Bleary: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Probably less than you already are — as long as nobody has started it. Everyone around Bleary begins with "have I ruined it?", and the honest answer is usually no: petrol left inside your tank of a diesel stays harmless until priming, cranking or driving draws it into the fuel system. Petrol in Diesel is who to phone, with your engine kept off, and so it stays that way. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel engine, the clues of how far it has spread, and ways to make sure you never do it again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
Two tasks fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. It burns, and before it burns it lubricates. Extremely fine clearances are built into the fuel injectors and your high-pressure pump, and just your diesel running through stops their surfaces grinding together.
Petrol handles the first job poorly and the second not at all. A pump running on a petrol mixture is wearing itself out, because petrol is runnier than diesel and takes away the protection your fuel system depends on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that's where the rattling comes.
The shape of the trouble is clear when you put those together. It's movement that does the harm, not contact. Petrol in a tank is a fuel issue. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to the injectors further on.
Petrol in a diesel in Bleary: how bad is it? Four situations
Filled up, never started. The best case there is. The petrol is inside that tank and just that tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where your car stands. This is the one scenario that can only really take place on a forecourt, since anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Petrol has left that tank and reached your filter and your lines, because the system has been bled. That's normally still a simple task — a drain, a flush, and your filter dealt with.
Driven a couple of miles. Now the pump has spent those miles labouring on thinned fuel. The work is the tank, the fuel lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the whole system, and how hard your car was driven counts as much as how far. The school run to the local primary school is one matter. Getting as far as Armagh, under 15 miles away, makes a very different job — as does any distance on the M77, over 50 miles from Bleary, with the engine labouring hard all the way.
Driven until it protested. Rattling, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The motor is telling you your fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Heugh Road, a lay-by, a side street — then leave the car where it is. What comes first is still the fuel drain and flush, and that sorts it out, with permanent damage very unusual if a vehicle is stopped soon.
Bleary drivers and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a fuller tank, still the same mixture. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, whatever that advice presumes.
Not so: a newer diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the opposite. Protection counts more on modern diesels, not less, since their fuel runs through more precise parts at higher pressure.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." This is the one that catches drivers. The motorist of a petrol motor fed diesel normally stops, since it will not run, and the damage stops there. Whilst the pump wears, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened. Running isn't the same as fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It's an old workaround for a separate fault. That petrol is still inside the tank afterwards, and whatever it has thinned is not put back.
The next start sends petrol back round your pump out of the fuel lines and the fuel filter, where some of that sits after your engine has run. That is why draining the tank yourself doesn't sort it — a myth. It's also truly risky to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
Why petrol in a diesel takes place at all
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. One way only, because of the nozzles: the slimmer petrol one slips inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while the diesel one generally won't fit a petrol vehicle. That is how the forecourt makes it easy.
It happens when habit and your car stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Fuelling up in a rush on the way to the nearest station, with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a driver used to petrol: precisely when it happens. Add a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and the hand takes over.
Bleary people: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt. The label is what matters.
- Plenty of motors state the fuel type inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on the first fill in a vehicle you don't know.
- One of each in the house? Mark the key to the diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — because intending to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle leaves the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" aloud. Daft, yes, yet it works.
- While you are thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so tuck your phone away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for the rest. Treat it as a safety net, then keep checking the pump.
- Noticing it mid-fill? Stop there and then. A thinner mixture results from less petrol in the tank, but the next stage remains the same: don't fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel in Bleary?
Then the order of things is short. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition off as well. If you're still on the forecourt — the nearest petrol station or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you push it clear of the pump. Call 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — your fuel, the rough quantity, and if it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a different problem, with its own page for Bleary, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection.
Why one petrol in a diesel job in Bleary costs more than another
An honest single quote does not exist here: four scenarios, four separate jobs. The situation itself does most of the work of moving the cost. After that it's the ratio — how much petrol got in against how much the tank takes — and after that where your car is and whether a technician can reach it safely.
Three questions come first, before quoting, instead of after — what was put in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. Those replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Bleary, for a moment
Bleary is a small locality in County Down, situated inland at an elevation of 71 metres, approximately 13 miles from Armagh. Bleary is characterized by its semi-detached housing stock and is located near other settlements such as Gibsons Hill and Waringstown. Bleary sits within the wider Craigavon area, and its residents are around 327 miles from London. Bleary has a population of around 726 people.
Bleary and County Down: where our fuel drain cover runs
Petrol in diesel jobs in Bleary — part of the BT postcode area — go to teams that also cover the locations around it, Gibsons Hill, Waringstown and Craigavon included. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all spots our engineers work, and your car doesn't need to come to us.
In Bleary and still at the pump?
Then you are in the best position there is. Phone, and keep it switched off.