West End: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
Petrol in Diesel drains and cleans wrong-fuelled vehicles where they sit, on the forecourt, at the roadside or on a private drive, across West End and the remainder of City of Edinburgh. The very first thing to do is not to fire up the motor. When your engine has not yet run and the fuel is still in your tank, a drain is nearly always all it requires, and the coming few minutes determine that, not how much was put in. Phone before all else happens, and you'll see what happens from there.
What to try now about petrol in a diesel
- Don't start the car — and do not depend on it if it does start. Here is the part drivers have wrong about petrol in a diesel in particular. A petrol engine fed diesel usually just will not run, and so the person stops and the harm halts with them. A diesel filled with petrol typically starts, ticks over and drives off without complaint for several miles. It's not okay. It is wearing out the fuel system whenever you drive.
- Diesel burns, and before it combusts it protects — that high-pressure pump, its injectors. Petrol does only the burning. So leave the car's ignition alone too: switching it on is often all it takes to prime your system, and priming draws petrol from the tank into just those components.
- Do not dilute it. Diesel poured on top clears nothing, and so all you get is more of what was already there, since percentage is not how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol. Super unleaded? Just petrol. The type makes no difference.
- Stay where you are if you sensibly can. A vehicle that has never shifted is the simplest one to sort out, and we would sooner drive to an odd spot than have it started. If you're pulled up on the verge on Canning Street, put the hazards on then leave it there.
- Keep your whereabouts ready before you ring. A postcode that starts EH2 4 and whatever is closest to you with a name on it is the difference between a van showing up and our van circling.
- Ring 0333 366 0103. Expect three things — what went in, approximately how much, plus if your car has been started. The replies settle all that comes after.
On the forecourt: removing petrol from your diesel
The work begins at the pump, generally. Quite often the work ends on site too. If you are still on the forecourt at JET, that's generally where this drain gets done — our technicians work on station forecourts regularly, with the site's permission.
At a garage, this gets stopped with the engine never started, and nowhere else does that. The few seconds between seeing your receipt and going for the key decide how much needs rinsing. Anywhere other than a forecourt — a car park, a private drive, a lay-by — the vehicle was switched on and driven to get there, so fuel was pulled from the tank, through the filter then into the high-pressure pump. That means the lines and your filter need cleaning as well as the tank. It is not a catastrophe, and we can still deal with it where the car sits.
Staff will generally chip in pushing it out from the pump, which lets the next driver get through. Welcome the help. Shifting it four bays doesn't warrant starting the engine.
Diesel Volkswagen Tiguan. A few litres of unleaded. Driven a couple of miles. Switched off now, outside Greens on the Go. That is the call we want, as the real question beneath it's about quantity through your pump instead of hours on the clock.
None of that is the motor failing. That is the part worth hearing, and it's why the normal Rutland Square Gardens call ends better than it sounds: a diesel Mercedes C-Class drives out there without fuss, comes back with the power gone, the idle uneven and possibly a little smoke, and the cause is the fuel no longer behaving like diesel. Diesel has to be thick enough to seal the precision parts it runs through; petrol weakens it; and a diesel injection system is hydraulic as much as chemical, needing the fuel to hold pressure rather than only to burn. So pressure that should build then stay built leaks past gaps, delivery shows up poorer and later and less even than built, and all of that stops once the fuel is put right.
Three things help when you ring from close to Scottish Arts Club: which side the filler is on, whether a van can pull up next to without blocking the road, and if your engine has run since you filled up. On-street is the most common spot we work, and so the location itself is seldom the problem — we would much rather deal with a narrow parking space than with a motor that has been driven to somewhere more convenient. We will drain the Dacia Duster, change the fuel filter where there is a serviceable one, flush your lines then put clean fuel through the whole circuit, since by this point the worst of it is resting in the lines rather than in the tank.
New places are where this occurs most, and the reason is mechanical not slapdash: the smaller petrol nozzle slides into a current diesel filler neck with practically no resistance at all. Fuelled up by Charlotte Chapel without thinking, in a diesel Vauxhall Astra you have had for two days? Ring us where you are. Hire and courtesy cars often get driven further before anybody notices, and distance is what determines how much petrol reaches the injectors.
It got a couple of streets and stopped. The throttle went dead, the idle turned uneven, and your diesel Ford Fiesta is now waiting by William Gladstone Memorial. That deadness is the fuel failing to build pressure fully instead of your engine giving up — and as there is no dashboard light for it, vehicles in that position usually get driven a second time before somebody phones. Do not. Turn it off then ring us.
Service near West End
Being a residential suburb, West End gets a frequent visit, and the places round about go with it on the same round: Tollcross and Fountainbridge, Dean and New Town, Coates.
