Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Akroydon
Provided it has not been started, worry far less than you likely are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the engine until something draws it through the system — the ignition priming your pump, the starter, or the drive on its own. So the fair answer to the first query anyone around Akroydon asks, "have I wrecked it?", is usually no. Keep it that way: leave your engine off then phone Petrol in Diesel. The remainder of this page covers what petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it does not happen to you again.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel does
On its way through an engine, diesel does two tasks. It burns, and before it burns it lubricates. Extremely fine tolerances are built into the injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and only the diesel running through stops those surfaces grinding together.
The second task petrol doesn't do at all, and the first it does badly. The knocking comes from petrol being designed not to ignite when compressed, which is exactly the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is runnier than diesel, it strips away the protection the system depends on, and any pump running on such a blend is wearing itself.
Put those together and the shape of the issue is clear. Not contact but circulation is what causes the damage. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel problem. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to the injectors further on.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four situations our technicians see in Akroydon
Fuelled, and never started: nothing beats it. That petrol is in the tank and just that tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle stands. This is the one situation that can only truly occur on a forecourt, since anywhere else your car has been driven to get there.
Your ignition turned on, or a short start. Petrol has left your tank and got to your filter and the lines, because the system has been primed. Still generally easy: drain, flush, and the fuel filter seen to.
Those few miles on the road were your pump running on fuel diluted by petrol the whole way. Distance is only half of it; how hard it was driven counts just as much. Either way the work includes your tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the entire system. Driving the kids to Trinity Academy Akroydon is one sort of trip. A run as far as Bradford, under 10 miles away, is a very different job. So is any distance on the M62, under 5 miles from Akroydon, where your engine has been working hard throughout.
Driven till it protested. Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and the motor is telling you. Leave it where it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Lincoln Way. What goes first is still the drain and flush, and that sorts it out, with lasting damage very unusual when a vehicle is pulled over soon.
Myths Akroydon people hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all it gives, since topping up takes out nothing. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol, however much that advice presumes.
Myth: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the opposite. At higher pressure, through more precise components: that's how a modern diesel moves its fuel, so the protection matters for more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." This is the one that catches people. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it normally will not run, so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened, while your pump grinds. Fine and running aren't the same at all.
An old fix for a separate problem lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." None of what petrol weakened gets put back by it — and afterwards, that tank still contains the petrol.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you're sorted." Once the engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer inside that tank: it is in the filter and your lines, and it goes straight back through the pump at the next start. Draining petrol into a can by the kerbside is also truly risky.
Why petrol in a diesel occurs so easily
Nobody does it on purpose, and it's seldom carelessness. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the error runs one way.
Habit and the car falling out of step is how it happens. A motor that is new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or just bought. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Fuelling up in a hurry en route to Halifax, with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a motorist accustomed to petrol: precisely when it takes place. Throw in a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and habit takes over.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Akroydon
- A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — yet not on each forecourt. Go by the label on the pump, not the colour.
- The first fill in a new vehicle is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, many cars state the fuel to use.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a household with one of each.
- It seems daft and it works: on the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you are thinking about something else.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to reject 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 checking the pump.
- Less petrol makes a weaker blend, so stop the moment you notice — while remembering that your next stage is unchanged. It is still not to start the car.
Put petrol in a diesel around Akroydon already?
The order of things is brief, then. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition off as well. Ask the attendants to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump if you're still at the forecourt, whether that is Shell or somewhere else. Then phone 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, roughly how much, and whether it has run.
If it was AdBlue rather than petrol, say so. That is a different fault — corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Akroydon.
What makes one Akroydon petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
There's no honest single quote for this, since the four scenarios above are four separate tasks. The situation itself does most of the work of moving the cost. Two things come after that: the petrol that got in as a proportion of what that tank holds, then the spot the car is in and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, we ask three queries: the fuel that was put in, the quantity, and whether it's run. That is why. With those replies, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Akroydon itself
Akroydon is a suburban area in West Yorkshire, situated near the River Calder and close to the city of Bradford. Akroydon sits at an elevation of 179 metres, with its terraced housing stock reflecting the local architectural style. Akroydon is located near other residential areas, including Woodside, Boothtown, and Lee Mount, and is about 6 miles from Bradford city centre.
Fuel drain cover around Akroydon and across West Yorkshire
The vans answering petrol in diesel calls in Akroydon, in the HX postcode area, equally work the spots near it, Woodside, Boothtown and Lee Mount among them. Our engineers drain wherever the car is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
In Akroydon and still at the petrol pump?
The best position there is, then — that is where you are. Leave the vehicle turned off, and ring.