Petrol in diesel fuel tank - what should I do?
Discussion
Back in December I had a new Astra 2.0 CDTI SRi hire car for 3 weeks. On the last day, when I was due to return it, I went to a fuel station to put some in as it needed to be on the same level as when I collected it. I worked out roughly how much to put in, factoring in the 50mile journey I was about to make to get to my home town.
I was so busy thinking about how much to put in that I used the unleaded pump (I've never owned a diesel). I realised when I'd put about 15 litres in, on top of the just under half a tank of diesel that was in there. Gutted. I felt like such an idiot, and was straight away wondering how hard and dry Enterprise were going to bum me for this.
Luckily the petrol station was on the site of a Ford garage. A mechanic came out and advised that the tank simply must be drained as you can't mess about when it comes to the modern diesels. He said that 10 years ago (when this thread was still quite new) he'd have said just to fill with diesel, but not any more as it will destroy it. I made a couple of calls to some trusted garages and they said the same.
After paying for the unleaded I'd just wasted
I was guided to the service desk to get a quote for draining. Initially they quoted £200 + vat PLUS the diesel needed to get it started. I felt this was a piss take and politely got them down to £120 cash (plus about £7 of diesel as it turned out). Still, it cost be about £200 all together with the lost fuel. Not a good day!
I was so busy thinking about how much to put in that I used the unleaded pump (I've never owned a diesel). I realised when I'd put about 15 litres in, on top of the just under half a tank of diesel that was in there. Gutted. I felt like such an idiot, and was straight away wondering how hard and dry Enterprise were going to bum me for this.
Luckily the petrol station was on the site of a Ford garage. A mechanic came out and advised that the tank simply must be drained as you can't mess about when it comes to the modern diesels. He said that 10 years ago (when this thread was still quite new) he'd have said just to fill with diesel, but not any more as it will destroy it. I made a couple of calls to some trusted garages and they said the same.
After paying for the unleaded I'd just wasted
I was guided to the service desk to get a quote for draining. Initially they quoted £200 + vat PLUS the diesel needed to get it started. I felt this was a piss take and politely got them down to £120 cash (plus about £7 of diesel as it turned out). Still, it cost be about £200 all together with the lost fuel. Not a good day!Hello all , I see this thread will never end - so here what I did
Put 9 liters of petrol in to almost empty (5 liters left maybe) topped up with 50+ diesel and on my way - car drives fine and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary , but when reaching operating temperature and I come back after 10 mins it doesn't start -if I push and in 2nd gear cranks and starts when warm and not starting otherwise I have to wait till it is cold and then start fine , please advice on what I should do
Put 9 liters of petrol in to almost empty (5 liters left maybe) topped up with 50+ diesel and on my way - car drives fine and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary , but when reaching operating temperature and I come back after 10 mins it doesn't start -if I push and in 2nd gear cranks and starts when warm and not starting otherwise I have to wait till it is cold and then start fine , please advice on what I should do
Rush2389 said:
Hello all , I see this thread will never end - so here what I did
Put 9 liters of petrol in to almost empty (5 liters left maybe) topped up with 50+ diesel and on my way - car drives fine and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary , but when reaching operating temperature and I come back after 10 mins it doesn't start -if I push and in 2nd gear cranks and starts when warm and not starting otherwise I have to wait till it is cold and then start fine , please advice on what I should do
I guess English isn't your first language? The first thing you should do is speak to a professional. Strangers on the internet won't be able to offer meaningful assistance, sight unseen and it's not really practical to ask you to rewrite your post to make it make sufficient sense.Put 9 liters of petrol in to almost empty (5 liters left maybe) topped up with 50+ diesel and on my way - car drives fine and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary , but when reaching operating temperature and I come back after 10 mins it doesn't start -if I push and in 2nd gear cranks and starts when warm and not starting otherwise I have to wait till it is cold and then start fine , please advice on what I should do
Rush2389 said:
Hello all , I see this thread will never end - so here what I did
Put 9 liters of petrol in to almost empty (5 liters left maybe) topped up with 50+ diesel and on my way - car drives fine and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary , but when reaching operating temperature and I come back after 10 mins it doesn't start -if I push and in 2nd gear cranks and starts when warm and not starting otherwise I have to wait till it is cold and then start fine , please advice on what I should do
what car is it?Put 9 liters of petrol in to almost empty (5 liters left maybe) topped up with 50+ diesel and on my way - car drives fine and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary , but when reaching operating temperature and I come back after 10 mins it doesn't start -if I push and in 2nd gear cranks and starts when warm and not starting otherwise I have to wait till it is cold and then start fine , please advice on what I should do
My own recent story. I had about 10% left in tank and fill up with unleaded. I didn't realise and drove about one mile before engine started juddering and huge amount of grey smoke coming out of exhaust. I still didn't realise it was a petrol problem so slowly drove another few hundred yards to a safe place to pull over. When I realised what I had done and checked forums I feared the worst. It is reasonably modern 2007 Mercedes CDi so assumed I had created very expensive damage. I got taken to a garage on a recovery truck, left the car and went home to make plans to buy a new car rather than spend thousands fixing it. Anyway, day after garage called to say all fine. The emptied the tank, filled up with diesel, flushed fuel lines, new filter and maybe few other bits and all fine. Total cost £196 including 20 litres of diesel! Not sure if I was just lucky or the internet is full of scaremongering so unscrupulous dealers can take advantage. Or perhaps some damage will appear down the line and I should flog the car right away! 
I know a fair bit on this subject because I have put petrol into the bmw 320diesel 07 plate that belongs to my wife three times (i know how retarded that sounds). Anyhow these are the facts , if you fill a diesel with petrol you need to ring a miss fuel company every garage has a card behind the counter, no alternative.But I am guessing most people reading this have put some petrol in the diesel noticed the mistake , brimmed it with diesel and are worried about future damage. A lot of threads are from people who are in the miss fuel business and tell horror stories but the truth is if you put up to £15 of petrol just fill it with diesel and you will be fine.Some say the petrol will float on top of the diesel so you can keep it topped up for a while but i believe it will be mixed up straight away so if it drives fine after the event and you keep it more than half full for 1500 miles (by then even if the petrol does float on top it will have mixed in) and have put less than £15 pounds worth of petrol in , you will be fine , do not worry.
lawless50 said:
What about 2.3 litres of petrol in a quarter full 40 litre tank of a 1.8 litre diesel and all I have is 4.8 litres of diesel in a 5 litre jerry can?
Depends if 95 or 97 RON was used.You have to divide the litres of petrol by the amount of RONs and multiply by the engine volume. Then you can work out if your engine is buggered or not.
CliveM said:
So a little bit of petrol in a diesel is probably ok.
A little bit of diesel in a petrol - not ok, needs draining immediately?
Again a little bit (e.g. couple of litres in a tank full) will likely be fine. The potential for engine damage is much higher with a mis-fueled diesel engine, especially with common rail injection.A little bit of diesel in a petrol - not ok, needs draining immediately?
Evening chaps,
I want to post my misfuelling experience here after I read the advice from these very posts in a crisis, and duly ignored them.
A while ago I rented a diesel vehicle from a well known UK hire company who handed it over with just a sniff of fuel in the bottom of the tank. Annoyed at this but planning to do just a little bit of running around I headed for the pumps as a first port of call. In a bit of a flap, typical rush-hour queues at the pumps, running late and 2 attempts to get the filler on the correct side I proceeded to dump 25 litres of fuel into it, confident that would be enough for all the to and fro'ing I had planned.
Skip forward 15 mins / 8 miles and the barely run-in common rail oil burner is shuddering on the inside lane of the motorway ever so slightly. Weird. Few pumps on the throttle in 6th, yup, definitely not happy. 30 seconds later I'm smashing my palm into my forehead trying to beat out the nightmare image of the green pump handle hanging out the filler neck and the oblivious tool holding it, mind elsewhere...