There are dedicated pages for the majority of towns around City of Edinburgh, and the ones mentioned above are merely the nearest neighbours — so yours being missing from the list means nothing about if we come. Phone to ask rather than presuming — county lines above all, and wherever your satnav might misread.
The map shows the area this page spans. We work at the roadside, at forecourts, on driveways and in car parks throughout all of it, and your car doesn't need to move to us.
Stuck on the kerb anywhere around West End?
The opportunity to pull over anywhere sensible doesn't come to everyone. Set off, then noticed? Finished up by the verge on Atholl Crescent Lane, or sat in some lay-by with the hazard lights flashing? That's a common call here. Not a rare one.
Fine where you are? Stay beside it. Not fine? Climb out and away from it. Never start it up to reach a nicer location. It'll go — a diesel on petrol usually obliges — and each mile of obliging drags the mixture deeper into your fuel system. A van coming to a difficult place is no problem for us, and it's much better for your car than driving on.
Some miles on petrol in a diesel: now what?
Here is where your M8 counts, under 5 miles from West End. A misfilled diesel will frequently take you onto it and some distance along before anything feels wrong, while the symptoms when they arrive are generally lost power, a lumpy idle and some smoke instead of a clean stop.
Do not start it to reposition. Get off at the next safe junction and switch off. It affects what we bring, so mention it when you call: on a longer trip — anything close to the under a mile to the closest city — assume the contamination has been through your filter, your pump and the injectors.
West End itself
West End is a suburban area in the City of Edinburgh, situated near the coast and approximately 0.9 miles from Edinburgh city centre. West End occupies a relatively low elevation of 71 metres, with its landscape characterised by a mix of residential and commercial properties. West End is close to nearby places such as Tollcross, Fountainbridge, and Dean, and is predominantly composed of flat-type housing.
When our technicians reach you in West End: what follows
- Three things get established before any price — your fuel that was put in, the amount, and if anything has been run since. Each answer alters the work.
- Our engineers drain your tank of all the tainted mixture.
- Fuel lines are purged through and the filter cleaned, leaving nothing in the fuel system that started any of this.
- The fuel system gets bled, on fresh diesel.
- Your engine is fired up and tested to make sure it runs correctly on new diesel.
That leaves your car ready to pull away. Our engineers do everything wherever the car has stopped, which means it never has to go to a workshop, and when it has been noticed early, it's very unusual for there to be lasting damage.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in West End is a separate problem
Do not fire it up: that first rule stands whether what got in was AdBlue or petrol. What differs is this fault itself. The protection a fuel system relies on is stripped away by petrol, which weakens the diesel. Corrosion and deposits are what a diesel tank ends up with instead, as AdBlue is urea dissolved in water.
Both are ours. There's a separate West End 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 drain around West End?
We cannot put one number on this page truthfully, because the job isn't one job. What moves it:
- Whether the engine has been started or driven. This is the big one.
- Wrong fuel in, against what that tank holds — that ratio.
- The type of liquid in the tank, petrol or AdBlue.
- Where the vehicle is, and whether a van can safely reach and work on it.
The vehicle, the amount, whether it has run — give us those and the answer comes back clear instead of as a range. Not time-critical, with the car at home and going nowhere? Then is fine.
Petrol in diesel: common queries in West End
I am on a forecourt in West End. Can you drain the vehicle on the spot?
Yes — forecourts are where a fair share of this takes place. Permission from the site is the condition. Given that, a forecourt like BP is somewhere we're frequently, along with the rest of them locally — so name yours on the call and you'll hear whether working there's possible.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
It hinges on the proportion instead of the litres, and much more on whether the motor has run. Five litres in an almost empty tank is a separate matter from five in a full one — but either way, the thing that settles how much work is needed is if that blend has been sucked through your fuel system.
I drove the vehicle after putting petrol in my diesel. What next?
Switch off somewhere safe, then keep it that way after you stop. Not restarting it is the single most valuable thing available to you now. Driving does move the problem out of your tank and into the pump and injectors, yes, and it remains recoverable much more often than people assume.
Is a fuel drain going to void my warranty?
It isn't a change, and so a drain and flush carried out properly does not cancel a manufacturer's warranty. A disagreement 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
No. Two-stroke oil is an old remedy for a separate problem and it does not put back what petrol has diluted. Petrol stays in that tank afterwards, whatever else goes in, and your pump gets no break from it.
Does petrol in a diesel have to go to a main dealer?
No. Our technicians drain and clean the car wherever it is, so there is no need to bring it to a main dealer.
You, and the vehicle, still together?
The motor remains off.
Driven it already? Then somewhere safe, stop, turn off, and no restarting the vehicle afterwards. Cold, stationary, going nowhere: that is the best place to be in. People fear this a lot more than they need to.
Call-out fuel draining around West End and across City of Edinburgh — at the roadside, on the forecourt or at home.