Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Coalville
Less than you likely are, if it has not been started. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine until something draws it through the fuel system — the ignition priming your pump, the starter, or the drive on its own. So the truthful answer to the first query everyone around Coalville asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. Keep it like that: leave your motor off and ring Petrol in Diesel. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it has travelled, and how to stop it from happening a second time: that's the rest of this page.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel really does
On its way through a motor, diesel has two tasks. It burns, and before it burns it lubricates. Very fine clearances are built into your injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and just your diesel flowing through stops those surfaces grinding together.
Petrol does the first task badly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump on that mixture to wear itself. It is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the rattling.
The shape of the issue is clear once you put those together. The damage is done by movement, not by contact. Petrol in the tank is a fuel fault. Whatever a worn pump sheds travels on, borne by your fuel, into the fuel injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has worked on the petrol is where a mechanical fault starts.
Petrol in a diesel around Coalville: how bad is it? Four situations
Filled up, and not started: nothing beats it. Being at a forecourt is what makes this the case: elsewhere, your car has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol held in that tank alone, it is drained and cleaned on the spot, and nothing more is needed.
Started for a moment, or just your ignition on. The fuel system has been primed, and so petrol has left the tank and reached the filter and the fuel lines. Still generally simple: drain, flush, and the filter seen to.
Driven a few miles. Now your pump has spent these miles labouring on weakened fuel. How hard the car was driven matters as much as how far, and this work covers your tank, your lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. On the school run to Saint Clare's Primary School A Catholic Voluntary Academy, Coalville, Leicestershire, the distance is short. Very different once more: a trip to Leicester, under 15 miles away, or some distance on the M1, under 3 miles from Coalville, where the engine kept working hard.
Driven on till it protested — rattling, smoke, a lumpy idle, a soft throttle. The engine is telling you the fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Pull up on the spot — on the verge on Forest Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it again. What comes first is still the fuel drain and flush, and that takes care of it, with lasting damage very unusual when a vehicle is stopped early.
What Coalville motorists get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It will not. Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mix. The idea behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. Finer components and higher pressure are how a modern diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." This is the one that fools drivers. Diesel in a petrol motor normally leaves a motor that will not run: the motorist stops, and so does the harm. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened, while your pump wears. Running doesn't mean fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It is an old fix, meant for another issue. It doesn't put back what petrol has diluted, and that petrol is still in that tank afterwards.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump from your lines and the fuel filter, where some of that ends up once the motor has been run. That's why a DIY tank drain doesn't leave you sorted — a myth. And, a can of petrol drained by the roadside is genuinely hazardous.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
It's seldom carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol motor at all. So the error runs one way.
It takes place when routine and your car stop matching. Courtesy car, hire car, or a motor that's new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. Fuelling up in a hurry en route to Loughborough, with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Renault Clio, its first fuelling, and a motorist accustomed to petrol: precisely when it happens. Throw in a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and habit wins.
Next time you fill up in Coalville: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt. The label is what matters.
- In a car you don't know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before the first fill: plenty of vehicles print the fuel there.
- Mark the key. In a household with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- 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 does the trick.
- While you're thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so tuck the phone away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for motors without one. They are a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol inside that tank makes a weaker mix. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to crank it.
Coalville: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is short, then. Don't start the vehicle, and do not switch the ignition on. Ask the staff to help you push it clear of the petrol pump if you're still at the forecourt, whether that's Harvest Energy or anywhere else. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it's been run.
Corrosion and deposits are the issue with AdBlue, whereas petrol brings lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Coalville page.
One petrol in a diesel job in Coalville costs more than another. Why?
There is no fair single price for this, because the four situations above are four different jobs. What shifts your cost is chiefly which of them you're in. The share counts next, meaning how much of your tank is petrol, and then the location of your car and whether reaching it is safe for our van.
Three queries come first, before any quote, instead of after — what went in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. A range becomes a straight figure once the answers are in.
About Coalville
Coalville is a town in north-west Leicestershire, situated approximately 11 miles north-west of Leicester. Coalville sits at an elevation of around 161 metres, in a region of gently rolling hills and countryside. Coalville has a mix of housing types, but semi-detached homes are particularly prevalent in the area. Coalville is also close to nearby settlements such as Hugglescote and Donington le Heath.
Fuel drain cover in Coalville and across Leicestershire
The vans answering petrol in diesel jobs around Coalville, in the LE postcode area, also work the places near it, Hugglescote, Greenhill and Donington le Heath included. Our engineers drain wherever the vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
Still at the petrol pump in Coalville?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better spot. Call, and keep it turned off.