Drop to 50mph, next slip is 2 miles further along the road and I think the AA card is in my wallet primed for its first actual use in 5 years of paying the subscription. She's not happy but makes it to the next forecourt somehow, spluttering away. Sod it, I'm dumping as much super diesel in it as she'll suffer (40l as it turned out), its a moment of desperation and I know it'll still be too rich but lets just 'see how it sounds' and take it from there plus I really need to get into town and meet these folks waiting on me.
For no reason at all I'm fully convinced lady luck owes me one here....
Stuck to 50-ish (<2000 rpm) on the remainder of motorway and its seemingly unaware of what I've done to it. Theres a very slight hesitation on pick up and it bogs down a tiny bit riding the throttle in 6th but its not putting up much of a complaint really, all things considered.
Journey completed, returned to my place and busied myself in forum messages and opinions by the end of which I was fully convinced I'd written the thing off and my only hope was to drain it, refill it and just pry that for some reason this fuel pump didn't need THAT much lubrication and hadn't suffered terminal damage. Half way out the door with a 2m length of bilge hose I thought, this is daft, its late, I have work in the morning, just phone them and explain whats happened after all thats what insurance is for. Back inside and Google 'thats what insurance is for'. Apparently not, read the t's & c's idiot, you're well and truly screwed. Full fuel system rebuild and you're footing the bill for the lot. No if's no but's and the media were quite delighted to supply the supporting evidence, if it was needed.
Next morning having barely been able to think about anything else all night I somehow arrived at the decision to bury my head in the sand. The facts were this:
- its working just now (cold and warm start confirmed, just half a crank each) , idles like new, and;
- it doesn't sound particularly unhappy. There's nothing clear from the outside to suggest an issue except the familiar whiff of a lighter fraction of oil in the mix when you open the filler cap and stick your nose in, but no one has a reason to do that surely?
So....We're boom or bust now. The back out route was 50 miles ago right? I've got a couple more jobs to do, I dont have time to drain it nor do I want to and I can definitely take it back like this, maybe even more dilute if I can free up a bit of space in the tank via some extra run time. Just get round a couple of jobs and back to the rental place. Couple of hundred miles max.
Proceed with plan, if you turn the innards to potting metal then so be it. You're in it now.
Jobs done. Melt down at every new rattle and crack from the interior along the way but all were false alarms. I even managed about 30 seconds of background radio before frantically shutting it off to hear a new imaginary whirring noise. Finished and importantly no discernible change in the symptoms. It doesn't seem to be getting worse and I'm all but done with it. Phew.
Next, time to wind out the brass neck: I'm not even diluting it further now before handing it back, I dont want to put another penny in this 4 wheeled indemnity someone could yet cash in against me and besides, I'm throughly enjoying the fact the finish line is in sight. I took a brain-dead risk and somehow its about to pay off and I'll be f#cked if I'm mitigating risk at this late stage in proceedings, that shipped sailed ages ago.
Handed the keys back to the guy too young for a suit. Felt like a right rotten sod. "Thats spot on mate, wish all customers returned them in the same state, not a mark on it". I managed to comfort myself with the knowledge that their offshore accounts could absorb this just fine whereas mine, firmly within the UK tax system, really couldn't. They don't run a risk free business and nor should they right? Sure, they must budget for unplanned maintenance and losses, nature of the game they are in....
So thats it. You told me not to but like a complete idiot I did it anyway and I promised myself at the time I would post the outcome on here given it was the forum I consulted most at the time and someone else is likely to be browsing this with a similar conundrum some time soon. By the way, if you are that person I thoroughly don't recommend doing the above, its incredibly stressful and for that reason alone its probably worth the £150-£200 to get it drained professionally and put right. You'll live longer.
In the end I calculate I was running about 35% - 65% mix in favour of diesel which is way too sweet by all accounts. But, based on my sample size of just one, if the engine is virtually brand new and not yours I conclude you CAN get at least a couple of hundred miles out of it and no follow up phone calls from the owners. Having looked into it a bit further I think it'll have put plenty of wear on the fuel pump but I doubt the injectors will have suffered any noticeable damage given all the subsequent nursing at <2000 rpm. True, the next user may have spent the subsequent 200 miles on the red line but I expect it just burned its way through most of it quite happily and was diluted down before arriving back at the depot and that was the end of that. The evidence I expect is now somewhere between the clouds and the ozone layer, either that or in a workshop vice with some spotty apprentice peering into it....
