just been and filled my diesel passat up with petrol . didnt realise my mistake until a couple of mile down the road when she started loosing power and spluttering . has anybody else done similar and how did you manage to sort it. im hoping draining the tank and then putting the right fuel in will sort it . any advise will be much appreciated.

 

andy

I didn't drive it but two years ago I half filled my freelander TD4 with unleaded, I realised after about £40 worth.

 

I ended up getting it picked up on the back of a trailer and the guys in my old works drained the tank

 

easily done when you're bouncing from car to car day in, day out

 

Not sure which is worse, diesel in a petrol or petrol in a diesel?

 

good luck bud

could well have done the seals in the fuel pump, injectors and anything the petrol touches. you might get lucky but if you drove it until it lost power there might be some damage there

Eeeek - sorry to hear that Andy:helpsmilie:

 

I hope it is OK; one of my engineers did this in his van last year and (luckily) it didn't do any harm....

 

....but to answer Japslapper's question; putting diesel in a petrol is not as bad as petrol in a diesel...

 

....in a petrol the diesel can act as an upper cylinder lubricant - and if diluted with enough petrol will burn off. Sure it will run rough - and might clog an injector - but it is not necessarily so bad.

 

However petrol in a diesel can wreck an engine if your unlucky:oops:

 

Good luck Andy,

 

Richard:helpsmilie:

I didn't drive it but two years ago I half filled my freelander TD4 with unleaded, I realised after about £40 worth.

 

I ended up getting it picked up on the back of a trailer and the guys in my old works drained the tank

 

easily done when you're bouncing from car to car day in, day out

 

Not sure which is worse, diesel in a petrol or petrol in a diesel?

 

good luck bud

 

petrol in derv is much worse, the petrol car would just cut out, drain the fuel and add petrol ull be fine.

 

other way round is worse because petrol is so corrosive it just melts everything

I've done it before. Put about 20l petrol in to my empty diesel tank on my Picasso.

Drove it and like you only noticed a Mile down the road when it started struggling.

 

Emptied the tank and put a fiver of diesel in to get me back to the petrol station, then filled up with vpower diesel and drove it. It ran like a bag of nails for a couple of mile but once the diesel got round the system again it was getter better.

For the next few tanks I put in some redex too.

 

I was going to get the fuel filter changed but never got around to it and after a few miles it was driving like normal again. That was about 18 months ago and the same car is still going strong now. Like it never happened :)

drained a few motors when worked for a company in london,

They had a fuel pump made up which connected to the fuel line under the bonnet and sucked it all out, once nothing left to come through, we filled it with a couple cans of diesal and sucked it through again till it starts coming through just to make sure lines are clear, then reconnected it all up and bleed it through, drained fuel filter and put new one in,

 

on all the cars i done they had drove them, and had no problems after, but as said maybe it could have caused damage,

 

Done one the other week, without any pump on a 05 focus and i dropped the tank to get fuel out,

It was a nightmare to start cause had nothing to clear fuel lines, so had to tow start it,

It was my mums friend and its been good ever since.

 

Just remember its gonna be hard to start, on the focus kept running battery flat trying to bleed it, again at work on some diesals i have opened fuel cap put an airline in their and using a cloth to seal it, put pressure in the tank and it pushes fuel through.

 

Some easy start too may help,

 

Goodluck.

VX Astra and a Merc Sprinter all had petrol put in by mistake in my last company.

 

Both were emptied of fuel, new filter, bled through and were fine !

 

Easy done, good luck !!

 

Alan........

Its easy done Andy hope you get it sorted mate.:clover:

Missis dads megane diesel. He filled it with petrol.

It cut out. They drained it, changed the filter, put diesel in it... Sorted.

£100 was all it cost him in the end. I thought he was looking at big bills!

All done it mate, unleaded in my 530d...

I once put diesel in a gsxr-1100!!! :o

I once put diesel in a gsxr-1100!!! :o

 

:lol::lol::lol: now that is special!!!

 

we probably see around a car every week or two in at work with petrol in a diesel!

 

Drain the fuel out, replace the fuel filter, fill up with fresh diesel & if you want to push the boat out then get some fuel system cleaner to add to the tank.

 

In modern CDI engines as people have mentioned it is possible to have damage to the pump/injectors/rail etc - but I have not seen one from all the jobs we have done that have caused this damage on a Mercedes. Even though some dealers will insist that the entire fuel system needs replacing!!

 

Unless very unlucky I am sure you will be fine :)

I put petrol in my old vectra diesel once. Managed to drive it about 5 miles before realising something was wrong. Had to get towed the rest of the way home and cost me £120 for a flush! :(

just been and filled my diesel passat up with petrol . didnt realise my mistake until a couple of mile down the road when she started loosing power and spluttering . has anybody else done similar and how did you manage to sort it. im hoping draining the tank and then putting the right fuel in will sort it . any advise will be much appreciated.

 

andy

 

Doh! I should not worry too much as the general consensus appears to be you will be ok after draining and refilling, if your stuck for getting the fuel out there is a guy just outside Kingsbury 10 mins from you who runs a mobile service for this very event, seen his van around a lot lately, might be worth a call at least.

 

Jeff

Remember and post up and let us know the outcome ! Good luck !

 

Alan......

well today i was out with a length of pipe and a bucket . i managed to get about 5 or 6 litres out of the tank . probably about 6 or 7 left in there . i went and got a a can of diesel and dropped that in . i reckon at this point the tank was probably 50-50 petrol and diesel . after about 5 mins of cranking and a huge cloud of smoke the battery died . at thius point i thought ***k it , call the AA . they quoted me £220 + vat plus a charge for disposing of the fuel . i told the fella on the phone that his services would not be required , i might not of put it quite like that though. so i went back out and jumped it off the zed . after about 3 or 4 minutes it fired up , ran like shit but luckily my local petrol station is only a few hundred yards away . went round and brimmed the tank . £77 worth of diesel . ive driven it around steady for a few miles and she seems ok . fingers crossed i might have got lucky .

well today i was out with a length of pipe and a bucket . i managed to get about 5 or 6 litres out of the tank . probably about 6 or 7 left in there . i went and got a a can of diesel and dropped that in . i reckon at this point the tank was probably 50-50 petrol and diesel . after about 5 mins of cranking and a huge cloud of smoke the battery died . at thius point i thought ***k it , call the AA . they quoted me £220 + vat plus a charge for disposing of the fuel . i told the fella on the phone that his services would not be required , i might not of put it quite like that though. so i went back out and jumped it off the zed . after about 3 or 4 minutes it fired up , ran like shit but luckily my local petrol station is only a few hundred yards away . went round and brimmed the tank . £77 worth of diesel . ive driven it around steady for a few miles and she seems ok . fingers crossed i might have got lucky .

 

if the petrol sat in the tank over night before you did anything today, then i doubt you would of done much harm.

 

Biggest problem with petrol is it will eat the rubber O rings on some of the parts along the fueling system.

 

Give it a good run and use all the fuel in the tank before filling up again. that way you will be filling up with plenty of diesel next time rather than watering down any petrol in the tank.