My car is a Seat Alhambra 1.9TDi '54 reg. Earlier this week, I was flustered at a pay-at-the-pump fuel pump and put ~13 litres of unleaded petrol in the tank, before realising my mistake (horror!). I then put diesel on top to fill the tank, so about 20% contamination ratio. The car started fine, so I continued my journey without any apparent problems, thinking that I'd got away with it. Subsequently, I found by chance that the engine starts and runs fine from cold, but once warmed up, will not re-start. It takes 1.5 to 2 hours to cool down before it will start again. This behaviour seems to be consistent. I assume that this is due to a vapour lock ?? or something similar ?? So the car is basically usable, provided that I am going to be spending enough time at each stop-off in order that the engine has enough time to cool down. What I don't know, is how much of the contaminated fuel I'm going to have to use up, in order that the next top-up of clean diesel will dilute the mixture enough that the hot-starting problem goes away. I've done about 480 miles since the mistake, which has used about 2/3 of the contaminated mixture. I'm thinking that if I can get the tank below the 1/4 mark, then the petrol ratio will be about 5% after filling up. However, if this doesn't solve the hot-starting problem, then I've got to do lots more miles, mostly in short journeys, where I still have to wait up to 2 hours every time. Bother, bother, bother .....