I want to post my misfuelling experience here after I read the advice from these very posts in a crisis, and duly ignored them.
A while ago I rented a diesel vehicle from a well known UK hire company who handed it over with just a sniff of fuel in the bottom of the tank. Annoyed at this but planning to do just a little bit of running around I headed for the pumps as a first port of call. In a bit of a flap, typical rush-hour queues at the pumps, running late and 2 attempts to get the filler on the correct side I proceeded to dump 25 litres of fuel into it, confident that would be enough for all the to and fro'ing I had planned.
Skip forward 15 mins / 8 miles and the barely run-in common rail oil burner is shuddering on the inside lane of the motorway ever so slightly. Weird. Few pumps on the throttle in 6th, yup, definitely not happy. 30 seconds later I'm smashing my palm into my forehead trying to beat out the nightmare image of the green pump handle hanging out the filler neck and the oblivious tool holding it, mind elsewhere...
Drop to 50mph, next slip is 2 miles further along the road and I think the AA card is in my wallet primed for its first actual use in 5 years of paying the subscription. She's not happy but makes it to the next forecourt somehow, spluttering away. Sod it, I'm dumping as much super diesel in it as she'll suffer (40l as it turned out), its a moment of desperation and I know it'll still be too rich but lets just 'see how it sounds' and take it from there plus I really need to get into town and meet these folks waiting on me.
For no reason at all I'm fully convinced lady luck owes me one here....
Stuck to 50-ish (<2000 rpm) on the remainder of motorway and its seemingly unaware of what I've done to it. Theres a very slight hesitation on pick up and it bogs down a tiny bit riding the throttle in 6th but its not putting up much of a complaint really, all things considered.
Journey completed, returned to my place and busied myself in forum messages and opinions by the end of which I was fully convinced I'd written the thing off and my only hope was to drain it, refill it and just pry that for some reason this fuel pump didn't need THAT much lubrication and hadn't suffered terminal damage. Half way out the door with a 2m length of bilge hose I thought, this is daft, its late, I have work in the morning, just phone them and explain whats happened after all thats what insurance is for. Back inside and Google 'thats what insurance is for'. Apparently not, read the t's & c's idiot, you're well and truly screwed. Full fuel system rebuild and you're footing the bill for the lot. No if's no but's and the media were quite delighted to supply the supporting evidence, if it was needed.
Next morning having barely been able to think about anything else all night I somehow arrived at the decision to bury my head in the sand. The facts were this:
- its working just now (cold and warm start confirmed, just half a crank each) , idles like new, and;
- it doesn't sound particularly unhappy. There's nothing clear from the outside to suggest an issue except the familiar whiff of a lighter fraction of oil in the mix when you open the filler cap and stick your nose in, but no one has a reason to do that surely?
So....We're boom or bust now. The back out route was 50 miles ago right? I've got a couple more jobs to do, I dont have time to drain it nor do I want to and I can definitely take it back like this, maybe even more dilute if I can free up a bit of space in the tank via some extra run time. Just get round a couple of jobs and back to the rental place. Couple of hundred miles max.
Proceed with plan, if you turn the innards to potting metal then so be it. You're in it now.
Jobs done. Melt down at every new rattle and crack from the interior along the way but all were false alarms. I even managed about 30 seconds of background radio before frantically shutting it off to hear a new imaginary whirring noise. Finished and importantly no discernible change in the symptoms. It doesn't seem to be getting worse and I'm all but done with it. Phew.
Next, time to wind out the brass neck: I'm not even diluting it further now before handing it back, I dont want to put another penny in this 4 wheeled indemnity someone could yet cash in against me and besides, I'm throughly enjoying the fact the finish line is in sight. I took a brain-dead risk and somehow its about to pay off and I'll be f#cked if I'm mitigating risk at this late stage in proceedings, that shipped sailed ages ago.
