How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Bedenham
Likely less than you already are — as long as no one has started the car. Everyone around Bedenham begins with "have I ruined it?", and the fair answer is usually no: petrol left inside that tank of any diesel remains harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into your fuel system. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with your motor kept off, so it remains that way. The rest of this page sets out what petrol actually does to a diesel, how to tell how far it has got, and how to make sure it does not happen to you a second time.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Two tasks fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. Before it burns, it lubricates — and then it combusts. The high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors are designed to extremely fine gaps, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from grinding against each other.
The second task petrol doesn't do at all, and the first it does poorly. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump running on that mixture wearing itself. It's also made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the knocking.
Together, those make the shape of the issue clear. Contact does not do the damage — circulation does. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the fuel injectors downstream.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios our technicians see in Bedenham
Fuelled up, never started. The best case there is. That petrol is in that tank and only your tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one situation that can only really take place on a forecourt, as anywhere else your car has been driven to get there.
Ignition on, or started for a second. The fuel system has been primed, so petrol has left your tank and got to the filter and your lines. Drain, flush, see to your filter: still normally straightforward.
Driven a couple of miles. Now your pump has spent those miles labouring on diluted fuel. How hard the vehicle was driven matters as much as how far, and the work covers your tank, your lines, your filter and clean fuel through the whole system. On the school run to Bedenham Primary School, the distance is short. A run as far as Portsmouth, under 5 miles away, is a very different job. So is any distance on the M27, under 3 miles from Bedenham, where the engine has been labouring hard throughout.
Driven on until it complained — clattering, smoke, a ragged idle, a dead throttle. The motor is telling you your fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Pull up on the spot — on the verge on Aerodrome Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it. Permanent damage is very uncommon when a car is stopped soon, and the drain and flush that still come first deal with it.
Petrol in a diesel myths Bedenham drivers hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Nothing comes out when you top up — that tank simply holds more of the same mixture. A diesel fuel system doesn't accept petrol by percentage in the way that advice supposes.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. A modern diesel runs its fuel through finer parts at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, so there is no harm" — the myth that trips up most drivers than any other. Diesel in a petrol motor normally means a motor that won't run: the driver stops, and so does the damage. 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. Running does not mean fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It's an outdated workaround for a separate problem. The petrol is still inside the tank afterwards, and what it has weakened isn't put back.
The next start draws petrol back round your pump from your lines and your filter, where some of that sits after the motor has run. That is why draining your tank yourself doesn't sort it — a myth. It's also truly dangerous to drain petrol into a can at the roadside.
How does petrol in a diesel take place?
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and nobody means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the slip runs one way.
It takes place when habit and your car stop matching. Any vehicle that's new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or just bought. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the drive. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A rushed fill en route to Portchester with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Renault Megane after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it happens. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand repeats what it has always done.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel at your next fill-up around Bedenham
- A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — yet not on each forecourt. Trust the label on the pump, not the colour.
- In a motor you do not know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before the first fill: many motors state the fuel type there.
- One of each in the household? Mark your key to the diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since meaning to remember is not enough.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so tuck the phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler built to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for vehicles without one. They are a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Less petrol makes a weaker mix, and so stop as soon as you notice — though remembering that the next step is unchanged. It is still not to crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Bedenham already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Do not crank it, and don't turn the ignition on. Yet on the forecourt, at Esso or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you push the car clear of the pump. Call 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — your fuel, the rough quantity, and whether it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a different issue, with its own page for Bedenham, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost lubrication.
One petrol in a diesel task in Bedenham costs more than another. Why?
Four separate jobs lie behind the four situations above — which is why there's no honest single price. Which of them you are in is mostly what moves the cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that got in as a proportion of what that tank holds, then the spot the car is in and whether a van can reach it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, come three queries: your fuel that got in, the volume, and if it has run. That is why. Given those answers, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Bedenham, briefly
Bedenham is a suburban area located on the coast of Hampshire, with an elevation of approximately 10 metres above sea level. Bedenham sits near the city of Portsmouth, being only 3.7 miles away, and is surrounded by other nearby places such as Bridgemary, Fleetlands, and Elson. Bedenham is characterised by its predominant semi-detached housing and is home to around 2364 residents. Bedenham is situated within the South East region of England, about 65 miles from London.
Across Hampshire and in Bedenham: fuel drain cover
Bridgemary, Fleetlands and Elson are among the spots near Bedenham that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel calls across Bedenham's PO postcode area. Our technicians drain where the car is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
Still at the petrol pump around Bedenham?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Keep the car switched off, then ring.