Petrol in a Diesel Car in Burnside: How Worried Should You Be?
Probably less than you are now — provided no one has started the vehicle. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your motor till something pulls it through the system — your ignition priming the pump, the starter, or driving on its own. So the truthful answer to the first query everyone in Burnside asks, "have I wrecked it?", is usually no. Keep it that way: leave the motor off and call Petrol in Diesel. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has spread, and the way to make sure you never repeat it.
What petrol in a diesel does to your engine
Two jobs fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. It lubricates to begin with, and only then does it burn. Designed to extremely fine gaps, the fuel injectors and the pump depend on the diesel flowing through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
Petrol handles the first task poorly and the second not at all. A pump working on a petrol mixture is wearing itself out, because petrol is thinner than diesel and strips out the lubrication your fuel system depends on. Petrol is also made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that's where the knocking comes.
The shape of the problem is plain once you put those together. It's circulation that causes the damage, not contact. Petrol in the tank is a fuel problem. A pump that has been labouring on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with the fuel to the injectors further on.
Burnside, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to significant
Filled up, and not started: nothing beats it. Being on a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the vehicle has been driven there to begin with. With that petrol held inside that tank alone, it is cleared and flushed on the spot, and nothing more is needed.
A brief spell of running, or merely the ignition on. Once primed, the system has pulled petrol out of your tank up to the filter and your lines. Drain, flush, deal with the fuel filter: still normally easy.
Driven a few miles. Now the pump has spent those miles labouring on weakened fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the whole system: that's the work, and the way your car was driven counts as much as the mileage. The school run to the local primary school is one thing. Getting as far as Dunfermline, under 10 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any mileage on the M8, under a mile from Burnside, with the engine labouring hard all the way.
Driven on until it protested — knocking, smoke, a lumpy idle, a soft throttle. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and the engine is telling you. Stop where you are — on the verge on Burnvale, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it again. A vehicle pulled over quickly very rarely has long-term damage, since the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still go first, deal with it.
Stories Burnside drivers hear about petrol in a diesel
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mix. A diesel fuel system doesn't accept petrol by percentage in the way that guidance presumes.
If anything, the reverse holds. Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." At higher pressure, through more precise parts: that's how a modern diesel moves its fuel, and so the protection matters more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, so no harm done" — the myth that trips up more people than any other. The motorist of a petrol engine fed diesel usually stops, since it will not run, and the damage stops with them. Whilst your pump grinds, a diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened. Fine and running are not the same thing.
Myth: a two-stroke additive makes it safe to drive home. It is an old workaround, supposed for another fault. What petrol has diluted remains thinned, and the petrol stays in the tank anyway.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, since after it has been running some petrol sits in your filter and lines, waiting to go right back through the pump at the next start. Draining petrol into a can at the roadside is also really hazardous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. One way only, since of the nozzles: the smaller petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whereas the diesel one mostly won't fit a petrol motor. That is how the forecourt makes it easy.
The moment habit stops matching the car is the moment it occurs. Any motor that is new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Two motors on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. A rushed fill en route to Uphall with a train to catch. Precisely the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Passat for the first time. The hand does what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Burnside
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — yet not on every forecourt. Go by the label on the pump, not the colour.
- The first fill in an unfamiliar motor is the time to check the filler flap — on it, or on the cap, many vehicles state which fuel to use.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for a house with one of each.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, yes, yet it works.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make while your mind is on something else, so your phone goes away.
- Add-on devices exist for vehicles without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't take a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- The moment you realise, stop: less petrol inside that tank makes a thinner mix. What to do next doesn't change, though — still don't start it.
Put petrol in a diesel around Burnside already?
In that case, there's just a short order of things. Don't switch the ignition on, and do not fire it up. Ask the staff to help you roll it away from the pump if you are still on the forecourt, whether that's Shell or somewhere else. Then call 0333 366 0103 and tell us what got in, about how much, and if it has run.
Corrosion and deposits are the problem with AdBlue, whereas petrol means lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Burnside page.
What makes one Burnside petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
There's no honest single quote for this, since the four situations above are four different tasks. Which of them you are in is chiefly what moves the cost. The ratio counts next, meaning how much of your tank is petrol, and then the position of the vehicle and whether getting to it is safe for a technician.
What went in, how much, and if it's run — three queries our engineers ask before pricing, not after, for precisely that reason. A range becomes a straight figure once the replies are in.
About Burnside
Burnside is a suburban area situated on the riverside in West Lothian, with an elevation of 52 metres. Burnside lies near several other communities, including Broxburn, Faucheldean, and West Clifton, and is approximately 9.6 miles from Dunfermline. Burnside has a population of around 1338 people and features predominantly terraced housing. Burnside is located about 334.5 miles from London, in the central lowlands of Scotland.
Fuel drain cover across West Lothian, Burnside included
Burnside rests in the EH postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the places near it as well — Broxburn, Faucheldean and West Clifton among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all locations our engineers drain, and the vehicle doesn't need to move to us.
At the pump around Burnside, right now?
The best position there is, then — that is where you are. Keep it off. Ring.