Barton: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Not started? Then less worried than you likely feel. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to your motor until something draws it through the fuel system — the ignition priming your pump, the starter, or driving on its own. So the truthful answer to the first question everyone in Barton asks, "have I ruined it?", is usually no. Leave the motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has gone, and how to keep it from happening again: that is the rest of this page.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
On its way through a motor, diesel does two jobs. It burns, and before it burns it lubricates. What keeps the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and your injectors from wearing down against one another is the diesel passing through them — they are designed to extremely fine gaps.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. It's runnier than diesel and takes away the protection your fuel system rests on, so a pump running on a petrol mix is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is made to resist igniting under compression, which is the opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That is where the rattling comes from.
The shape of the problem is clear when you put those together. Contact doesn't do the damage — circulation does. Where that petrol is only inside the tank, it's an issue of fuel, nothing more. After your pump has been working on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: whatever is shed by a pump that's wearing down travels onward to your injectors with the fuel.
Petrol in a diesel around Barton: how serious is it? Four situations
Fuelled but never started — the best it gets. Only the tank has petrol in it, and so the task is clearing the tank and purging the system where your car sits. This situation can only really happen at a forecourt: anywhere else, the vehicle got there by being driven.
Started for a moment, or just the ignition on. With the fuel system primed, your lines and filter already hold petrol that came from that tank. Still usually easy: drain, flush, and your filter seen to.
Those few miles driven were your pump working on fuel thinned by petrol throughout. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the whole system: that is this work, and the way your car was driven matters as much as the distance. Short trips, such as the school run to St James' Church of England Junior School, are one thing. Any distance on the M5, under 3 miles from Barton, means the motor has worked hard throughout, and a run to Gloucester, under a mile away, makes a very different job as well.
Driven on till it complained — knocking, smoke, a ragged idle, a soft throttle. That is the engine telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on India Road, a lay-by, a side street — and leave the vehicle where it is. A vehicle pulled over early very rarely has lasting damage, because the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, take care of it.
What Barton motorists get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
Myth: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a fuller tank, still the same mix. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, whatever that advice presumes.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. Finer parts and higher pressure are how a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication count more, not less.
The myth that catches people off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. A petrol motor fed diesel usually will not run, so the motorist stops and the harm stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually does; meanwhile the pump wears. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, borrowed from a fix from years ago, for a distinct issue. What petrol has thinned remains thinned, and that petrol stays in the tank regardless.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you're sorted." Once your engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer in the tank: it's in your filter and the lines, and it goes straight back through your pump at the next start. And, a can of petrol filled at the roadside is genuinely risky.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
Nobody does it on purpose, and it is rarely carelessness. The petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two and slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the slip runs one way.
Habit and the car falling out of step is when it happens. Any vehicle that's new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to Gloucester. Years of petrol cars behind you, a diesel Renault Megane in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Add a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and habit takes over.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Barton
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — but not on every forecourt. Trust the label on the petrol pump, not the colour.
- Plenty of motors state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check there on your first fill in any motor you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for a household with one of each.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you lift the nozzle — each time a new or hired car needs its first tank. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- Put the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you are thinking about something else.
- Some diesels come with a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for motors without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- As soon as you realise, stop: less petrol inside that tank means a weaker mixture. What to do next doesn't change, though — still do not start the car.
Already put petrol in a diesel in Barton?
Then the order of things is brief. Don't turn your ignition on, and do not fire it up. Ask the attendants to help you roll it away from the pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that's Asda or anywhere else. What went in, about how much, and whether it has run: tell us those when you phone 0333 366 0103.
Corrosion and deposits are the trouble with AdBlue, whereas petrol brings lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Barton page.
Barton petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
The four scenarios above are four different jobs, so no single price for this would be fair. What moves your cost is chiefly which of them you are in. Where your car is counts too, and whether a van can safely reach it, after the proportion of petrol to what the tank holds.
What went in, how much, and if it has run — three questions our engineers ask before pricing, not after, for exactly that reason. Given the answers, you get a straight figure rather than a range.
About Barton
Barton is a suburban area located on the outskirts of Gloucester in Gloucestershire, situated near the river at an elevation of around 21 metres. Barton sits close to the city centre, with nearby areas including Tredworth and St Pauls, and is characterized by its predominantly terraced housing. Barton is part of the larger Gloucester urban area, with the city's amenities and services within easy reach. Barton is also relatively close to London, at a distance of approximately 93 miles.
Across Gloucestershire and in Barton: fuel drain cover
The teams answering petrol in diesel call-outs in Barton, in the GL postcode area, equally work the spots near it, Tredworth, St Pauls and Gloucester included. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all spots our engineers work, and the vehicle does not need to move to us.
Barton: still at the pump?
No position is better: that's where you now are. Ring, and keep it switched off.