Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Ewell
Not started? Then less anxious than you likely feel. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine until something pulls it through your fuel system — your ignition priming your pump, your starter, or driving on its own. So the fair answer to the first question everyone around Ewell asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. Leave your motor off then phone Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it that way. Below, you will find what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it might have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
Diesel has two tasks on its way through a motor. Before it combusts, it lubricates — then it burns. Extremely fine tolerances are built into the injectors and your high-pressure pump, and only your diesel flowing through keeps those surfaces from grinding together.
Of these two jobs, petrol manages the first badly and the second never. It's thinner than diesel and takes away the lubrication your fuel system depends on, so a pump running on a petrol blend 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 is where the clattering comes from.
The shape of the trouble is clear once you put those together. Contact doesn't do the damage — circulation does. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. Once your pump has been working on that petrol, a mechanical issue has begun: anything shed by a pump that's wearing is carried downstream to your injectors with the fuel.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four situations our engineers see around Ewell
Filled but never started — the best it gets. The petrol is in that tank and just your tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where your car stands. This is the one situation that can only truly occur at a forecourt, since anywhere else your car has been driven to get there.
Started for a second, or just the ignition on. Petrol has left your tank and got to your filter and the fuel lines, since the fuel system has been primed. Normally nothing more than draining, rinsing and sorting the filter, and so still straightforward.
Driven a few miles. Now your pump has spent those miles working on diluted fuel. Miles is only half of that; how hard it was driven counts equally. Either way this work runs to your tank, the lines, your filter and clean fuel through the entire system. The school run to Ewell Grove Primary and Nursery School is one matter. Very different once more: a trip to Westminster, under 15 miles away, or some distance on the M25, under 5 miles from Ewell, where the motor kept working hard.
Rattling, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. The engine is telling you your fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on West Street, a lay-by, a side street — then leave it there. A car pulled over quickly very seldom has permanent damage, since the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, take care of it.
Ewell motorists and the petrol in a diesel stories they hear
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It does not. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all it gives, because topping up takes out nothing. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol, whatever that advice assumes.
If anything, the opposite is true. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." More precise components and higher pressure are how a current diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
This is the one that catches motorists. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." The motorist of a petrol engine fed diesel normally has no choice but to stop, since it will not run, and the damage stops there. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually does; meanwhile the pump grinds. Running is not the same as fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a separate problem. None of what petrol weakened is put back by it — and later, your tank still contains the petrol.
The next start draws petrol back round your pump out of the fuel lines and your filter, where some of it sits once the engine has run. That's why a DIY tank drain doesn't sort it — a myth. Clearing petrol into a can at the kerbside is also really hazardous.
Why petrol in a diesel occurs so easily
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and nobody means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol vehicle at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the error runs one way.
When routine and your car stop matching, it takes place. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. Racing for a train outside Ewell West and filling up en route. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Renault Clio in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Throw in a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and habit wins.
Next time you fill up around Ewell: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — yet not on every forecourt. Trust the label on the petrol pump, not the colour.
- Check the filler flap. Plenty of cars state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in a vehicle you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, for a household with one of each.
- Say it before you lift it. On the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the petrol pump. It seems daft and it works.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make whilst your mind is on something else, so the phone goes away.
- Some diesels have a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- The moment you notice, stop: less petrol inside your tank makes a weaker blend. What to do next does not change, though — still do not start the vehicle.
Put petrol in a diesel around Ewell already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off as well. If you are still on the forecourt — Esso or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you push the car away from the pump. What was put in, about how much, and if it's run: tell us those when you ring 0333 366 0103.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a different problem, with its own page for Ewell, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection.
What makes one Ewell petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
The four situations above are four separate tasks, so no single quote for this would be honest. Which of them you are in is mostly what moves your cost. The ratio matters next, meaning how much of the tank is petrol, and then the location of your car and whether getting to it is safe for a technician.
What got in, how much, and if it's run — three questions our engineers ask before costing, not after, for precisely that reason. Their answers are what turn a range into one firm number.
About Ewell itself
Ewell is a town in Surrey, situated on the River Hogsmill, with a mix of semi-detached housing and other residential properties. Ewell sits at an elevation of around 37 metres, close to the North Downs and near the towns of East Ewell, Stoneleigh, and West Ewell. Ewell is located approximately 12 miles from central London, making it a commuter town with good transport links. Ewell has a population of around 23557 people, living in a range of housing types, predominantly semi-detached homes.
Across Surrey and around Ewell: fuel drain cover
Ewell sits in the KT postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the places near it as well — East Ewell, Stoneleigh and West Ewell among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all locations our technicians drain, and the car does not need to come to us.
In Ewell and still at the petrol pump?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better spot. Phone, and leave it turned off.