Removing fuel from a Vauxhall Astra Estate

[James Noble]

I posted this over in free.uk.cars.vauxhall but no response yet so, I thought I would try here...

I wonder if anyone can tell me how to remove the fuel from the tank of an 07 Astra Design Estate. I have a 5 gallon container and a hose.

In the old days it was simply a matter of siphoning the fuel using a tube but these newer cars have anti siphoning baffles in the filling pipe so how do I do it.

The reason for this is that I filled the car up the other day in preparation for a trip and on Tuesday the cooling system sprang a leak. The dealer took it in yesterday and diagnosed a head gasket failure. This coupled with new front discs required and a couple of other things has brought the estimate for repair to over 2000.00. Decided to trade it in against a new car so I want to transfer the fuel to our other car.

Thanks in advance!

[MuddyMike]

Remove the fuel pipe from somewhere obvious (filter perhaps) under the bonnet and turn on the ignition. Sit back and watch it pump out.

Mike

[Ret.]

But just make sure that it doesn't spray onto anywhere electrical where it might be ignited - otherwise you may end up with no fuel and no trade-in...

[Kevin Poole]

Will this work if it's a diesel? I know it wouldn't on earlier Astras.

If it wouldn't, you're stuck with sucking/syphoning the stuff through the pipe leading to or from the fuel filter. Possible, but slow, and you may have some trouble bleeding out the air you'll probably introduce.

[MuddyMike]

It worked with a diesel Mondeo.

Mike

[damduck-egg]

I have done it with a vauxhall Astra as well,don't know how early the one previously tried actually was but they have been around a fair while now. When I did it there was a rubber termination on the pipe that supplied fuel to the injectors. This was a PITA as the component which must have cost about 1/2p was only a push fit and had the habit of blowing off making a right mess of everything as diesel was sprayed around the engine bay. After it happening twice I carried a spare rubber termination. It did make an easy place to attach a bit of tube to recover fuel from though when the replacement car arrived from the lease co. (Why did they always announce they were coming the day after you filled up?)

G.Harman

[Steve Walker]

It also worked with my father's Citroen C5 when he put petrol in instead of diesel by mistake - we figured that the low pressure pump would cope well enough with the mix.

As it happened, we never found out if the life of the pump was affected, as a few weeks later the auxiliary belt split and a small piece shot through a tiny slot where the timing belt cover met the block, got caught up, allowed the belt to move a few teeth and valves and pistons collided!

SteveW