Petrol in a Diesel Car in Elswick: How Worried Should You Be?
Less than you probably are, provided it hasn't been started. Until your ignition primes your pump, your starter cranks, or the car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply waits there and does nothing. Which means the honest reply to that first Elswick query — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. Leave your motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it like that. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has got, and the way to make sure you never do it again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to your engine?
Passing through an engine, diesel is doing two jobs at once. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. Built to very fine tolerances, your injectors and the pump rely on your diesel flowing through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Of those two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second not at all. It's thinner than diesel and strips away the lubrication the system depends on, and so a pump running on a petrol mix is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is made to resist igniting under compression, which is the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That's where the clattering comes from.
Put these together and the shape of the trouble is clear. The damage is done by movement, not by contact. Petrol in the tank is a fuel problem. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the fuel injectors downstream.
Four scenarios we see around Elswick: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. Just your tank has petrol in it, and so the task is clearing your tank and rinsing the fuel system where the car sits. This scenario can only really occur at a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
The ignition switched on, or a short start. Petrol has left your tank and got to the filter and your lines, because your system has been bled. That's normally still a straightforward job — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
Driven a couple of miles. Now your pump has spent those miles working on thinned fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the entire circuit: that is the work, and the way your car was driven matters as much as the distance. Driving the children to St Johns Primary School is one kind of trip. A run as far as Newcastle upon Tyne, under 3 miles away, is a very different job. So is any distance on the Central Motorway East, under 3 miles from Elswick, where the engine has been running hard the whole time.
Knocking, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. That is your engine telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Whether it is the verge on Saint John's Road, a lay-by or a side road, stop where you are and leave it. A car pulled over soon very rarely has lasting damage, as the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, sort it out.
What Elswick people get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
Myth: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. A bigger tank of the same mix is all it gives, since topping up takes out nothing. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that advice presumes.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. Lubrication counts more on newer diesels, not less, since their fuel runs through finer components at higher pressure.
One myth that catches drivers off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor normally means a motor that will not run: the motorist stops, and so does the damage. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually does; meanwhile 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 workaround for a distinct fault. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and the petrol is still in the tank later on.
Myth: "Drain the tank yourself and you are sorted." After the motor has been run, some of the petrol is no longer in that tank: it is in the filter and the lines, and it goes right back through the pump on your next start. Besides, petrol emptied into a can by the road is truly risky.
How does petrol in a diesel happen?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. A diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol car, yet the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel almost without resistance — so forecourts make this one error simple, and only in that direction.
The moment routine stops matching your car is the moment it happens. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. A hurried fill on the way to Metrocentre with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a motorist accustomed to petrol: precisely when it happens. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids, and the hand repeats what it has always done.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel on your next fill-up in Elswick
- A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — but not on each forecourt. Go by the label on the pump, not the colour.
- In a car you don't know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before the first fill: plenty of vehicles state the fuel there.
- One of each in the household? Mark your key to your diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since meaning to remember isn't enough.
- It seems daft and it works: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make while your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for vehicles without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- As soon as you notice, stop: less petrol inside the tank means a thinner mixture. What to do next does not change, though — still don't fire it up.
Petrol already in a diesel around Elswick? Begin here
The order of things is short, then. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off too. Still at the forecourt, at Shell or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you push the vehicle clear of the pump. Then call 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, about how much, and whether it's run.
Corrosion and deposits form the issue with AdBlue, where petrol means lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Elswick page.
What makes one Elswick petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
There is no fair single price for this, because the four scenarios above are four separate jobs. Mostly, the cost shifts with which situation you are in. After that it is the ratio — how much petrol got in against how much that tank takes — and then where the vehicle is and whether our van can get to it safely.
Three questions 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 when the replies are in.
About Elswick, for a moment
Elswick is a suburban area located on the River Tyne in north-eastern England, sitting at an elevation of 57 metres and approximately 1.7 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne. Elswick is characterized by its predominantly flat-type housing and forms part of the larger urban area surrounding Newcastle. Elswick is close to nearby places such as South Benwell, Paradise, and Dunston, and is situated near the city centre. Elswick has a population of around 5687 residents.
Across Tyne and Wear and in Elswick: fuel drain cover
South Benwell, Paradise and Dunston are among the locations around Elswick that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel call-outs across Elswick's NE postcode area. The car does not need to move to us: our engineers drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
Still at the pump around Elswick?
The best place there is, then — that's where you are. Ring, and leave it switched off.