Ran out of fuel at home today and asked my brother to come over with a supply of diesel. He sent is wife over instead! After filling the car up with 5litres of petrol, I mentioned i hadnt started a car that had run out of diesel before.... oh she said, i thought you said petrol!!! No offence, but she is blonde!!

So now i have 5l of petrol in the empty tank. I havent started the car and therefore its not pulled the petrol through.

Any help on what to do would be greatly appreciated!

Hang on. Am I right in thinking there will be a manual rubber bulb thingy to squeeze somewhere that would normally be used to prime the system on an empty tank?

I am sure there was one on my old Rover 600 diesel. Have we got them on Multis? If we have, could this be used to drag up and drain the petrol from the tank?

Alternatively, we are talking about 1/12th of a tank of petrol if you topped it up to the brim with diesel........

Brim it and start it? What do we reckon folks?

Don't do this until you get some other opinions. If you are an AA or Rac member, you should be able to get free technical advice from them ref whether 5 litres of petrol in a full 63 litre diesel tank will do any harm.

Cheers Pandabloke.
Have read quite a few sites saying to fill it to the brim and continually top it up and keep doing so for a while. As its less than 5l it should be OK. Will call Fiat tomorrow and see!

However i would prefer to drain it first and then fill it up to be on the safe side!! Any suggestions, or know how, on how to drain the tank?

If you brim it you should be ok, and you may get an unexpected bonus - if it's %$^Y%&& cold it will help thin the diesel making it easier to start etc.

Adding Petrol is an old trick in colder climes, it's also a trick used for the veggie burners

Trev

To be honest, no. Unless there is an obvious drain plug. Or you can get a hose down the fill pipe and syphon it out. Or there is access through the top of the tank inside the boot via the fuel float thingy. There used to be on some of my old cars, but that was a long time ago! I'm clutching at straws here.

Don't ask Fiat! They'll tell you not to do it all costs and tell you to bring it in to them! I would contact local garage or AA/Rac or similar for opinion.

To be honest, if it was mine, I'd brim it and sod it! Brim it. Quarter of a tank down, brim it again. Quarter of a tank do it again and finally half a tank and once more and that'd do it.

Can't be safer than that.

Of course, you'll have to get a tow to the garage and you may have to bleed the system to get it to go, I'm told, cos it ran empty.

On one of my dim days (they're becoming more frequent now) I put about 10 litres of petrol into my almost empty diesel tank. It was late at night, raining and far from home, so I just brimmed it with diesel, and to be honest couldn't discern any difference in driving.

That was about a year ago, so it couldn't have caused any probs.

I hope!