How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Cullen
Unstarted? Then less worried than you likely are. Until your ignition primes the pump, the starter turns, or the vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply waits there and does no harm. Which makes the truthful reply to the first Cullen query — "have I ruined it?" — usually no. To leave it like that, phone Petrol in Diesel then leave your motor switched off. The rest of this page sets out 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 a second time.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route round a motor. It protects to begin with, and only then does it burn. Very fine tolerances are built into the fuel injectors and your high-pressure pump, and only the diesel flowing through stops their surfaces grinding together.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. It's runnier than diesel and removes the lubrication your fuel system rests 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 opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That is where the rattling comes from.
Combined, those leave the shape of the problem clear. It is circulation that causes the harm, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. The start of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to your injectors beyond it.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four situations we see in Cullen
Fuelled but never started — as good as it gets. Only the tank has petrol in it, and so the job is draining the tank and cleaning the system where the vehicle stands. This situation can only really occur at a forecourt: anywhere else, the car got there by being driven.
The ignition turned on, or a short start. With the system primed, the fuel lines and filter already hold petrol that has come from that tank. That's normally still a straightforward task — a drain, a flush, and your filter seen to.
Driven a couple of miles. Now the pump has spent those miles labouring on weakened fuel. How hard your car was driven counts as much as how far, and the work takes in that tank, the lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. The school run to the local primary school is one thing. Very different again: a run to Aberdeen, under 50 miles away, or any mileage on the M90, over 50 miles from Cullen, where your engine never stopped working hard.
Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and your engine is telling you. Whether it's the verge on The Square, a lay-by or a side road, stop there then leave it. The fuel drain and flush-through still go first, and they deal with it: if a car is stopped soon, lasting damage is very uncommon.
Cullen motorists and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mixture. A diesel fuel system doesn't tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice supposes.
If anything, the reverse is true. Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Finer components and higher pressure are the way a current diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection count more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no harm done." This is the one that catches motorists. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it usually will not run, and so the driver stops — and the harm stops with them. Whilst the pump wears, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened. Fine and running are not the same thing.
An old fix for a separate problem lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." The petrol is still in that tank afterwards, and whatever it has diluted isn't put back.
The next start sends petrol back round your pump out of your lines and your filter, where some of that ends up once the motor has been run. That's why draining your tank yourself does not sort it — a myth. And, a can of petrol filled by the kerbside is genuinely dangerous.
Why petrol in a diesel happens so easily
It is rarely carelessness, and nobody does it on purpose. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the smaller 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 motor at all. So the error runs one way.
When routine and the car stop matching, it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that's new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. Your usual forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. A train to catch, and a rushed fill on the way to Keith. A new-to-you diesel Renault Megane, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: exactly when it occurs. Your hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Cullen
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most usually do. Check the pump's label; the colour is only a clue.
- Plenty of cars state the fuel type inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on the first fill in a motor you do not know.
- One of each in the home? Label the key to the diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since meaning to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, perhaps, yet it does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put your phone away then keep your mind on the petrol pump.
- Add-on devices are available for vehicles without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that will not accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a safety net only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- The moment you notice, stop: less petrol inside the tank makes a weaker mixture. What to do next does not change, though — still do not crank it.
Cullen: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off as well. The staff on the forecourt — whether at the nearest petrol station itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help push it away from the petrol pump if you ask. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what got in, about how much, and if it has been run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That is a different problem — corrosion and deposits and not lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Cullen.
What makes one Cullen petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
A fair single price doesn't exist here: four situations, four separate jobs. Which of them you are in is mostly what shifts your cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that went in as a share of what your tank holds, then the spot the vehicle is in and whether a van can get to it safely.
Three queries come first, before quoting, rather than after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. The replies turn a range into a straight figure.
About Cullen and its setting
Cullen is a small town on the Moray coast, situated at an elevation of 37 metres and looking out to the North Sea. Cullen has a population of around 1341 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Cullen is located near other small communities such as Seatown, Lintmill, and Portknockie, and is within commuting distance of Aberdeen, which is 46 miles away. Cullen sits in a scenic area of Scotland, with the city of Aberdeen to the east and the Cairngorms National Park to the south.
Fuel drain cover in Cullen and across Moray
The vans answering petrol in diesel calls in Cullen, in the AB postcode area, equally work the spots near it, Seatown, Lintmill and Portknockie among them. Our technicians drain wherever your car is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
Cullen: still at the pump?
Then, you could not be in a better position. Keep it off. Ring.