btw when i worked in a garage we used to seriously cane people finatially for this.we would change anything and everthing that we could claim had been in contact with the wrong fuel,filter, fuel lines, tank of juice,disposal of old "bad mix fuel" stripping out this and that.
actually usaully took no time at all and involved a quick drain and filter change, new full brimming tank of fuel and a warp speed road test of around 45 mins on local motorway to "clear her through"

I hope you're kidding, or thats possibly the most disgraceful theiving to admit to, and liable to cause future problems for the owner too.

I've worked for both a Mercedes (commercial) and Iveco service agent.
I tended to work on the trucks rather than the vans. Nobody ever puts petrol in a truck, but when we had vans towed in it was simply a case of remove the tank, turn it upside down to drain it, refit and refill the tank, crank it over till it fires, go for a test drive, then tip the contaminated fuel in my Land Rover.
I'm not absolutely certain, but these were probably common rail engines and suffered no long term damage.
I run my Land Rover on LPG, so if I ever had a problem with the free diesel/petrol mix it would be easy to switch back to LPG until I got an opportunity to drain the tank.

Wife's put petrol in our diesel car….help!

well divorce is the legal option, but its expensive i hear, killing her is a bit risky as you may get caught.
start leaving the toilet seat up and hope she moves out on her own?

I'd just drain it, and then re-fill with diesel – what have you to lose?

An ex-boss did the same with his 535i, bill was over £6k – but then he admitted it to the BMW garage…

I'm not absolutely certain, but these were probably common rail engines and suffered no long term damage.

Depends how far you try to drive it I suspect. Realise your mistake and tow it from the road next to the garage and you'll probably be fine. Drive a few miles on it and you're likely to write off the pumps as they need the lube provided by the D. They may just rapidly wear and keel over at a later date of course, hopefully when you don't own it, but it certainly isn't something that you walk away from unscathed.

Diesel in petrol=catastrophic.

My sister did this to a car of mine when we were kids, never ran the same again. Car was ok after a professional flushing and 10k or so of driving.

b r – Member
I'd just drain it, and then re-fill with diesel – what have you to lose?

An ex-boss did the same with his 535i, bill was over £6k – but then he admitted it to the BMW garage…

carefull the dealers will have samples of fuel lines tested – so if you try and get away with a warranty claim, be prepared for a failed claim and a bill for their time!!

oh, i did fill up a diesel with Petrol – it was a company hire car that i had to give back after a particularly long week and relaised i had to fill the bugger up in the morning – cue not very awake trip to garage for fill up (it was empty), drive it back 6 miles and leave it. They collected it, it conked out, but a simple drain was all they did to it – £250 bill to the company – not done it since, but it's not always as bad as it may seem.

Baring in mind i work with fuels as a living this was a particularly stupid mistake 🙂

Change the wife for a diesel version!

Smellier, noisier but more economical?

Smellier, noisier but more economical?

Dowdier and less likely to be picked up by another man?

Sorry swiss, but if she brimmed it then drove it till it conked out and its a common rail / PD engine, I'll put a fiver on it being either written off or in the thousands to sort out.

Just picked it up from the garage, they drained the tank, flushed the system and refilled with diesel and it's fine, £150 plus diesel.

Lowey, paypal to address in profile 😉

A PD engine may nnot be to bad as they are different in how they work to a common rail engine.
Diesel in a petrol = lots of white smoke out the back and one dead cat amongst the engine bits.

Lowey, paypal to address in profile

Fair's fair, Lowey…

Back to one of the top posts, get me a lottery ticket will you 'cos you're one lucky F**ker.

For sanities sake too – make / model / age of the car?

Surf

I'm not talking about RUNNING a diesel on petrol. Just that an OLD diesel can take a 1:3 petrol:diesel mix. A petrol cannot tolerate diesel in any mix.

Newer diesels don't do petrol.

Absolutely classic thread. STW expertise at its best. 😉

1:3 petrol:diesel will run like crap, it'll lower the cetane value so much you'll lose a lot of power 🙂

I'd also wager a PD engine would not be as bad as a common rail. Those unit injectors are probably pretty tough.

What car/model is it?

Personally I'd consider trading in asap 🙄

swisstony – really glad that you've got it sorted and it wasn't too expensive.

