Petrol in a Diesel Car in Fartown Green: How Worried Should You Be?
Probably less than you are now — provided nobody has started it. Everyone in Fartown Green starts with "have I ruined it?", and the fair answer is usually no: petrol left inside your tank of any diesel remains harmless until priming, cranking or driving pulls it into the system. To leave the car that way, phone Petrol in Diesel then leave the engine switched off. Below, you will find what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it might have got, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
What petrol in a diesel does to the motor
Passing through a motor, diesel does two jobs at once. It burns, and before it combusts it lubricates. Made to extremely fine tolerances, the fuel injectors and your pump rely on your diesel moving through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. A pump working on a petrol mixture is wearing itself out, since petrol is thinner than diesel and takes away the lubrication the fuel system depends on. Petrol is also made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that's where the rattling starts.
Put those together and the shape of the trouble is clear. It's movement that does the damage, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel fault. Once your pump has been working on that petrol, a mechanical issue has begun: anything shed by a pump that's wearing down travels downstream to the fuel injectors with your fuel.
Four scenarios our technicians see in Fartown Green: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Filled up, and not started: no case is better. The petrol is inside that tank and just that tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car stands. This is the one situation that can only truly happen on a forecourt, since anywhere else your car has been driven to get there.
The ignition turned on, or a brief start. Once primed, the fuel system has pulled petrol from your tank up to your filter and your lines. Drain, flush, see to your filter: still usually straightforward.
Your pump has worked a few miles on diluted fuel — that's what driving the vehicle meant. Mileage is only half of it; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way the work includes the tank, the fuel lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit. On the school run to Ashbrow School, the distance is small. Any miles on the M62, under 3 miles from Fartown Green, means the motor working hard throughout, and a run to Bradford, under 10 miles away, is a very different task too.
Clattering, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. What you are hearing is your engine reporting fuel that no longer behaves like diesel. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Alder Street. The drain and flush still go first, and they take care of it: if a car is pulled over quickly, lasting damage is very rare.
What Fartown Green drivers get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mixture. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol, however much that advice supposes.
If anything, the opposite holds. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Protection counts more on modern diesels, not less, because their fuel runs through finer parts at higher pressure.
This is the one that fools motorists. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." The driver of a petrol motor fed diesel usually stops, because it will not run, and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened, while your pump wears. Running doesn't mean fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It is an outdated fix for a separate issue. What petrol has weakened remains diluted, and that petrol stays inside the tank anyway.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." After your engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer inside that tank: it is in the filter and the lines, and it goes straight back through the pump on your next start. Emptying petrol into a can by the roadside is also truly hazardous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. A diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol car, yet the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake straightforward, and only in that direction.
It happens when routine and the car stop matching. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. Your normal forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Rushing for a train at Deighton and fuelling up en route. The first fill-up in a diesel Renault Clio after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it occurs. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids, and your hand does what it has always done.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Fartown Green
- The label is what counts, and so read the pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt.
- Plenty of vehicles state the fuel type inside your filler flap or on the cap, so check there on the first fill in any car you don't know.
- Label the key. In a home with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- "Diesel", aloud, before you lift the nozzle — every time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It sounds silly. It does the trick.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you're thinking about something else.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler built to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for the remainder. Treat it as a safety net, and keep reading the petrol pump.
- Spotting it halfway? Stop there and then. A weaker blend follows from less petrol inside the tank, yet the next stage stays the same: do not start it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Fartown Green already?
Then, there's only a short order of things. Don't switch your ignition on, and don't start it. Still on the forecourt, at Asda or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push the vehicle clear of the pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has been run.
Corrosion and deposits are the issue with AdBlue, whereas petrol means lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Fartown Green page.
One petrol in a diesel task around Fartown Green costs more than another. Why?
Four different jobs lie behind the four scenarios above — which is why there is no honest single quote. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving the cost. Next it's the share — how much petrol got in against how much that tank holds — and then where the vehicle is and whether our van can get to it safely.
What was put in, how much, and if it has run — three questions our technicians ask before quoting, not after, for exactly that reason. The replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Fartown Green itself
Fartown Green is a suburban area in West Yorkshire, situated near the River Calder at an elevation of around 75 metres. Fartown Green lies approximately 8.8 miles from Bradford and is characterised by its predominantly terraced housing stock. Fartown Green is close to nearby places such as Woodhouse Hill, Brackenhall, and Sheepridge, and is home to a population of around 5157 people.
Fartown Green and West Yorkshire: where our fuel drain cover runs
Woodhouse Hill, Brackenhall and Sheepridge are among the locations near Fartown Green that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel calls across Fartown Green's HD postcode area. Our technicians drain wherever your car is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
In Fartown Green and still at the petrol pump?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better position. Keep the car turned off, then ring.