How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Curry Rivel
Not started? Then less worried than you likely are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine until something draws it through the system — the ignition priming the pump, your starter, or driving itself. So the fair answer to the first query anyone in Curry Rivel asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. Keep it that way: leave the engine off then ring Petrol in Diesel. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has got, and ways to make sure you never repeat it.
The motor and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Passing through an engine, diesel does two jobs at once. Before it combusts, it protects — and then it ignites. The high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors are made to extremely fine gaps, and the diesel passing through them is what keeps those surfaces from wearing down against one another.
Petrol handles the first task badly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump on the blend wearing itself. It is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the knocking.
Put these together and the shape of the problem is clear. Contact doesn't do the harm — circulation does. Where the petrol is only inside the tank, it's a problem of fuel, nothing more. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, borne by your fuel, into the fuel injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has been working on that petrol is where a mechanical issue starts.
Petrol in a diesel in Curry Rivel: how bad is it? Four cases
Fuelled up, not once started. The best case there can be. At a forecourt, and genuinely only there, the petrol is still confined to that tank — since everywhere else your car was driven to reach it. The job is draining and purging on the spot.
A brief spell of running, or merely your ignition on. Petrol has come out of the tank and got to the fuel filter and the fuel lines, since your system has been primed. Usually nothing more than emptying, cleaning and seeing to the filter, and so still simple.
A couple of miles driven, and the pump has spent each of them running on thinned fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the whole system: that is this work, and the way the car was driven counts as much as the mileage. A school run to Curry Rivel Church of England VC Primary School is one matter. A run as far as Wells, under 25 miles away, is a very different job. So is any distance on the M5, under 10 miles from Curry Rivel, where the engine has been working hard the whole time.
Driven until it protested. Knocking, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. What you are hearing is the engine signalling fuel that no longer behaves like diesel. Stop where you are — on the verge on Church Street, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it. What comes first is still the drain and flush, and that deals with it, with lasting damage very uncommon when a vehicle is pulled over soon.
Stories Curry Rivel drivers hear about petrol in a diesel
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be." Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a fuller tank, still the same mixture. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that guidance supposes.
Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. At higher pressure, through more precise components: that is how a modern diesel handles its fuel, so the protection matters more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." This is the one that catches drivers. A petrol engine fed diesel normally will not run, and so the driver stops and the harm stops with them. Whilst your pump grinds, a diesel fed petrol usually starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive makes it safe to drive home. It is an old fix, meant for another fault. None of what petrol weakened gets put back by it — and afterwards, that tank still contains the petrol.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol sits in your filter and lines, ready to go right back through the pump at the next start. Besides, petrol drained into a can by the road is genuinely dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
No one does it on purpose, and it's seldom carelessness. 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 car at all. So the mistake runs one way.
It takes place when routine and the car stop matching. A car that is new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or just bought. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the drive. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. Racing for a train outside Bridgwater and fuelling up en route. Exactly the moment it takes place: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Renault Megane for the first time. Your hand repeats what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
Next time you fill up in Curry Rivel: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Check the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt. The label is what counts.
- In a motor you do not know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before the first fill: many vehicles state the fuel there.
- One of each in the house? Mark your key to your diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — because meaning to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new motor, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, yes, but it works.
- Put your phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you are thinking about something else.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for vehicles without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Stop the moment you notice. Less petrol in your tank means a thinner mix. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to crank it.
Curry Rivel: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then the order of things is brief. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition off as well. The staff at the forecourt — whether at BP itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help push it away from the pump if you ask. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what went in, about how much, and if it has been run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a different problem — Curry Rivel has a page all for it.
Curry Rivel petrol in a diesel jobs: why one costs more than another
Four different jobs sit behind the four scenarios above — which is why there is no honest single price. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving your cost. The ratio matters next, meaning how much of your tank is petrol, and then the location of the car and whether getting to it is safe for a van.
That is why our technicians ask three queries before costing rather than after: what went in, how much, and whether it has run. Their replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Curry Rivel and its setting
Curry Rivel is a village situated on the banks of the River Parrett in Somerset, with a mix of old and new buildings, including many detached homes. Curry Rivel has a population of around 1019 people and is located near other small settlements like Wiltown and Heale. Curry Rivel sits at an elevation of 49 metres, close to the Somerset Levels, and is about 16 miles from the city of Wells. Curry Rivel is also within a reasonable distance of larger cities, being around 123 miles from London.
Fuel drain cover around Curry Rivel and across Somerset
Curry Rivel rests in the TA postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the places near it as well — Wiltown, Heale and Drayton among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all locations we drain, and your vehicle does not need to come to us.
Curry Rivel: still at the petrol pump?
Then, you couldn't be in a better spot. Keep it off. Phone.