Handed the keys back to the guy too young for a suit. Felt like a right rotten sod. "Thats spot on mate, wish all customers returned them in the same state, not a mark on it". I managed to comfort myself with the knowledge that their offshore accounts could absorb this just fine whereas mine, firmly within the UK tax system, really couldn't. They don't run a risk free business and nor should they right? Sure, they must budget for unplanned maintenance and losses, nature of the game they are in....
So thats it. You told me not to but like a complete idiot I did it anyway and I promised myself at the time I would post the outcome on here given it was the forum I consulted most at the time and someone else is likely to be browsing this with a similar conundrum some time soon. By the way, if you are that person I thoroughly don't recommend doing the above, its incredibly stressful and for that reason alone its probably worth the £150-£200 to get it drained professionally and put right. You'll live longer.
In the end I calculate I was running about 35% - 65% mix in favour of diesel which is way too sweet by all accounts. But, based on my sample size of just one, if the engine is virtually brand new and not yours I conclude you CAN get at least a couple of hundred miles out of it and no follow up phone calls from the owners. Having looked into it a bit further I think it'll have put plenty of wear on the fuel pump but I doubt the injectors will have suffered any noticeable damage given all the subsequent nursing at <2000 rpm. True, the next user may have spent the subsequent 200 miles on the red line but I expect it just burned its way through most of it quite happily and was diluted down before arriving back at the depot and that was the end of that. The evidence I expect is now somewhere between the clouds and the ozone layer, either that or in a workshop vice with some spotty apprentice peering into it....
Pump_Numpty said:
Evening chaps,
I want to post my misfuelling experience here after I read the advice from these very posts in a crisis, and duly ignored them.
A while ago I rented a diesel vehicle from a well known UK hire company who handed it over with just a sniff of fuel in the bottom of the tank. Annoyed at this but planning to do just a little bit of running around I headed for the pumps as a first port of call. In a bit of a flap, typical rush-hour queues at the pumps, running late and 2 attempts to get the filler on the correct side I proceeded to dump 25 litres of fuel into it, confident that would be enough for all the to and fro'ing I had planned.
Skip forward 15 mins / 8 miles and the barely run-in common rail oil burner is shuddering on the inside lane of the motorway ever so slightly. Weird. Few pumps on the throttle in 6th, yup, definitely not happy. 30 seconds later I'm smashing my palm into my forehead trying to beat out the nightmare image of the green pump handle hanging out the filler neck and the oblivious tool holding it, mind elsewhere...
Drop to 50mph, next slip is 2 miles further along the road and I think the AA card is in my wallet primed for its first actual use in 5 years of paying the subscription. She's not happy but makes it to the next forecourt somehow, spluttering away. Sod it, I'm dumping as much super diesel in it as she'll suffer (40l as it turned out), its a moment of desperation and I know it'll still be too rich but lets just 'see how it sounds' and take it from there plus I really need to get into town and meet these folks waiting on me.
For no reason at all I'm fully convinced lady luck owes me one here....
Stuck to 50-ish (<2000 rpm) on the remainder of motorway and its seemingly unaware of what I've done to it. Theres a very slight hesitation on pick up and it bogs down a tiny bit riding the throttle in 6th but its not putting up much of a complaint really, all things considered.
Journey completed, returned to my place and busied myself in forum messages and opinions by the end of which I was fully convinced I'd written the thing off and my only hope was to drain it, refill it and just pry that for some reason this fuel pump didn't need THAT much lubrication and hadn't suffered terminal damage. Half way out the door with a 2m length of bilge hose I thought, this is daft, its late, I have work in the morning, just phone them and explain whats happened after all thats what insurance is for. Back inside and Google 'thats what insurance is for'. Apparently not, read the t's & c's idiot, you're well and truly screwed. Full fuel system rebuild and you're footing the bill for the lot. No if's no but's and the media were quite delighted to supply the supporting evidence, if it was needed.
Next morning having barely been able to think about anything else all night I somehow arrived at the decision to bury my head in the sand. The facts were this:
- its working just now (cold and warm start confirmed, just half a crank each) , idles like new, and;
- it doesn't sound particularly unhappy. There's nothing clear from the outside to suggest an issue except the familiar whiff of a lighter fraction of oil in the mix when you open the filler cap and stick your nose in, but no one has a reason to do that surely?
