unleaded in a diesel Golf, what to do?

This will be a PD engine more than likely, the petrol itself wont be a problem but the reduced lubricity of the fuel would be if there was any quantity of petrol in the fuel.

Brim it with diesel to dilute the petrol as much as possible- you dont say how much fuel is in the tank but if its only £10 of petrol and £20 of diesel then dont drive it until its filled.

Tim..

Considering what's at risk - it's a Golf, only three months old, remember - wouldn't it be worth draining, pumping or syphoning out as far as possible what's there, then brimming up with diesel? There''ll surely be no damage done so far.

You would certainly void the warranty if it's found that you put petrol in it I guess.

What's the harm in syphoning it *all* out and replacing it with fresh Diesel. Just diliting it means it's going to take quite some time to get rid of it, and effectively all of the petrol is going to go through the engine.

You would have to find somewhere sensible to dispose of it, tho.

Isn't the car likely to have some kind of anti-syphon device such as mesh in the filler pipe? Might there be a drain plug on the tank? Unlikely I know, in these days of plastic fuel tanks.

Why not read the owners handbook first and see if it still has the bit in it that all diesel vehicles i've owned for the past 20 years has had... it'll be under winter motering,

Goes something like.. 'if winter diesel can't be found, then it is perfectly permissable to put in upto xx% of petrol to prevent the diesel from waxing and clogging the fuel filter up'

On my VW's i've owned (mainly VW LT's) it was 30% petrol allowed to be mixed with the diesel,

I don't know why people seem to be so quick to quote the 'lubricity' thing when ever petrol in a diesel is mentioned, Modern pumps are designed to run on low lube fuels.. that's what all this low sulphur diesel is about.. the sulphur was the diesel's equivelent to lead in petrol,

And if you've ever used a fuel system cleaner.. then what are you doing??? (appart from paying 5 quid for 250Ml's of parafin :) your putting in a solvent type fuel, one that strips out carbon deposits.. if it can do that then it can't be a very good lube then :)

Of course if you were to start running the engine on parafin, then eventualy the pump would suffer due to lack of lube, but it takes a long time to clean all of the lubricating properties out of a pump, we're talking about weeks of running all the time here btw.

Of course if your that worried, take it to a garage, where they'll charge you around a quid a litre to remove and 'dispose' of the contaminated fuel, (quoting all sorts of bullshit enviromental reasons when it costs so much to have contaminated fuel sent to be 'recycled')

Then they'll charge you for alegidly flushing the fuel system out.. what with they won't tell you, then a new set of filters.. probably incl;uding the water trap you didn't know you had.. which is only an empty metal canister that looks like a filter.. nothing in there to clog up so they never need replacing.. so when they do get replaced they cost a silly ammount of money,

Then you have to fill the tank with diesel again.. add on the first fill with petrol and diesel, and you've payed for that fill about 10 times over,

I used to work for a recovery garage BTW.. 'contaminated fuel' was a pretty common job where i used to work.. and a nice little money spinner.. not to mention we never had to buy diesel for my recovery truck... it 'recycled' the petrol and diesel mix nicely as i drove along the road :)

The one to get worried about is when you put diesel in a petrol car.. spark ignition can't ignight diesel, where as compression ignition can ignight most fuels, which is why your able to run diesels on chip fat, lard, sunflower oil, rape sead oil, parafin if you add some ATF to it and so on.

Fill the tank with diesel. From what I remember, £30 of fuel doesn't fill them.

->Isn't the car likely to have some kind of anti-syphon device such as

->mesh in the filler pipe? Might there be a drain plug on the tank?

->Unlikely I know, in these days of plastic fuel tanks.

Connect the fuel pump to a battery and pump it out, you might find the pump under the rear seat.

Personally I never put "xx quids worth" of fuel into any car. I just fill it to the top. Going to have to pay the same amount wether I buy the fuel now or later so might as well fill the thing up.

That's what NASA would have to do with a moon mission, but you realise that you're carrying extra weight all the time (and therefore less mpg, acceleration etc) - we're talking minimal numbers but not negligible ones ;-))

I've heard that argument. But I think it is balanced out by having to drive to and from the petrol station all the time. Plus our local one is usually very busy and you have to sit there for 5 minutes waiting for a pump.

Did he say it was on empty when it was filled?

I guess I'm lucky, I've got several petrol stations on my way to work - and I tend to work odd hours so I don't get queues.

Irrelevant if you top the tank off, as there will be a tenners worth of petrol in a large amount of diesel.

The message from "Mr Fix It" contains these words:

Depends where you're trying to get to. To get from low earth orbit such as Burt Rutan attained the other day with White Knight/SpaceshipOne to a higher more useful orbit takes considerable energy.

It's one of the main criticisms of the Ansari X prize, that getting into space is only a small part of the battle. Getting to geostationary orbit, for example, is going to be massively more expensive.

If you look in a Mondeo TDCI owners manual, you'll see it say...

Do not use biodiesel (except less than 5% mixed with proper diesel) Do not *ever* put kerosene, parrafin, or petrol mixed with diesel, especially in a TDCI engine. Do not ever use fuel additives. Pete.

Followed local recovery truck this moring into dealers with 04 plate S60 D5 hanging off the dolly.......Full tank of unleaded in it!

Tim..

Exept space rockets don't need much fuel once out in space and hurtling somewhere. In fact, once they are up to speed its just course corrections. No friction due to lack of air you see (maybe a few cosmic particles, but they haven't slowed the voyager probe much yet).

Drain the tank, flush the fuel lines and don't drive until this is done.

It's not worth risking anything less. The resulting damage of driving with petrol in the tank could be considerable.

sPoNiX

Wouldn't the petrol float on top of the diesel, meaning that the petrol could conceivably remain in the tank for *years* until the fuel level drops sufficiently for it to be drawn into the engine?

sPoNiX