I made the embarrassing error of parking my 66 beetle with its nose up a steep driveway last night. Today, stinks of petrol and went "clunk" when I tried to start it. And the oil dip stick reads ridiculously high.

So it seems my fuel pump is at least somewhat dodgy (although it's never been an issue until now), which I'll deal with later. In the meantime, how do I deal with all this petrol in the engine? Obviously I'll need to drain the oil, but are there other things I should do before putting fresh oil in? Is this likely to have done anything terribly nasty?

Flat parking spots from now on

I have had this happen once on our Beetle.

I rolled to a flat spot.

I drained all oil/ petrol mix.

Refilled the oil to correct level.

6 years later and the engine has shown no problems.

When parking with the nose up high, the float level valve can allow fuel to seep from the tank. This is due to the angle, and the tank being higher. No big deal, it can be fixed in 10 minutes.

That's a relief!

Thanks for that, I now know what I'll be doing tomorrow!

Its possible to "hydraulic" the motor and bend a conrod............turn it over by hand first to bleed the fuel out of the cyclinders

Yeah as the lads said, the tank just empties through the carb cos the tank is at a higher point
Happened to me too, just change the oil, drive for a couple of days, chance the oil again
Repeat this if the dipstick still smells like fuel, and feel free to use cheapo oil if you gonna dump it in a couple of days
You don't want any fuel left in the oil, cos it'll end up washing your bearings out! Not good
But all should be fine along as you don't keep driving it like it is for months!!
Good luck!!

Fantastic, thanks guys

This exact same thing happened to me once in my 76 bay kombi. The engine wouldn't turn over due to the hydraulic lock in cylinder 1.

Just one extra thing to think about if you decide to remove the plugs and crank the engine to push out the fuel in the cylinders.....DISCONNECT THE COIL to ensure there is no risk of a spark igniting all that fuel!

I learnt the hard way. Fortunately the only fire damage was to the alternator and tail lamp wiring.

I think this serves as a good reminder to fit an electric fuel shut off valve, so that every time you turn your motor off, the valve locks off the fuel supply. This item can be purchased from any LPG gas centre. I think this is an absolute must for kombis, as the petrol tank is higher than the motor. cheers Frank

Surely this problem only occures if there is a fault in some other part of the system (needle seat ?). The tank in the wench is almost directly over the engine and so is always higher than the carb, so far I have never had the problem.

To empty the fuel out of the cylinders, turn the engine over by hand BACKWARDS two revolutions: turn the crank pulley two full turns anticlockwise (on a type 1 engine you can turn the generator pulley four full turns anticlockwise). Now your cylinders are empty and you won't break a rod when you start the engine. BUT now your exhaust has petrol in it.... make sure no people or dogs are standing behind when you start it, because a lot of dirty sooty petrol is going to get blasted out of the exhaust.

ALSO
You *must* change the oil before running the engine otherwise it will wear really fast because the petrol in the sump has washed the protective oil off all the surfaces.



No the problem is not the needle valve: it's just that when the carb is tipped up (by parking nose up) the petrol can flow over the rear edge of the float bowl and down the throat into the engine, filling cylinders and then leaking past the cylinder rings to fill the sump as well. The needle valve is further forward in the float bowl, so by parking uphill you've raised the needle valve higher than the rear edge of the float bowl, hence the fuel overflows.