the best place to be in. People fear this much more than they need to.
Across Aberdeen City and around Tullos: on-site fuel draining, at home or on the forecourt or at the roadside.