How do you drain fuel tank from a 2004 turbo diesel Volkswagen Golf?

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1044988

2026-04-27 13:11

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I mistakenly filled my Beetle tank last night with 13 gallons of BP Ultimate and drove half a mile until my Beetle stopped running. After calling several shops and being told only the dealer can fix it, I followed the advice I found here and fixed it myself.

I siphoned the tank (access under the back seat), removed and drained the fuel pump, replaced the fuel filter, filled the filter with diesel fuel and about an ounce of 2 cycle oil and it started right up and runs like it never happened.

I did not drop the tank and I did not blow out the fuel lines. Hardest part was figuring out how to get the fuel lines off the fuel pump at the tank - find the button on the pump/tank end of the fitting, squeeze the button and lift - the fuel line pops right off the top of the pump.

It wasn't fun. It was messy as hell. Gas smell in the car probably for awhile. Took a couple of hours. But extremely satisfying to fix it myself for about $30.

Maybe I was lucky (one shop told me "we did a Jetta a while back and couldn't get it to run and had to have it towed to the dealer"). I did it and you can too. Mis-fueling a VW TDI is not fatal and won't cost an arm and a leg to fix.

Its good to notice right away (no acceleration, major loss of power) and shut it down before damage is done to the injector pump. These TDIs run like watches, so when they don't its obvious something is wrong - shut it down asap!

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