Felling: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Unstarted? Then less worried than you probably are. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first thing everyone around Felling asks, and the honest answer is usually no, because petrol resting in a diesel tank hurts nothing until it's drawn through the system — by ignition priming, by the starter, or by driving. Leave your engine off and ring Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. Further down, 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 your engine?
On its way through an engine, diesel does two tasks. Before it combusts, it lubricates — and then it ignites. Your high-pressure pump and your injectors are designed to extremely fine clearances, and the diesel passing through them is what keeps those surfaces from wearing down against each other.
The second task petrol does not do at all, and the first it does poorly. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the protection a fuel system needs, leaving a pump on the blend to wear itself. It's also made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the clattering.
The shape of the problem is plain when you put those together. The harm is done by movement, not by contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. Once your pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: anything shed by a pump that's wearing down is carried downstream to your injectors with your fuel.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four situations we see around Felling
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. The petrol is in that tank and just your tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where your car sits. This is the one situation that can only truly happen on a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Once primed, the system has pulled petrol from that tank up to your filter and the fuel lines. That is normally still a straightforward task — a drain, a flush, and your filter seen to.
Your pump now worked a couple of miles on weakened fuel — that is what driving the vehicle meant. Distance is only half of it; how hard it was driven matters equally. Either way the work includes the tank, the lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the entire system. Short trips, such as the school run to Brandling Primary School, are one thing. A run as far as Newcastle upon Tyne, under 3 miles away, is a very different task. So is any distance on the A194(M), under 3 miles from Felling, where the engine has been running hard the whole time.
Driven on until it complained — rattling, smoke, a lumpy idle, a soft throttle. That is your engine telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Saint Johns Place, a lay-by, a side street — then leave the vehicle there. The fuel drain and flush-through still come first, and they deal with it: if a vehicle is pulled over soon, long-term damage is very rare.
What Felling drivers get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mix. The idea behind that guidance — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
"Current diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and nearer the reverse. At higher pressure, through finer parts: that's how a current diesel handles its fuel, so the lubrication counts more, not less.
This is the one that catches people. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." Any petrol engine fed diesel normally will not run, and so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. Whilst your pump wears, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened. Being able to run is not the same as being fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It is an old fix, supposed for another issue. None of what petrol thinned is put back by it — and later, the tank still holds the petrol.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, because after it has been running some petrol sits in the filter and lines, waiting to go right back through your pump on your next start. And, a can of petrol filled by the kerbside is truly hazardous.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol car at all. So the error runs one way.
It happens when habit and your car stop matching. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. Two vehicles on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Rushing for a train outside Heworth and fuelling up en route. A new-to-you diesel Renault Megane, its first fuelling, and a motorist accustomed to petrol: exactly when it occurs. With rain, a call coming in, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand simply does what it always has.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel on your next fill-up around Felling
- The label is what counts, and so check the pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt.
- Plenty of motors state the fuel type inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in any motor you do not know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for a house with one of each.
- It sounds silly and it does the trick: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the pump.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make while your mind is on something else, so your phone goes away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for vehicles without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Spotting it halfway? Stop at once. A weaker mixture follows from less petrol inside that tank, but your next step remains the same: do not start it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Felling already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Never fire it up, and don't switch your ignition on. If you are still at the forecourt — Jet or anywhere else — ask the attendants to help you roll it away from the pump. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what got in, roughly how much, and whether it has run.
If it was AdBlue and not petrol, say so. That's a separate fault — corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Felling.
Felling petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
The four scenarios above are four separate tasks, so no single price for this would be honest. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving the cost. Where the vehicle is matters too, and whether our van can safely get to it, after the proportion of petrol to what your tank holds.
Three questions come first, before quoting, rather than after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. Those replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Felling
Felling is a suburban area located inland in Tyne and Wear, England, with an elevation of 51 metres above sea level. Felling sits approximately 2.4 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne, and is situated near other local areas such as Old Fold and Heworth Lane. Felling has a population of around 5217 people, and its predominant housing stock consists of semi-detached homes. Felling is also close to the Felling Shore, which offers views of the surrounding area.
Fuel drain cover in Felling and across Tyne and Wear
Petrol in diesel call-outs in Felling — part of the NE postcode area — go to teams that also cover the spots about it, Old Fold, Heworth Lane and Felling Shore among them. The car does not need to come to us: we drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
At the pump around Felling, still?
The best position there is, then — that's where you are. Keep the car turned off, then ring.