Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Bromley
Provided it hasn't been started, you can worry far less than you probably are. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first question everyone around Bromley asks, and the truthful answer is generally no, because petrol resting in a diesel tank harms nothing till it is dragged through the system — by ignition priming, by your starter, or by driving. Leave your motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it that way. The rest of this page explains 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 again.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Two tasks fall to diesel on its journey round a motor. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. Made to very fine clearances, the injectors and your pump rely on your diesel flowing through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
Petrol does the first job badly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the lubrication a fuel system needs, leaving a pump running on the blend wearing itself. It's equally made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the clattering.
Combined, those make the shape of the issue clear. Contact does not do the harm — circulation does. Petrol in the tank is a fuel issue. The start of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been working on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to your injectors beyond it.
Four scenarios we see around Bromley: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled up, never started. The best case there is. At a forecourt, and truly only there, that petrol is still limited to your tank — since everywhere else the car was driven to reach it. The task is emptying and purging on the spot.
Started for a second, or only the ignition on. Your system has been primed, so petrol has left your tank and reached your filter and the fuel lines. Still generally straightforward: drain, flush, and your filter dealt with.
A couple of miles driven, and your pump has spent each of them working on thinned fuel. How hard your car was driven matters as much as how far, and the work covers the tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the whole circuit. The school run to The Bromley-Pensnett Primary School is one thing. Any mileage on the M5, under 5 miles from Bromley, means the engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Wolverhampton, under 10 miles away, is a very different job too.
Driven until it protested. Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The motor is telling you your fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Stop on the spot — on the verge on Bromley Lane, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it again. A car stopped quickly very rarely has lasting damage, since the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still go first, deal with it.
What Bromley people get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
Myth: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all it gives, since topping up takes out nothing. That advice supposes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
"Newer diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the opposite. At higher pressure, through more precise components: that's how a newer diesel moves its fuel, and so the lubrication matters more, not less.
One myth that catches drivers off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. The driver of a petrol engine fed diesel usually stops, because it will not run, and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally fires up, idles and drives away as if nothing happened — all the while its pump is wearing. Running doesn't mean fine.
An outdated fix for a separate problem lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It does not put back what petrol has thinned, and that petrol is still in the tank after that.
Once the motor has run, part of that petrol is in your filter and your lines, not the tank — and the next start sends it right back through your pump. So the myth "drain the tank yourself and you're sorted" does not stand up. On top of that, petrol drained into a can by the road is truly hazardous.
Why petrol in a diesel takes place so easily
Nobody does it on purpose, and it's rarely carelessness. The petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the mistake runs one way.
It happens when routine and the car stop matching. A new motor, a hire car or a courtesy car. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. Your normal forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. A hurried fill en route to Lye with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Renault Megane after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it occurs. Throw in a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and habit takes over.
Bromley drivers: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most usually do. Read the pump's label; the colour is only a clue.
- Inspect the filler flap. Plenty of vehicles state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in a motor you don't know.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a bright colour on the diesel's key when a house has one of each. So label it.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you take the nozzle off the pump. It sounds silly and it works.
- Whilst you are thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so put the phone away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler built to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for motors without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- Less petrol means a weaker mixture, so stop the moment you realise — while remembering that the next step is unchanged. It's still not to crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel around Bromley already?
The order of things is short, then. Don't turn the ignition on, and do not crank it. The attendants on the forecourt — whether at the nearest petrol station itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help push it away from the petrol pump if you ask. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has been run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost lubrication, make it a different issue — Bromley has a page all for it.
What makes one Bromley petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
Four different jobs sit behind the four scenarios above — which is why there's no fair single price. Which of them you're in is chiefly what shifts your cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that got in as a proportion of what your tank takes, then the spot the car is in and whether a van can reach it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, come three questions: your fuel that went in, the volume, and if it has run. That is why. Those answers are what change a range into one firm number.
About Bromley and its setting
Bromley is a suburban area in the West Midlands, situated near several lakes and reservoirs at an elevation of around 117 metres. Bromley lies within commuting distance of Wolverhampton, which is approximately 6.5 miles away, and is also near the communities of Pensnett, Brockmoor, and Harts Hill. Bromley has a population of around 6360 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing. Bromley is located some distance from London, at around 109 miles northwest of the capital.
Fuel drain cover across West Midlands, Bromley included
The vans answering petrol in diesel jobs in Bromley, in the DY postcode area, equally work the locations near it, Pensnett, Brockmoor and Harts Hill included. The car does not need to move to us: we drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
In Bromley and still at the petrol pump?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Keep it off. Call.