Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Borden
Likely less than you already are — provided nobody has started it. Until the ignition primes the pump, your starter turns, or the vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just rests there and does no harm. Which makes the honest reply to that first Borden query — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. Petrol in Diesel is who to phone, with your motor kept off, so it remains that way. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has got, and ways to make sure you don't do it again.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel does
On its way through a motor, diesel has two tasks. Before it ignites, it lubricates — then it ignites. Your high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors are built to very fine gaps, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing against one another.
Petrol handles the first task badly and the second not at all. The rattling 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 out the lubrication your system rests on, and any pump running on that mixture is wearing itself.
The shape of the trouble is clear when you put those together. It is circulation that causes the damage, not contact. Petrol in a tank is a fuel fault. Whatever a worn pump sheds travels on, carried by your fuel, into the fuel injectors further along, which is why a pump that has worked on that petrol is where a mechanical fault begins.
Petrol in a diesel in Borden: how bad is it? Four situations
Fuelled but not once started — the best it gets. The petrol is inside your tank and only the tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the vehicle stands. This is the one scenario that can only really occur on a forecourt, because anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Started for a moment, or only the ignition on. Petrol has left that tank and got to your filter and the lines, because the system has been bled. Drain, flush, deal with the filter: still usually simple.
Those few miles driven meant your pump labouring on fuel weakened by petrol the whole way. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the whole system: that's this work, and the way the vehicle was driven matters as much as the miles. The school run to Borden Church of England Primary School is one matter. Very different again: a run to Southend-on-Sea, under 15 miles away, or some distance on the M2, under 3 miles from Borden, where the motor never stopped running hard.
It protested, and only then stopped: smoke, clattering, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone ragged. The engine is telling you the fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Leave it wherever it stops: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Barn Close. A vehicle stopped quickly very rarely has permanent damage, as the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still come first, deal with it.
What Borden people get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you're left with a bigger tank, still the same mix. The assumption behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Not so: a newer diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the opposite. Lubrication counts more on modern diesels, not less, since their fuel passes through smaller components at higher pressure.
"It starts, it drives, so no harm done" — the myth that catches more drivers than any other. Any petrol engine fed diesel normally won't run, and so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually will; meanwhile the pump wears. Running is not the same as fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It's an old workaround for a distinct problem. The petrol is still in your tank afterwards, and whatever it has weakened is not put back.
Once your engine has been run, part of the petrol sits in the fuel filter and the fuel lines, not your tank — and the next start sends it straight back through your pump. So the myth "drain that tank yourself and you're sorted" doesn't hold. It is also genuinely dangerous to drain petrol into a can at the roadside.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it take place?
Carelessness is rarely the cause, and no one means to do it. 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.
The moment habit stops matching your car is the moment it occurs. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that is new. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. Your normal forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. Racing for a train at Sittingbourne and filling up en route. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that's when. Add a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and habit wins.
Next time you fill up around Borden: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most generally do. Read the pump's label; the colour is only a clue.
- The first fill in a strange vehicle is the time to check the filler flap — on it, or on the cap, many cars state the fuel they take.
- Good intentions count for less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on the diesel's key if a household has one of each. So label it.
- Say it before you lift it. On the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump. It seems silly and it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make while your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices exist for the rest. Treat it as a backstop, and keep reading the petrol pump.
- Spotting it mid-fill? Stop at once. A thinner blend results from less petrol inside that tank, but your next step stays the same: don't crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Borden already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition off as well. Still on the forecourt, at Esso or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you push the car away from the petrol pump. Call 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the rough volume, and whether it's run.
If it was AdBlue and not petrol, say so. That's a separate problem — corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Borden.
What makes one Borden petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
An honest single quote doesn't exist here: four situations, four separate tasks. Which of them you're in is mostly what shifts the cost. Where the vehicle is matters too, and whether a van can safely get to it, after the proportion of petrol to what that tank takes.
What went in, how much, and whether it has run — three questions our technicians ask before costing, not after, for precisely that reason. Given the answers, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Borden itself
Borden is a small village in Kent, situated inland at an elevation of 54 metres, and is located near the villages of Harmans Corner and Hearts Delight. Borden has a population of around 768 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Borden is close to Key Street and is within commuting distance of Southend-on-Sea, which is approximately 14 miles away. Borden is also about 38 miles from London, making it a potential base for those working in the capital.
Fuel drain cover across Kent, Borden included
Harmans Corner, Hearts Delight and Key Street are among the locations near Borden that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel jobs across Borden's ME postcode area. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all places our technicians work, and your car does not need to move to us.
In Borden and still at the pump?
No position is better: that's where you are. Turned off it remains; then ring.