Just put petrol in my 2.0tdi vw. Had about 1ltr diesel in tank and then put £20 petrol in. Drove it about 500yds then went into shop. Came out and wouldn’t start. From what I’ve read it looks like if I get tank drained and get some diesel back in I should get away with it. Opinions..?

You may be lucky you may face a huge bill, diesels don’t like petrol.

Exactly this happened to my mate in his brand new accord a few years ago.
He had it drained and filters replaced and all was well, i think he had driven for about half a mile. He used the car for 120k miles after it too.

Mechanic in the honda dealer told him his was like the 6th that week, and it was the only one that was ok, all the others were facing big bills to repair.
Hope you are lucky bro.

No help, but fair play for admitting you did it yourself instead of blaming your other half!

Fill it full of diesel and drive it.My dads technique to keep a diesel work truck running in the winter was a gallon of petrol in the tank. He was amazed that it was regarded as an issue by some. Old timers trick I guess. 1 reason for this was that the VW caddy he had had silly plastic petrol pipes so he couldn’t hold some burning newspaper under them.
we are talking this century as well. 25% isn’t an good but 10% won’t do any harm, especially if you get most of it out.

I don’t know about VW but if it was Ford diesel you might have damaged your fuel pump (~£1000) as they rely on the diesel for lubrication. To minimise the risk I suggest draining the fuel system, not the tank, and repriming with diesel – you’ll probably need to do that to get it to start, anyway. 10% in the tank isn’t likely to be problem, it’s the neat petrol in the pump and injectors you need to get rid of.

I’d try the complete drain, fresh fuel filter and blow through all the injector pipes and fuel return pipes if it’s an older model. Fill it with diesel and keep your fingers crossed you haven’t already fubarred the engine.

Arse, I noticed when I was putting the petrol in “hmmm this diesel smells funny, oh ****”.
£40 on petrol i didnt need
£200 on draining tank
£60 to fill it back up with diesel

Bollocks

If your car is still under warranty you’ll invalidate the warranty if you don’t get it sorted at a VW garage. I speak from experience (Volvo). Amazingly my insurance covered everything…entire new fuel system including 5 new injectors. That’s what Volvo insisted was done even tho I only drive 30 feet…tho I’m not convinced the garage really did it!

Apparently in older diesels it’s ok as the tolerances are much less fine than modern diesels.

Fine in older diesels. As above a little bit of petrol makes good antifreeze. In my old diesel mitsubishi lots of people run then on a cooking oil and petrol mix. Modern diesels are a different beast. You might be lucky.

Car is 2005

Drain it new filters full tank of derv. Don’t top it up and run it. Modern common rail pumps run mega high pressures and use diesel to lube themselves.

It’s not just the pump it will do either. Dpfs wouldn’t benefit either

My mother done the same with her 08 207 1.4 HDI, had about 1/4 tank of diesel and then she put about another 1/4 tank of unleaded in, she had a bit of a panic, she’d drove it a few mile without any issue then we filled the tank with diesel to dilute it down, its ran fine ever since.

When I worked at a Merc dealer, we had a guy do it in a CLK320 CDi.

He filled it up and ran it…stopped working and he got towed in. About £3k later it was ready to go…..then he did it again, worse the second time and the bill rocketed up to nearly £15k.

Can’t remember for the life of me whether the insurer wrote it off or not…*

*this was back in 2006 ish

**not helpful, but thought you’d like to know 😉

I did the same in my vw earlier this year – tank drained and new fuel filter and all is fine.

You can get away with a small amount of petrol in a full tank of diesel but it sounds like you ran the car with a mix that was mostly petrol. If it now won’t start it sounds like you have knackered the fuel pump. I wouldn’t even turn the ignition on until you have had it professionally checked. If the fuel pump is damaged and turning on the ignition makes the pump run, you could be making it much worse. If swarf from the pump goes through the fuel system you could then ruin the injectors – or worse. Sorry to be a doom monger loddrik. It’s easily done.

We once had 2 Transits at work (one petrol, one diesel).

A young graduate managed to put diesel in the petrol one – evidently not being able to get the larger diesel nozzle into the petrol filler wasn’t enough of a clue that something was wrong….. He took 10 minutes to dribble the diesel in from a half inserted nozzle 🙂

Then we got a diesel Trafic that in the first week somebody filled with petrol (thinking it was the old Transit). That just got drained and new filters – still going now 200,000 miles later.

Happened to us 6 weeks ago- 07 plate Saab 93 1.9TiD. Almost empty tank filled with £40 unleaded. Driven 1.5 miles home before spluttered & stopped.
Towed to garage, drained, new fuel filter, good as new.
Keep fingers crossed.

Rob

Ok so spoke to my usual garage, nothing to worry about. £50 to drain and flush and another £20 for diesel. Phew!

OT but I remember seeing a Fiat 500 Diesel special edition (the car was a petrol). No room there at all to get things muddled up:

Ok so spoke to my usual garage, nothing to worry about. £50 to drain and flush and another £20 for diesel. Phew!

Garages often love these jobs as they get free fuel out of it.

I’m confused, loddrik is the OP then anagallis_arvensis chips in with this:

Arse, I noticed when I was putting the petrol in “hmmm this diesel smells funny, oh ****”.
£40 on petrol i didnt need
£200 on draining tank
£60 to fill it back up with diesel

Bollocks

Were you two out together and anagallis_arvensis filled the car up with the wrong fuel?

Different amounts, I think a_a was just confirming he’s done the same thing.

It’s not going to help you here, but Mrs B filled my car (diesel) with petrol, but realised just as the pump went ‘click’ as the tank filled. Cue a little swearing, phone call to the RAC and a long wait. About £250 to empty and flush the tank, then another £80 to fill the tank up with diesel, to add to the £70 or so for the petrol that had just been flushed out. 😥

Our boys (3) now remind us when we fill up: Mrs B’s car is green, so that gets the green stuff, whilst my car is black, so that gets the black stuff. Colour-coded cars is obviously the answer here!

I once filled up my diesel Land Rover with petrol, despite having had it for years. It was at a run-down garage, and they had a few pumps in the same row. I’d spotted a diesel pump on the way in, and then filled up from the pump with the black nozzle. Unbeknown to me, it was a petrol pump in disguise! That was one example of where a colour-coded car wouldn’t have worked!

I discovered after filling its tank to the brim, but thankfully didn’t try to start it. I pushed it across the forecourt to a nearby workshop, had the tank drained, and then pushed it back to fill it up with diesel. It was a waste of time and money, but it could have been a lot worse.

I hope you get yours sorted without any additional worries or expense!