i put £5 petrol in my sdi fabia on an empty tank i realize but only had 10 on me so could only put £5 diesel in it to counter balance.. it ran fine for 30 mile then just conked out.. it now fires but will not start.. how can i fix it??? i have changed filter and it did start but only ran for 5 mins then stopped and now wont start again.. i have bypassed the filter altogether and tried to start it with fresh diesel in a can this didn't work.. fuel is getting to all injectors fine .. it wont bump start and i am now puzzled please help..

Have a mechanic pump the fuel out of the tank. The glow plugs have been known to die from petrol. So replace them, fill the tank with quality diesel and put a bottle of engine flush (diesel) into the tank then run it as long as you can at normal working temps.

I'm by no means an expert in diesel engines, but this saved my mates Passat.

Edited 11 April, 201313 yr by DaKKs_152

Official answer: Drain tank and re-fill with diesel and change fuel filter.

Unofficial answer: You've already driven it so neck (even vented fill) it with diesel, and keep topping it up, it used to be common practice to add petrol to diesel (and still is in stupidly cold climates), as long as it's been only a fivers worth it should be OK doing this. Doing it the other way round (diesel in a petrol) is a lot worse.

It's your choice of course

Official answer: Drain tank and re-fill with diesel and change fuel filter.

Unofficial answer: You've already driven it so neck (even vented fill) it with diesel, and keep topping it up, it used to be common practice to add petrol to diesel (and still is in stupidly cold climates), as long as it's been only a fivers worth it should be OK doing this. Doing it the other way round (diesel in a petrol) is a lot worse.

It's your choice of course

IIRC in the manual for my old MkI diesel Toledo N/A it said you could fill the tank 1/3 petrol and 2/3 diesel (or thereabouts) for colder climates. I wouldn't want to chance that ratio though.

Yep, officially you drain it, unofficially you've got 3.5-3.7ltrs of petrol for £5, a vented fill is over 50ltrs total so it'll be 93% diesel and will mix OK. Misfuel is used with people using SVO/WVO. The reason it's not starting is the mix is circa 50:50 in the tank at the moment.

The only issues are pump/injectors as petrol isn't a lubricant but as you've already driven it 30 miles then I'd not worry too much, my Dad did the same in his Rav4 years ago, it's still going fine and has done a lot of miles now.

Totally agree with Avalon.

Did the same to my vRS with no ill effects.

SN

As above no worries. I put 3/4 of a tank of petrol in to a TD5 Landie . Caused no problems.