£20 of petrol in a diesel ZT
 

A mate of mine has just accidently put £20 worth of petrol in his recentlg acquired diesel zt. Am i right in thinking if he fills the rest of the tank with diesel to dilute the petrol he'll be ok? Sure ive read that on here before if you accidently put a bit of petrol in a diesel 75 or zt.

Cheers

my uncle has got a nissan qashqai and he did about 15 quids worth iof petrol in his deisel so he filled his tank full of diesel and it was ok . he actually said it run a little better but its up to your mate . i would personally try and drain it via a tube into tank rgds mark

Hi Rick, I was working on a customers car the other day who put £25 worth of unleaded in, then a couple of days later he rang me up as his under bonnet pump was leaking, it’s not really rocket science to work out why all of a sudden that started leaking, the mix of petrol in diesel acts as a solvent, and thus starts reducing lubrication and causing damage to the pump as the metal parts come into contact and rub together.
If your friend has put in £20 worth of petrol, I guess that’s approximately just under 17 L that’s not good, also as you know mate I know a thing or two about diesel injectors, and they won’t like it,
Mick

Hello

I have seen (I think AA) state that 1/10 ratio can be passed with normally no damage. I have done this myself and got away with it. However £20 is a 1/4 ratio roughly so I would get it pumped out. You can put 12 on the under bonnet pump and draw it through into a suitable container until you get it down to the 1/10 by adding the balance of diesel before running the car again.

There's an anti syphon trap in the filler.

A tough one to call.

If it was a more modern diesel I'd say straight away, drain off. Better to be safe than sorry.
But if he can brim it with diesel, and only uses it on slow runs, not fast motorway type of journeys then he might get away with it.

£20 doesn't buy much fuel these days, so I'd get my pen and paper out and calculate how much has actually gone in. Then make a decision on how the car gets used.
If he decides to risk it, make sure he changes the fuel filter after he's run the bad fuel through and is running back on derv.

That's a little too much to get away with Rick, whip the pump cover off the tank and drain out as much as possible then refill to the brim.

Okay we can take this as a calculation then 1.23 per litre x 16.26= £19.98, so as I said earlier he has put in just under 17 L, further to that from testing that I have done in the past I have found that Given the large difference in flash point temperature between petrol and diesel, it doesn’t take very much petrol to depress the flash temperature significantly. As little as 1% petrol contamination will lower the diesel flash point by 18 degrees C. This means the diesel fuel will Prematurely ignite, and that’s not the sort of thing that you want, I Hope that’s a clear enough explanation.
What Andy has suggested above is the simple and easiest solution that’s what I would be doing
Mick

Hi, it was me that did it. Fuel tank was empty and put £20 in at around £1.25 per litre. Drove about half a mile before I realised and switched off and got recovered home.

Get some diesel in as soon as you can, I fear the HP pump seals will have suffered but its not the end of the world.