petrol in my diesel :(

**marcel1** · 14th September 2007, 10:13

Hello everyone

I have a 02 plate vectra 2.2DTI and this morning went to fill her up - however managed to put £4 worth of unleaded in it before realising what i had done. I then without really thinking put £30 worth of diesel into it.....

I drove bout half a mile home no problem but....the question is will it be ok to drive or should i drain the tank? and also if so how do I best go about this.

Cheers

**Drinky** · 14th September 2007, 10:18

I will probably get hung for saying this but if it was me (and it has been in the past ) i would fill the tank right to the top and forget about it i did this in my 2.2DTi with about a fivers worth of petrol and filled up with diesel then when the tank was half empty i filled up again and so on for 3 or 4 tanks it was fine for me but maybe i was lucky

If it was any more than that then might be different !!

**chrisgettings** · 14th September 2007, 10:23

it's not to bad as you only put around 4 liters in and then filled the rest with diesel

you will need to keep the tank filled up for a few weeks and you will be ok this time round,, most put £20 to £30 befor the words sh?t then you do need to drain the tank

**AJA** · 14th September 2007, 10:42

I've put £15.00 worth of petrol in a Mundeo TDCi before, then realised and topped up with diesel. The car was fine. I just kept topping up with diesel for about 4-5 tank fulls.

**markm** · 14th September 2007, 11:07

You should be ok, you may get little pockets of lumpy running due to the petrol feeding through, drop in so redex or diesel cleaner aswell in to the take which will help, like the other guys say keep it topped up for weeks and you should be fine

**_ZS_** · 14th September 2007, 11:28

Schoolmate of mine used to put £5 worth of petrol in every tank of diesel in his Citroen Visa. Did 200k no bother.

But anyway, you should be fine.

**dave45040** · 14th September 2007, 11:31

Hi,

I did this recently (although I put £20.00 in!!!!).

When I contacted VX & AA (before starting the car), their response was if you put 5 litres or less in, you can 'safely' top up with diesel - anything more than that and you shouldn't even start the car and should seek the tank being drained (which cost me another £330 in total!)

**izonoky** · 14th September 2007, 11:41

Can't comment but the others seem to think you'll be fine.

One question though, I thought the sizes of the nozzles at diesel & unleaded pumps were designed to prevent just this very thing. I almost did it, and for about five seconds I was blindly trying to shove an unleaded nozzle into a diesel tank.

My old citroen BX turbo (petrol) would happily run on both petrol and diesel - that's progress for yah.

**R-man** · 14th September 2007, 11:43

Ignore this.

**john_k_sri** · 14th September 2007, 16:01

Originally Posted by izonoky

Can't comment but the others seem to think you'll be fine.

One question though, I thought the sizes of the nozzles at diesel & unleaded pumps were designed to prevent just this very thing. I almost did it, and for about five seconds I was blindly trying to shove an unleaded nozzle into a diesel tank.

My old citroen BX turbo (petrol) would happily run on both petrol and diesel - that's progress for yah.

As I understand it, diesel nozzles are thicker than petrol ones, so it is quite easy to misfuel a diesel car with petrol, and less likely the other way round as the diesel nozzle should not fit . Maybe this is just with more modern cars. When I fill up my girlfriend's diesel car, I check 4 or 5 times before filling that I've got the right type of fuel, because my car is a petrol.

Have often heard it said that a small amount of petrol in an otherwise full tank of diesel wont do any lasting damage. But I suspect modern fuel systems are less tolerant.