Whimple: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
With that tank still holding the fuel and your engine not yet started, nearly every job takes only a drain, so keep your engine off. That outcome is settled in the minutes straight after the fill-up, and not by the amount that went in. All over Whimple and the rest of Devon, Petrol in Diesel drains the vehicle and flushes it where it sits, whether by a roadside, on a private drive or at a forecourt. Our technicians will tell you what your next part will be. Contact us — this happens before everything else.
What to do next about petrol in a diesel
- Do not fire it up — and never trust it when it does start. This is the thing motorists get wrong about petrol in a diesel specifically. A petrol engine filled with diesel typically just cannot run, and so the driver stops and the wear halts with them. A diesel given petrol normally starts, ticks over and moves off perfectly well for several miles. It's not fine. It's wearing out that fuel system as you drive.
- Diesel ignites, and before it burns it greases — your injection pump, those injectors. Petrol manages only the burning. So leave the ignition be as well: switching it on is often enough to prime that system, and priming moves petrol from that tank into just those components.
- That advice supposes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It doesn't. Pour diesel on top and nothing at all is removed; what you have is a bigger tank of the same mix. And no, the type makes no difference — super unleaded is just petrol.
- A vehicle that hasn't moved is the simplest one to sort, so remain where you are if you reasonably can. Pulled up on the verge on Rectory Close? Hazards on, and leave the car there. An awkward location works for us better than a started motor.
- Before you phone, get your position. Anything closest to you with a label on it, plus a postcode that starts EX5 2 — that is what settles whether our van arrives or circles.
- What went in, about how much, and also whether the engine has started — those three answers determine the full job. Call 0333 366 0103 and tell us.
Quarter past eight, a quick fill-up on the drive in, and the penny drops around eleven — by then the diesel Volkswagen Passat has been parked outside the nearest station for three hours. Ring us and keep it just where it stands. The drive in is the bit that is key now, as diesel performs two tasks on its way through a motor: it burns, and before it burns it lubricates its injection pump and the injectors. Petrol does the first and not the second. So those few miles were travelled with the pump working on a liquid that had given up much of the protection it is made for — which is why the question our engineers ask is how many miles you drove, not how long your car has been sitting.
Each start primes the fuel system and pulls more of that mix out of the tank and toward the pump — which is why a motor shuffled twice into a better space has gradually turned into a worse job than one left exactly where it stopped. So if our technicians cannot work next to the diesel Skoda Octavia, our engineers shift the vehicle without starting it. None of that is pedantry about a couple of seconds of running. Car parks like the one outside Morrisons we attend all the time, and the fuel is hardly ever the complicated part: that bay is. Vehicles either side, a trolley shelter behind, sometimes a height limit at the entrance determining if our van can reach you at all. Tell us how boxed in you are, and which way the vehicle points.
The parts that should be getting oiled are grinding instead, and the vehicle gives no sign of it: a diesel on a diluted tank fires up and drives off quite happily. Try the journey home from New Fountain? Not a chance. Phone us then leave the Nissan Qashqai where it sits.
Out there happy, back sluggish. If that was the run to Dince Hill, look at the tank. Diesel gets weakened by petrol, and thin fuel leaks past the tight tolerances supposed to build injection pressure — so every further mile your diesel Ford Focus covered, the less pressure it held onto. Somewhere sensible, switch off, call us.
Drain it and put fresh diesel in — that's the suggestion you'll get, generally from somebody confident, and it is half true. Do exactly that to a diesel BMW 5 Series close to Whimple Victory Hall and it would start, which is what makes the suggestion sound sensible. What occurs next is the trouble: your engine straight away pulls the petrol still resting in the filter and the feed lines straight back through your pump, as emptying a tank does nothing about fuel that has already left it. Call us instead. Our engineers flush the circuit and take your filter off where your vehicle has a working one, which is the difference between the car being put right and the vehicle simply starting.
Forecourt draining for petrol in a diesel
It begins at the pump, mostly. Quite often the work ends at one as well. If you're still on the forecourt at Texaco, that is normally where this drain takes place — we operate on petrol station forecourts all the time, with the owner's agreement.
A filling station is the single place it is caught before your motor has run. Anywhere else — a car park, a drive, a lay-by — the vehicle was switched on and moved to get there, which means fuel was pulled from that tank, through the fuel filter and into the high-pressure pump. That's not a disaster, and our engineers can still put it right where it is. It does mean the lines and the fuel filter need rinsing as well as that tank, and that is settled by the few seconds between seeing your receipt and reaching for the keys.
Attendants will generally help out pushing it away from the pump, which lets the next motorist get through. Accept the help. Starting it just to roll four vehicle lengths is not.
Coverage near Whimple
Being a rural village, Whimple gets a frequent visit, whilst its neighbours close by go along on the same journey: Aller Grove and Strete Ralegh, Hand and Pen and Larkbeare, Allercombe.
