Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Drumbeg
If it hasn't been started, you can worry less than you likely are. Everyone in Drumbeg begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the honest answer is generally no: petrol left in that tank of a diesel stays harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into your fuel system. Keep it that way: leave the motor off then phone Petrol in Diesel. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel engine, 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
On its way through a motor, diesel does two tasks. Before it burns, it lubricates — then it ignites. Extremely fine tolerances are built into the injectors and your high-pressure pump, and just the diesel running through stops those surfaces grinding together.
Of those two jobs, petrol handles the first poorly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump running on the mixture to wear itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the clattering.
Combined, those make the shape of the problem plain. Contact does not do the damage — circulation does. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, carried by your fuel, into your injectors further along, which is why a pump that has worked on that petrol is where a mechanical fault starts.
Petrol in a diesel around Drumbeg: how serious is it? Four cases
Fuelled up, not once started. The best case there is. The petrol is in your tank and only the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where your car stands. This is the one situation that can only really take place at a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. With the system primed, the fuel lines and filter now hold petrol that has come from that tank. That's usually still a straightforward task — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
The pump has worked a couple of miles on diluted fuel — that's what driving the vehicle does. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the entire circuit: that's the work, and the way the vehicle was driven matters as much as the miles. The school run to the local primary school is one thing. A run as far as Lisburn, under 3 miles away, is a very different task. So is any distance on the M77, over 50 miles from Drumbeg, where your engine has been labouring hard the whole time.
Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. The fuel is not behaving like diesel any more, and your engine is saying so. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Heugh Road. A vehicle stopped soon very rarely has permanent damage, because the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, deal with it.
Myths Drumbeg 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. Nothing is removed when you top up — the tank simply holds more of the same blend. A diesel fuel system doesn't accept petrol by percentage in the way that guidance supposes.
Not so: a modern diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the opposite. More precise components and higher pressure are how a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches most motorists than any other. The driver of a petrol motor fed diesel usually has no choice but to stop, because it will not run, and the harm stops there. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually will; meanwhile your pump wears. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
An old workaround for a distinct problem is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." What petrol has diluted remains thinned, and the petrol stays in that tank regardless.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, since after it's been running some petrol lies in the fuel filter and lines, ready to go straight back through the pump at the next start. And, a can of petrol drained at the roadside is truly risky.
Why petrol in a diesel happens at all
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. The petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the error runs one way.
The moment habit stops matching your car is the moment it happens. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. A train to catch, and a rushed fill en route to the nearest station. The first fill-up in a diesel Renault Megane after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it takes place. The hand does what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Drumbeg
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — yet not on every forecourt. Go by the label on the petrol pump, not the colour.
- In a vehicle you don't know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before the first fill: many vehicles print the fuel there.
- Label 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 meaning to remember.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump. It sounds silly and it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put the phone away and keep your mind on the petrol pump.
- Add-on devices exist for cars without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that will not accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Spotting it halfway? Stop there and then. A weaker mixture results from less petrol in the tank, yet your next step remains the same: do not fire it up.
Put petrol in a diesel in Drumbeg already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Do not turn your ignition on, and don't start it. Still on the forecourt, at the nearest petrol station or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll it away from the pump. What got in, roughly how much, and whether it's run: tell us those when you call 0333 366 0103.
Corrosion and deposits are the trouble with AdBlue, whereas petrol brings lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Drumbeg page.
One petrol in a diesel task around Drumbeg costs more than another. Why?
An honest single price does not exist here: four situations, four separate jobs. Chiefly, the cost shifts with which situation you're in. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a proportion of what your tank takes, then the place the vehicle is in and whether our van can reach it safely.
Three queries come first, before quoting, instead of after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. With the replies, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Drumbeg itself
Drumbeg is a small locality in County Down, situated near the city of Lisburn and close to the communities of Ballyskeagh, Edenderry, and Dunmurry. Drumbeg lies inland, with an elevation of approximately 20 metres above sea level, and is characterized by predominantly detached housing. Drumbeg is located about 2.4 miles from Lisburn, making it a convenient residential area for those working in the city.
Fuel drain cover around Drumbeg and across County Down
Drumbeg waits in the BT postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the spots near it as well — Ballyskeagh, Edenderry and Dunmurry among them. We drain wherever your vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
In Drumbeg and still at the pump?
No position is better: that is where you are. Switched off it remains; then phone.