As in first post the car is an 05 Passat, the recovery guy from the garage said he gets a couple of these a week and by the sounds of things at £150 a pop for draining the tank it's bread and butter for them.

Good point hamishthecat you can always be sure to get the full spectrum of views on here, love it.

Molgrips,

I'm not talking about 1:3 petrol:diesel for a petrol! I've run an old VW 1.9 diesel on 1:3 petrol:diesel in winter absolutely fine. But not a modern unit to be fair!!

"Diesel in a petrol car – bad but not tragic
Petrol in a diesel car – really bad"

surfmats got it wrong way round. if he had got it right then my diesel car wouldnt have made a further 130k after doing this twice by mistake! it also ran better after making the mistake.

Diesel in petrol=catastrophic.

A petrol cannot tolerate diesel in any mix.

Except that, as I mentioned above, I have used the fuel drained from diesel vans in my petrol Land Rover.
I don't know what the ratio mix was, but…
it smelled like petrol,
the diesel van wouldn't run on it,
I normally run the Land Rover on LPG, so it was no problem to switch back if it wouldn't run on the mix and
I used to run a BSA Bantam on 5% two stroke oil,
so it was worth a try.

An an aside, my step father used to put a bit of petrol in the diesel for the tractors in the winter – stopped it getting too viscous.
My understanding is as above really, older engines are more tolerant. New common rail etc are pretty fussy.
Reading the posts though, sounds like it's a fuel pump failure followed by ingress into the engine of said failed pump – I'd be tempted to get a quote on a replacement pump to be sure.
And comments around reusing the fuel that's drained – no chance. We went from a petrol pump to a diesel pump on the farm the cheap way (run till empty then switch) – ended up with some hundred gallons of 'mix' that wasn't really useful for anything, certainly wasn't about to put it in a car!

odannyboy – Member
Surf mat. Wrong. Diesel in petrol=catastrophic.

Petrol in diesel = up to 1/3 tank can be petrol if it's an older gen engine. An 05 might be okay

13yo Escort diesel van. I often (under my mechanic's advice) chuck a couple of litres of pertol in it during the Winter. I was surprised by how much smoother it was the first time I did this. Starts much quicker too.

My mechanic also reckons I could just chuck vegetable oil in there in the Summer (has the right fuel pump, apparently) but I'm too scared in case he's wrong.

Call the RAC, they'll do a fuel drain for you, then fit one of their FuelSure devices, it'll prevent you doing it again.

HTH

Big m – the rac don't do it, well that's what they told my wife

These guys sorted me out – no need to be an AA member. Tank was 50:50 diesel / petrol in a diesel engine. No new parts were meeded. Cost was about £250.

http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/news/aa-fuel-assist.html

always leave to the pros to sort out this problem it is going to cost a lot but think how much it will cost if you bork it,possible you should take the wife for a colour vision check as green and black do not mix 😕 .lifted the bonnet on my transit connect as running odd the pressure the pumps work at is fantastic, injecter had a leak and i was covered in diesel so was the wall behind me

Back when I were a lass, I worked in a Tesco petrol station. We were always told that if the customer had put over 10 litres of the wrong fuel in their car that they should not, under any circumstances, start the engine. Not sure if that's based on any hard facts or figures, but we did have a few people that had to be towed by the RAC/AA.

Not quite as bad as when one of our colleagues (known by the ladies as 'Creepy Pete', dead ringer for Harold Shipman) failed to check the connectors when we had a fuel delivery. They'd finished the delivery when they realised the pipes were the wrong way round – we had to immediately shut the pumps off, get the tanks drained, decontaminated, then refilled. The whole incident (including loss of sales over 24 hours) cost about £26,000. Whoops!

I put petrol in a 525 Bmw joined the motorway promptly conked out – recovery guy drained tank and sent me on my way no problem – although he did warn me that some of the electric gizmos were at risk of needing resetting at the dealers (this wasn't necessary)
Either I was lucky or it backs up the fact that garages take advantage.

! I've run an old VW 1.9 diesel on 1:3 petrol:diesel in winter absolutely fine

Surprised by this. It MUST have been down on power and economy. To make veggie oil run nicely in our winter when the stuff freezes at +5C you only need about 5l of petrol, so 1/3 petrol in normal diesel (which is full of additives anyway to make it flow well in the climate it's sold so petrol is not necessary) is way excessive.