So....We're boom or bust now. The back out route was 50 miles ago right? I've got a couple more jobs to do, I dont have time to drain it nor do I want to and I can definitely take it back like this, maybe even more dilute if I can free up a bit of space in the tank via some extra run time. Just get round a couple of jobs and back to the rental place. Couple of hundred miles max.
Proceed with plan, if you turn the innards to potting metal then so be it. You're in it now.
Jobs done. Melt down at every new rattle and crack from the interior along the way but all were false alarms. I even managed about 30 seconds of background radio before frantically shutting it off to hear a new imaginary whirring noise. Finished and importantly no discernible change in the symptoms. It doesn't seem to be getting worse and I'm all but done with it. Phew.
Next, time to wind out the brass neck: I'm not even diluting it further now before handing it back, I dont want to put another penny in this 4 wheeled indemnity someone could yet cash in against me and besides, I'm throughly enjoying the fact the finish line is in sight. I took a brain-dead risk and somehow its about to pay off and I'll be f#cked if I'm mitigating risk at this late stage in proceedings, that shipped sailed ages ago.
Handed the keys back to the guy too young for a suit. Felt like a right rotten sod. "Thats spot on mate, wish all customers returned them in the same state, not a mark on it". I managed to comfort myself with the knowledge that their offshore accounts could absorb this just fine whereas mine, firmly within the UK tax system, really couldn't. They don't run a risk free business and nor should they right? Sure, they must budget for unplanned maintenance and losses, nature of the game they are in....
So thats it. You told me not to but like a complete idiot I did it anyway and I promised myself at the time I would post the outcome on here given it was the forum I consulted most at the time and someone else is likely to be browsing this with a similar conundrum some time soon. By the way, if you are that person I thoroughly don't recommend doing the above, its incredibly stressful and for that reason alone its probably worth the £150-£200 to get it drained professionally and put right. You'll live longer.
In the end I calculate I was running about 35% - 65% mix in favour of diesel which is way too sweet by all accounts. But, based on my sample size of just one, if the engine is virtually brand new and not yours I conclude you CAN get at least a couple of hundred miles out of it and no follow up phone calls from the owners. Having looked into it a bit further I think it'll have put plenty of wear on the fuel pump but I doubt the injectors will have suffered any noticeable damage given all the subsequent nursing at <2000 rpm. True, the next user may have spent the subsequent 200 miles on the red line but I expect it just burned its way through most of it quite happily and was diluted down before arriving back at the depot and that was the end of that. The evidence I expect is now somewhere between the clouds and the ozone layer, either that or in a workshop vice with some spotty apprentice peering into it....
OKI want to post my misfuelling experience here after I read the advice from these very posts in a crisis, and duly ignored them.
A while ago I rented a diesel vehicle from a well known UK hire company who handed it over with just a sniff of fuel in the bottom of the tank. Annoyed at this but planning to do just a little bit of running around I headed for the pumps as a first port of call. In a bit of a flap, typical rush-hour queues at the pumps, running late and 2 attempts to get the filler on the correct side I proceeded to dump 25 litres of fuel into it, confident that would be enough for all the to and fro'ing I had planned.
Skip forward 15 mins / 8 miles and the barely run-in common rail oil burner is shuddering on the inside lane of the motorway ever so slightly. Weird. Few pumps on the throttle in 6th, yup, definitely not happy. 30 seconds later I'm smashing my palm into my forehead trying to beat out the nightmare image of the green pump handle hanging out the filler neck and the oblivious tool holding it, mind elsewhere...
Drop to 50mph, next slip is 2 miles further along the road and I think the AA card is in my wallet primed for its first actual use in 5 years of paying the subscription. She's not happy but makes it to the next forecourt somehow, spluttering away. Sod it, I'm dumping as much super diesel in it as she'll suffer (40l as it turned out), its a moment of desperation and I know it'll still be too rich but lets just 'see how it sounds' and take it from there plus I really need to get into town and meet these folks waiting on me.
