East Bower: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Not started? Then less worried than you likely are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine till something pulls it through your fuel system — the ignition priming the pump, your starter, or the drive itself. So the honest answer to the first question everyone in East Bower asks, "have I ruined it?", is usually no. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with the motor left off, so it remains that way. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it's travelled, and how to keep it from happening again: that's the rest of this page.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the motor?
Passing through an engine, diesel does two things at the same time. Before it ignites, it protects — and then it ignites. Extremely fine gaps go into your injectors and the high-pressure pump, and just your diesel running through stops their surfaces grinding together.
Petrol handles the first job poorly and the second not at all. A pump running on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, since petrol is thinner than diesel and takes away the lubrication the fuel system relies on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel — and that is where any knocking comes.
Taken together, they show the shape the problem takes. It is circulation that causes the harm, not contact. Where that petrol is only in the tank, it's a fault of fuel, nothing more. Whatever a worn pump sheds travels on, borne by your fuel, into your injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has been working on the petrol is where a mechanical problem starts.
East Bower, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to significant
Filled up, and not started: no case is better. The petrol is in your tank and only that tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle stands. This is the one situation that can only truly occur at a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
The ignition switched on, or a brief start. Petrol has left that tank and got to the fuel filter and the lines, because the system has been bled. Drain, flush, see to the fuel filter: still usually simple.
A few miles driven, and the pump has spent every one of them labouring on thinned fuel. How hard your car was driven counts as much as how far, and the work takes in your tank, the fuel lines, the filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. On the school run to St John and St Francis Church School, the mileage is short. A run as far as Wells, under 25 miles away, is a very different job. So is any distance on the M5, under a mile from East Bower, where the motor has been running hard throughout.
Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is telling you. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Bower Lane. A vehicle pulled over quickly very seldom has long-term damage, since the drain and the flush-through, which still go first, sort it out.
What East Bower people get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed when you top up — that tank simply carries more of the same blend. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that advice supposes.
Not so: a modern diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the reverse. At higher pressure, through smaller parts: that is how a newer diesel moves its fuel, and so the lubrication matters for more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." This is the one that fools drivers. A petrol engine fed diesel usually will not run, and so the motorist stops and the damage stops with them. A diesel fed petrol normally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened, while your pump grinds. Running isn't the same as fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It is an outdated fix for a different fault. The petrol is still inside the tank after that, and whatever it has weakened isn't put back.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, because after it has been running some petrol lies in your filter and lines, waiting to go right back through the pump on the next start. It is also truly dangerous to drain petrol into a can at the kerbside.
Why petrol in a diesel takes place so easily
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. A diesel nozzle mostly won't fit a petrol vehicle, but the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one error straightforward, and just in that direction.
The moment routine stops matching the car is the moment it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that is new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. A train to catch, and a hurried fill on the way to Bridgwater. The first fill-up in a diesel Renault Megane after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it takes place. The hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Next time you fill up around East Bower: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — yet not on every forecourt. Trust the label on the pump, not the colour.
- In a car you do not know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before the first fill: plenty of motors print the fuel there.
- Label your key. In a house with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you pick up the nozzle — every time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away.
- Add-on devices exist for vehicles without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a safety net at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Noticing it mid-fill? Stop there and then. A weaker mixture results from less petrol in your tank, yet the next stage remains the same: don't crank it.
Petrol already in a diesel around East Bower? Begin here
The order of things is short, then. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition off as well. If you are still at the forecourt — Shell or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what went in, about how much, and if it's been run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a different issue, with its own page for East Bower, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection.
Why one petrol in a diesel task in East Bower costs more than another
Four separate tasks sit behind the four scenarios above — which is why there's no honest single price. What shifts your cost is chiefly which of them you're in. Where the car is matters too, and whether a van can safely reach it, after the proportion of petrol to what the tank holds.
What went in, how much, and if it has run — three questions we ask before costing, not after, for precisely that reason. Given the answers, you get a straight figure rather than a range.
About East Bower
East Bower is a suburban area in Somerset, located inland at a low elevation of around 8 metres. East Bower sits near the villages of Sydenham and Slape Cross, and is close to the larger settlement of Horsey. East Bower is characterized by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock, and is situated approximately 15 miles from the city of Wells.
East Bower and Somerset: where our fuel drain cover reaches
Petrol in diesel calls in East Bower — part of the TA postcode area — go to teams that also cover the places around it, Sydenham, Slape Cross and Horsey included. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own driveway are all locations our technicians work, and your car doesn't need to move to us.
At the pump in East Bower, right now?
Nothing beats it: that's where you now are. Leave the vehicle switched off, and ring.