OH just put petrol in my diesel V70, drove a couple of miles down the road before realising. It’s now parked off the road safely. Drain, flush, refill necessary at least, then fingers crossed – it’s 14 years old so probably not worth much more work.

So, question is who to drain it etc? Insurance doesn’t cover it, RAC will do it for £240. Googling seems to just throw up aggregators – ideally I want someone decent local to the Midlands, failing that has anyone used one of the Google results? Were they any good, and how much, or just call a local garage?

So…advice please!

Ghostbusters?

What ratio of fuel?

Worth phoning a couple of local petrol stations? One of mine has cards for a fuel mistake guy.

Start with your local indy, it doesn’t need much kit

I put petrol in my diesel Skoda Octavia, quite modern for me then. I then filled right up with diesel and had no problems whatsoever. If you’ve not put too much in you maybe ok. Diesel in a petrol car however, you’d know very quickly. Keep calm and work out the ratio you put in. Good luck.

Yeah…should have added that detail, the tank is now mostly petrol and (apparently) engine knocking a lot, so topping off not an option.

Local petrol stations for local contacts a good call.

Leave it on the street over night with the fuel cap off. Some kind soul will help. Any car will cope with half a litre of piss once you fill up up correctly.

the tank is now mostly petrol and (apparently) engine knocking a lot

I don’t want to be a downer here but engine knock is the least of your problems. Older diesels were comparatively basic but in the more modern ones the HP fuel pump and the injectors in particular are very sensitive to contamination, their clearances are incredibly tight and they’re lubricated by diesel. Whoever you find to help should be flushing the whole system through, and not by running it. But the damage may already have been done.

How full was the tank before? and how much did you put in?

Putting petrol into a diesel isn’t as bad as doing it the other way round…if you just topped a half full tank up with £20 quids worth, just fill it up to the brim with diesel and happy days.

I don’t want to be a downer here but engine knock is the least of your problems. Older diesels were comparatively basic but in the more modern ones the HP fuel pump and the injectors in particular are very sensitive to contamination, their clearances are incredibly tight and they’re lubricated by diesel. Whoever you find to help should be flushing the whole system through, and not by running it. But the damage may already have been done.

It’s a Volvo, it’ll be fine!

I’m going to own up to putting 40 litres of vpower diesel in my 944 turbo. So roughly 50/50 mix. Going rate seemed to be £200 for a drain and 10 litres of unleaded. It didn’t make it across the forecourt.

So I think the RAC price is about the going rate.

Opposite issue to the op. I then brimmed the tank with vpower e5 and octane booster.

Putting petrol into a diesel isn’t as bad as doing it the other way round…

Is bollocks.

I should probably explain that.
On a petrol car the sparkplugs will oil up pretty much straight away with a large amount of diesel.
The car will stop, almost immediately.
Fresh petrol and new or clean plugs will sort it out.

Diesel fuel pumps really don’t like petrol.

iirc putting petrol in a diesel is the worst.
I got 50 yards before I realised.
Didnt want to take the risk so got relayed home and drained the tank,(easy to do on my berlingo) took the injectors out, and fuel filter, hit the starter a bit, then put it back together and bled the system
2.0 hdi (siemens)
saved me £200

Look on the bright side, at least you’re not my mate Pete, who’s managed to put a full tank of diesel into a Ducati 748. Twice.

Some people just should have thier licence to drive, revoked.

Some people just should have thier licence to drive, revoked.

Lots of people swap between diesel and petrol vehicles regularly. So it’s not really a shock it happens.
The Shell v power pumps are both red. Granted one handle is green and the other black.

My only surprise from that video is how long the Escort ran for, I suppose they had to be good at something.
Awful cars.

A long time ago I put a couple of some posh diesel in my Ducati 748, pump handle was green and looked like the premium petrol pump but didn’t look or smell like it… Luckily it wasn’t that much and didnt take any tools to talke the tank off and the farmer in the puckup at the next pump was quite happy to have a bit more fuel for free.

My SIL filled their Volvo, ended up about 50:50. Brother drained it off and emptied it into my 1986 petrol Passatt, free fuel for a month 🙂 Fantastic car

It could be worse someone put diesel in a mclaren F1 Here

Update. Rang local garage, they heard it’s a Volvo – recommended Fuel Doctor, so called them. Relatively local franchisee.

He turned up, sucked the fuel out – cycled the ignition a few times – apparently Volvos have some find of convoluted tank setup with a pump between two sections which this technique sorts. Then put 20l of diesel in – about 15 starting attempts later it fired up and so far….seems OK. £170 lighter plus half a tank of 50/50 pumped out.

Fingers crossed now. It does seem that most anecdotes are cases where it was all OK, rather than the worse possible cases, so hopefully this will be the former.

Sounds like a decent result.

It could be worse someone put diesel in a mclaren F1 Here

THat is all kinds of special.

Volvo v70 high volume, low pressure lift pump inside tank.
Low volume high pressure pump im engine bay.
You could have spun off the fuel filter and drain the tank more than enough to fill woth deisel to be safe.
Catching 40ltrs of fuel rushing out the filter housing would have been the hardest part

Probably a way to cycle the ignition to get the pump to empty the tank into a container up front by disconnecting a line inside the engine bay

Petrol and diesel nozzles at petrol stations are designed so that the really bad way of doing it is really hard to do because of the nozzle filler cap incompatibility. The still not great, but not as bad way of doing it is why it is comparatively easier to do it the other way round as you found out.

A much worse mix up
putting AdBlue in fuel tank results in £15k bill

my two pence worth is also that thi isn’t so bad and that you could try any of the suggestions that cost no money or next to no money.