If yours is not on this list it doesn't mean we never come — there are pages for most towns across Devon, and the ones listed above are just the immediate neighbours. Phone to enquire instead of presuming, above all where you're on the border or anywhere your satnav gets wrong.
The patch this page covers sits on this map. Kerbside, forecourt, drive, car park: every bit of that is territory our engineers work on, and none of it asks your car to travel to us.
Whimple: broken down where you parked
Some people get no safe place to pull over whatsoever. A routine call for us instead of an odd one: realised after setting off, finished up along the verge beside Henry Lewis Close or in a lay-by with the hazard lights flashing.
Clear of the vehicle while it isn't wise to be inside, with it when it is. It will usually oblige. A diesel running on petrol limps along very willingly, and that's the catch: restart it to get to somewhere better and that blend goes further into your fuel system with every mile covered. A technician coming to a difficult location is no bother for us, and it's much better for the vehicle than carrying on.
Some miles on petrol in a diesel: now what?
Your M5 is the one that counts now, and it sits under 5 miles from Whimple. It will usually get you onto it, and some way along, before you spot a thing. Then it's some smoke, a rough idle and power ebbing away — not a tidy stop. Wrongly fuelled diesels seldom give you one of those.
Take the next junction that is sensible, pull up there, and do not restart it to reposition. Long drive? Anything near the under 10 miles to the nearest city and you should presume the lot — filter, pump, injectors, all of that reached by the mixture. Say that on the phone, as it alters what goes in the van.
Where's Whimple?
Whimple is a village in Devon, situated inland at an elevation of 49 metres, approximately 8 miles east of Exeter. Whimple has a population of around 1120 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Whimple is close to nearby places such as Aller Grove, Strete Ralegh, and Hand and Pen, and is located in the South West region of England. Whimple is about 149 miles west of London.
Once our technicians get to you in Whimple: what follows
- The replies alter the work, which is why our technicians ask before pricing: what was put in, how much of it, and if the motor has run.
- The contaminated fuel is pulled out of the tank.
- What is remaining in the fuel system should not be what caused the trouble, so your fuel lines get rinsed and the filter cleaned.
- New diesel goes in, and then the system gets primed.
- Our technicians fire it up and confirm it runs smoothly on clean diesel.
That has it ready to set off. All of this is done where the vehicle is, so it never has to be taken to a workshop, and when it has been spotted quickly, permanent damage is very rare.
Whimple AdBlue removal is a separate job
AdBlue rather than petrol? Then the opening instruction is unchanged — the engine stays off — while this fault under it is a distinct one altogether. Weakened diesel, and no lubrication left for your fuel system that depends on it. That's petrol. Rust and deposits are what a diesel tank gets instead, as AdBlue is urea in water.
Both are ours. There's a separate Whimple page for AdBlue removal, with the details on it — including the reasons it often turns out to be the worse of the two.
Whimple pricing for a petrol-in-diesel drain
One number wouldn't be fair here, since this isn't one job. These are the things that shift it:
- This is the key one: whether the motor has been run, or driven.
- How much of the wrong fuel went in, compared with how much your tank can hold.
- The sort of fluid in the tank, petrol or AdBlue.
- Where is it? And can a technician get to it and work there sensibly?
The car, the quantity, whether it has run — give us those and the answer comes back firm instead of as a range. Not urgent, with the car at home and going nowhere? Then is fine.
Questions our technicians hear about petrol in diesel in Whimple
I'm on a forecourt in Whimple. Can you drain it on the spot?
Yes — forecourts are where a fair part of this gets done. Permission from the site is the condition. Given that, a forecourt like Murco is somewhere we're often enough, along with the rest of them locally — so name yours on the call and you will hear whether working there's possible.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
Ratio settles it instead of litres — and more than either, whether the engine has run. Five litres into an almost dry tank isn't five into a full one, no. But both land on the same query in the end: has that mixture been pulled right through, or has it not?
Already driven it with petrol in the diesel? Now what?
Pull over somewhere safe, turn off, and keep the car off. Driving is what moves the trouble from that tank into your pump and injectors — but it's salvageable a lot more regularly than motorists assume, and the single most useful thing you can do now isn't restart the car.
My warranty — does a fuel drain void it?
No. Carried out properly, emptying and flushing is no modification at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is unaffected by it. A dispute 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. It belongs to a different fault from a bygone era, and petrol has diluted something no oil of that kind replaces. Your pump still has to live with it, because that tank still has petrol in it afterwards.
A main dealer for petrol in a diesel — needed?
No. We drain and clean your car wherever it is, so there is no need to take it to a main dealer.
You, and the vehicle, still together?
Keep the engine turned off.
Turn it off somewhere sensible and leave it off, if you have already driven it. A still, cold vehicle is the best place to be in, and this is recoverable from far more frequently than people expect.
Draining wrongly fuelled vehicles, Whimple and the rest of Devon, wherever they are. Kerbside. Forecourt. Home.