Abbotswood: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Provided it has not been started, worry far less than you probably are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the motor until something draws it through the fuel system — the ignition priming the pump, the starter, or driving itself. So the truthful answer to the first question everyone in Abbotswood asks, "have I ruined it?", is usually no. Leave the motor off then phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. Further down, you will find what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it may have gone, and how to stop it happening to you again.
The engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route round a motor. It burns, and before it combusts it lubricates. Your high-pressure pump and the injectors are designed to very fine tolerances, and your diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing against one another.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. A pump working on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, because petrol is runnier than diesel and strips out the protection the fuel system relies on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel — and that's where any clattering starts.
Combined, those make the shape of the issue clear. Contact doesn't do the harm — circulation does. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. Once your pump has been labouring on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: whatever is shed by a pump that is wearing is carried downstream to the injectors with the fuel.
Petrol in a diesel in Abbotswood: how bad is it? Four cases
Fuelled, and not started: nothing beats it. That petrol is inside the tank and just the tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one situation that can only truly take place on a forecourt, because anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
A brief spell of running, or merely the ignition on. With the fuel system primed, your lines and filter now contain petrol that came from your tank. That is usually still a straightforward job — a drain, a flush, and your filter seen to.
Those few miles on the road meant your pump labouring on fuel diluted by petrol throughout. Mileage is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way this work runs to your tank, the lines, the filter and clean fuel through the entire system. On the school run to Boxgrove Primary School, the distance is small. A run as far as Westminster, under 50 miles away, is a very different job. So is any mileage on the M25, under 10 miles from Abbotswood, where the motor has been labouring hard the whole time.
Driven on till it complained — clattering, smoke, a ragged idle, a dead throttle. The motor is telling you the fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Leave it where it has stopped: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Westward Ho. Permanent damage is very rare if a vehicle is stopped soon, and the drain and flush-through that still go first sort it out.
Petrol in a diesel stories Abbotswood people hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It won't. Nothing comes out when you top up — that tank simply carries more of the same blend. The idea behind that guidance — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Not so: a newer diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the opposite. A current diesel runs its fuel through more precise parts at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that trips up more motorists than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it usually won't run, and so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually does; meanwhile your pump wears. Being able to run isn't the same as being fine.
An outdated fix for a different problem is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." None of what petrol weakened gets put back by it — and later, the tank still contains that petrol.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, because after it has been running some petrol sits in the filter and lines, waiting to go right back through your pump at the next start. Besides, petrol drained into a can by the road is genuinely hazardous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
Carelessness is rarely the cause, and no one means to do it. A diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol vehicle, yet the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel almost without resistance — so forecourts make this one error easy, and only in one direction.
When routine and your car stop matching, it takes place. Any vehicle that's new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A hurried fill on the way to London Road (Guildford) with a train to catch. Years of petrol vehicles behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. The hand does what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
Next time you fill up in Abbotswood: preventing petrol in a diesel
- The label is what counts, and so read the pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt.
- The first fill in a strange car is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, many vehicles state the fuel to use.
- Mark your key. In a home with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you pick up the nozzle — each time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It sounds silly. It does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make while your mind is on something else, so the phone goes away.
- Some diesels come with a filler built to block a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- As soon as you realise, stop: less petrol inside that tank makes a thinner mixture. What to do next does not change, though — still do not start the vehicle.
Abbotswood: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then the order of things is brief. Don't fire it up, and do not switch the ignition on. The staff at the forecourt — whether at BP itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help push it clear of the pump if you ask. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what got in, about how much, and if it's been run.
Corrosion and deposits form the issue with AdBlue, whereas petrol means lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Abbotswood page.
One petrol in a diesel task around Abbotswood costs more than another. Why?
The four scenarios above are four different jobs, so no single quote for this would be fair. Which of them you are in is chiefly what moves your cost. The proportion counts next, meaning how much of the tank is petrol, and then the position of the vehicle and whether getting to it is safe for our van.
Three queries come first, before any quote, instead of after — what went in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. Those answers turn a range into a straight figure.
About Abbotswood, briefly
Abbotswood is a suburban area in Surrey, situated near the River Wey and characterised by its detached housing stock. Abbotswood sits at an elevation of 48 metres, with nearby places including Slyfield, Burpham, and Merrow. Abbotswood is located approximately 25 miles from central London, making it a commuter-friendly location. Abbotswood has a population of around 2681 residents, who enjoy the area's riverside setting.
Abbotswood and Surrey: where our fuel drain cover reaches
Petrol in diesel call-outs around Abbotswood — part of the GU postcode area — go to vans that also cover the places about it, Slyfield, Burpham and Merrow among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all locations our technicians work, and the vehicle does not need to move to us.
In Abbotswood and still at the pump?
The best spot there is, then — that is where you are. Keep it off. Phone.