Charing: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you likely feel. Everyone around Charing starts with "have I ruined it?", and the honest answer is usually no: petrol left in your tank of any diesel remains harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into your fuel system. Leave the engine off then call Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it's travelled, and how to stop it from happening again: that's the rest of this page.
Inside the motor: what petrol in a diesel does
Diesel has two tasks on its way through a motor. Before it ignites, it protects — then it ignites. Very fine gaps go into the injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and just your diesel running through keeps their surfaces from grinding together.
Petrol handles the first job badly and the second not at all. The clattering comes from petrol being made not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is thinner than diesel, it strips away the protection your system hinges on, and any pump working on that mixture is wearing itself.
The shape of the problem is plain once you put those together. The harm is done by movement, not by contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel problem. Once the pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical problem has begun: anything shed by a pump that is wearing is carried onward to the injectors with your fuel.
Petrol in a diesel around Charing: how bad is it? Four situations
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. Being on a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, your car has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol kept inside the tank alone, it's emptied and purged right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Started for a second, or only the ignition on. Once primed, your system has drawn petrol out of your tank up to the filter and the fuel lines. Drain, flush, deal with your filter: still usually easy.
Driven a couple of miles. Now the pump has spent those miles running on thinned fuel. How hard the car was driven counts as much as how far, and this work covers the tank, the lines, your filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. Driving the children to Charing Church of England Primary School is one kind of trip. Any mileage on the M20, under 3 miles from Charing, means the motor has worked hard throughout, and a run to Canterbury, under 15 miles away, makes a very different job as well.
Driven till it protested. Rattling, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and the engine is saying so. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Market Place. Long-term damage is very unusual when a vehicle is pulled over early, and the fuel drain and flush-through that still go first sort it out.
Myths Charing motorists hear about petrol in a diesel
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It won't. Nothing comes out when you top up — that tank simply carries more of the same blend. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that guidance assumes.
"Newer diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and nearer the opposite. A newer diesel runs its fuel through smaller components at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
One myth that catches drivers out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it usually will not run, so the motorist stops — and the damage stops with them. A diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened, whilst the pump wears. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It's an outdated workaround for a different problem. It doesn't put back what petrol has diluted, and the petrol is still inside that tank later on.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you're sorted." After the motor has run, some of the petrol is no longer inside the tank: it's in your filter and your lines, and it goes straight back through the pump on the next start. And, a can of petrol filled by the roadside is genuinely risky.
How does petrol in a diesel occur?
No one does it on purpose, and it is rarely carelessness. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol vehicle at all. So the slip runs one way.
When routine and the vehicle stop matching, it occurs. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A forecourt you know, only with its pumps laid out differently. Racing for a train at the nearest station and fuelling up en route. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it happens. Add a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and the hand takes over.
Charing motorists: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most usually do. Read the petrol pump's label; the colour is just a clue.
- Plenty of motors state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check it on your first fill in a vehicle you do not know.
- Good intentions count for less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on the diesel's key when a household has one of each. So mark it.
- Before the nozzle comes off the pump the first time you fill a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, perhaps, but it works.
- Whilst you're thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so tuck the phone away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels have a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for the rest. Count it as a safety net, then keep reading the pump.
- Spotting it halfway? Stop at once. A weaker mixture follows from less petrol in the tank, yet your next stage remains the same: don't fire it up.
Petrol already in a diesel around Charing? Start here
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition off too. Ask the attendants to help you push it away from the petrol pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that is Charing Motors Ltd. or anywhere else. What went in, about how much, and whether it has run: tell us that when you phone 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost lubrication, make it a different problem — Charing has a page all for it.
Charing petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
There is no fair single quote for this, since the four scenarios above are four separate jobs. Chiefly, the cost shifts with which one you're in. After that it is the share — how much petrol was put in against how much that tank holds — and after that where the car is and whether a van can reach it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, come three questions: your fuel that went in, the amount, and whether it's run. That's why. Those answers change a range into a straight figure.
About Charing and where it is
Charing is a village in Kent, situated inland at an elevation of 103 metres, approximately 13 miles from Canterbury and 45 miles from London. Charing has a population of around 942 people and is characterised by semi-detached housing. Charing is close to nearby places such as Broadway, Charing Hill, and Coppins Corner. Charing remains a small, rural community with a strong sense of local identity.
Charing and Kent: where our fuel drain cover runs
Broadway, Charing Hill and Coppins Corner are among the places around Charing that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel calls across Charing's TN postcode area. We drain wherever your car is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
Charing: still at the pump?
No position is better: that's where you are. Turned off it remains; then phone.