How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Burgess Hill
Not started? Then less worried than you likely feel. Everyone around Burgess Hill starts with "have I ruined it?", and the fair answer is usually no: petrol left inside your tank of any diesel stays harmless until priming, cranking or driving pulls it into your fuel system. To keep the car that way, call Petrol in Diesel and leave the motor switched off. Further down, this page sets out what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it might have gone, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Passing through an engine, diesel does two things at once. It lubricates to begin with, and after that does it burn. Designed to extremely fine clearances, the fuel injectors and the pump depend on your diesel moving through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. It's runnier than diesel and strips away the protection your fuel system hinges on, and so a pump running on a petrol mixture is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is made to resist igniting under compression, which is the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That's where the clattering comes from.
Put those together and the shape of the trouble is plain. It's movement that does the damage, not contact. Where the petrol is only inside that tank, it is a fault of fuel, nothing more. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to the injectors downstream.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four situations our engineers see in Burgess Hill
Filled up, and never started: nothing beats it. At a forecourt, and truly only there, the petrol is still limited to that tank — because everywhere else your car was driven to reach it. The job is draining and flushing on the spot.
Started for a moment, or just the ignition on. Petrol has left that tank and got to the filter and the fuel lines, since the fuel system has been bled. That is generally still an easy job — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter seen to.
Some miles driven, and your pump has spent every one of them running on diluted fuel. Distance is only half of it; how hard it was driven matters equally. Either way this work runs to your tank, the fuel lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit. On the school run to St Wilfrid's Catholic Primary School, the mileage is short. Getting as far as Brighton and Hove, under 10 miles away, makes a very different job — as does any distance on the M23, under 10 miles from Burgess Hill, with the motor running hard all the way.
Driven on till it complained — knocking, smoke, an uneven idle, a dead throttle. What you are hearing is the motor reporting fuel that no longer behaves like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Lower Church Road, a lay-by, a side street — then leave it where it is. A vehicle stopped soon very seldom has lasting damage, since the fuel drain and the flush, which still go first, take care of it.
Stories Burgess Hill drivers hear about petrol in a diesel
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. A bigger tank of the same mix is all you get, because topping up takes out nothing. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol, however much that guidance presumes.
Myth: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the reverse. A newer diesel runs its fuel through finer components at higher pressure, which makes the protection count more, not less.
This is the one that catches drivers. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." A petrol engine fed diesel usually will not run, and so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. While your pump wears, a diesel fed petrol usually starts, idles and drives away as if nothing has happened. Being able to run isn't proof of being fine.
Not so: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It is an old workaround, meant for another problem. None of what petrol thinned is put back by it — and afterwards, your tank still holds that petrol.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you're sorted." Once the motor has been run, some of that petrol is no longer in the tank: it's in your filter and the fuel lines, and it goes right back through the pump on your next start. Besides, petrol emptied into a can by the road is genuinely hazardous.
How does petrol in a diesel take place?
A careless moment is seldom the cause, and no one 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 car at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the mistake runs one way.
The moment routine stops matching the vehicle is the moment it occurs. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. Rushing for a train at the nearest station and filling up en route. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a driver used to petrol: precisely when it occurs. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and your hand repeats what it has always done.
Burgess Hill people: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Check the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt. The label is what matters.
- The first fill in a strange motor is the time to check the filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, many vehicles state the fuel to use.
- Label the key. In a household with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you pick up the nozzle — each time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It sounds silly. It works.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you're thinking about something else.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for vehicles without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- The moment you realise, stop: less petrol inside that tank means a weaker mix. What to do next does not change, though — still don't crank it.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Burgess Hill?
Then the order of things is brief. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off as well. Still on the forecourt, at BP or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the pump. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, about how much, and whether it has run.
Corrosion and deposits are the trouble with AdBlue, where petrol brings lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Burgess Hill page.
Why one petrol in a diesel task around Burgess Hill costs more than another
The four scenarios above are four different jobs, so no single price for this would be honest. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving your cost. The share matters next, meaning how much of that tank is petrol, and then the location of the car and whether reaching it is safe for a technician.
Ahead of any quote, not after, we ask three questions: your fuel that got in, its volume, and if it has run. That is why. Given those replies, you get a straight figure rather than a range.
About Burgess Hill, briefly
Burgess Hill is a town in West Sussex, situated approximately 38 miles south of London and 9 miles north of Brighton and Hove. Burgess Hill sits in a relatively low-lying area, with an average elevation of around 40 metres, and is surrounded by nearby places such as St Johns Common and Worlds End. Burgess Hill has a population of around 26,000 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing. Burgess Hill is also close to other local areas, including Abbotsford.
Fuel drain cover across West Sussex, Burgess Hill included
Petrol in diesel jobs in Burgess Hill — part of the RH postcode area — go to vans that likewise cover the locations round it, St Johns Common, Worlds End and Abbotsford among them. 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.
Burgess Hill: still at the petrol pump?
The best spot there is, then — that is where you are. Ring, and keep it turned off.