For no reason at all I'm fully convinced lady luck owes me one here....
Stuck to 50-ish (<2000 rpm) on the remainder of motorway and its seemingly unaware of what I've done to it. Theres a very slight hesitation on pick up and it bogs down a tiny bit riding the throttle in 6th but its not putting up much of a complaint really, all things considered.
Journey completed, returned to my place and busied myself in forum messages and opinions by the end of which I was fully convinced I'd written the thing off and my only hope was to drain it, refill it and just pry that for some reason this fuel pump didn't need THAT much lubrication and hadn't suffered terminal damage. Half way out the door with a 2m length of bilge hose I thought, this is daft, its late, I have work in the morning, just phone them and explain whats happened after all thats what insurance is for. Back inside and Google 'thats what insurance is for'. Apparently not, read the t's & c's idiot, you're well and truly screwed. Full fuel system rebuild and you're footing the bill for the lot. No if's no but's and the media were quite delighted to supply the supporting evidence, if it was needed.
Next morning having barely been able to think about anything else all night I somehow arrived at the decision to bury my head in the sand. The facts were this:
- its working just now (cold and warm start confirmed, just half a crank each) , idles like new, and;
- it doesn't sound particularly unhappy. There's nothing clear from the outside to suggest an issue except the familiar whiff of a lighter fraction of oil in the mix when you open the filler cap and stick your nose in, but no one has a reason to do that surely?
So....We're boom or bust now. The back out route was 50 miles ago right? I've got a couple more jobs to do, I dont have time to drain it nor do I want to and I can definitely take it back like this, maybe even more dilute if I can free up a bit of space in the tank via some extra run time. Just get round a couple of jobs and back to the rental place. Couple of hundred miles max.
Proceed with plan, if you turn the innards to potting metal then so be it. You're in it now.
Jobs done. Melt down at every new rattle and crack from the interior along the way but all were false alarms. I even managed about 30 seconds of background radio before frantically shutting it off to hear a new imaginary whirring noise. Finished and importantly no discernible change in the symptoms. It doesn't seem to be getting worse and I'm all but done with it. Phew.
Next, time to wind out the brass neck: I'm not even diluting it further now before handing it back, I dont want to put another penny in this 4 wheeled indemnity someone could yet cash in against me and besides, I'm throughly enjoying the fact the finish line is in sight. I took a brain-dead risk and somehow its about to pay off and I'll be f#cked if I'm mitigating risk at this late stage in proceedings, that shipped sailed ages ago.
Handed the keys back to the guy too young for a suit. Felt like a right rotten sod. "Thats spot on mate, wish all customers returned them in the same state, not a mark on it". I managed to comfort myself with the knowledge that their offshore accounts could absorb this just fine whereas mine, firmly within the UK tax system, really couldn't. They don't run a risk free business and nor should they right? Sure, they must budget for unplanned maintenance and losses, nature of the game they are in....
So thats it. You told me not to but like a complete idiot I did it anyway and I promised myself at the time I would post the outcome on here given it was the forum I consulted most at the time and someone else is likely to be browsing this with a similar conundrum some time soon. By the way, if you are that person I thoroughly don't recommend doing the above, its incredibly stressful and for that reason alone its probably worth the £150-£200 to get it drained professionally and put right. You'll live longer.
In the end I calculate I was running about 35% - 65% mix in favour of diesel which is way too sweet by all accounts. But, based on my sample size of just one, if the engine is virtually brand new and not yours I conclude you CAN get at least a couple of hundred miles out of it and no follow up phone calls from the owners. Having looked into it a bit further I think it'll have put plenty of wear on the fuel pump but I doubt the injectors will have suffered any noticeable damage given all the subsequent nursing at <2000 rpm. True, the next user may have spent the subsequent 200 miles on the red line but I expect it just burned its way through most of it quite happily and was diluted down before arriving back at the depot and that was the end of that. The evidence I expect is now somewhere between the clouds and the ozone layer, either that or in a workshop vice with some spotty apprentice peering into it....
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