Petrol in a Diesel Car in Ferryhill Station: How Worried Should You Be?
Likely less than you already are — as long as nobody has started the car. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to the motor till something draws it through the system — your ignition priming your pump, your starter, or the drive itself. So the fair answer to the first query anyone in Ferryhill Station asks, "have I ruined it?", is generally no. Keep it like that: leave your engine off and phone Petrol in Diesel. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it's travelled, and how to stop it from happening a second time: that is the remainder of this page.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
Diesel does two jobs on its way through a motor. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. The high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors are made to very fine gaps, and your diesel passing through them is what keeps those surfaces from grinding against each other.
Of those two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second never. The knocking comes from petrol being designed not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is runnier than diesel, it strips out the lubrication your system depends on, and any pump working on that mixture is wearing itself.
Together, those leave the shape of the issue plain. The damage is done by circulation, not by contact. Petrol in the tank is a fuel problem. Once the pump has been labouring on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: whatever is shed by a pump that's grinding travels downstream to the fuel injectors with your fuel.
Four scenarios we see in Ferryhill Station: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled, and never started: no case is better. On a forecourt, and truly only there, that petrol is still confined to that tank — because everywhere else the vehicle was driven to get to it. The job is emptying and purging on the spot.
Your ignition switched on, or a brief start. With the fuel system primed, your lines and filter already contain petrol that has come from the tank. Still normally straightforward: drain, flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
Driven a couple of miles. Now the pump has spent those miles running on diluted fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the whole system: that's this work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the mileage. Short trips, such as the school run to Ferryhill Station Primary School, are one matter. A run as far as Durham, under 10 miles away, is a very different task. So is any mileage on the A1(M), under 3 miles from Ferryhill Station, where your engine has been labouring hard the whole time.
Knocking, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. The fuel is not behaving like diesel any more, and your motor is telling you. Leave it wherever it stops: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Haig Street. Permanent damage is very rare when a car is pulled over early, and the fuel drain and flush that still come first deal with it.
Ferryhill Station motorists and the petrol in a diesel stories they hear
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be." A bigger tank of the same mixture is all it gives, because topping up takes out nothing. A diesel fuel system doesn't tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice supposes.
"Newer diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the opposite. At higher pressure, through finer parts: that's how a newer diesel handles its fuel, so the protection counts for more, not less.
The myth that catches people out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor normally means a motor that won't run: the driver stops, and so does the damage. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally starts, idles and drives away like nothing has happened — all the while its pump is wearing. Running doesn't mean fine.
An outdated fix for a separate issue lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." None of what petrol weakened is put back by it — and afterwards, the tank still holds the petrol.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, since after it's been running some petrol lies in the filter and lines, ready to go straight back through your pump at your next start. It's also genuinely risky to drain petrol into a can at the roadside.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
Carelessness is rarely 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 mostly won't go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the slip runs one way.
Habit and your car getting out of step is how it takes place. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that is new. Two motors on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. A forecourt you know, but with its pumps laid out differently. A rushed fill on the way to Newton Aycliffe with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. With rain, a call arriving, or a car full of children to deal with, your hand just does what it always has.
Next time you fill up around Ferryhill Station: preventing petrol in a diesel
- The label is what matters, so read the petrol pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt.
- The first fill in a strange vehicle is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, plenty of cars state which fuel they take.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, for a home 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 silly and it does the trick.
- Put the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you are thinking about something else.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for vehicles without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- Less petrol means a thinner mix, and so stop as soon as you realise — though remembering that the next step is unchanged. It is still not to start the car.
Ferryhill Station: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then, there is only a short order of things. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition switched off as well. Ask the staff to help you push it clear of the pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that's BP or somewhere else. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has been run.
Corrosion and deposits form the issue with AdBlue, where petrol means lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Ferryhill Station page.
Ferryhill Station petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
Four separate tasks sit behind the four scenarios above — which is why there's no honest single quote. What shifts your cost is mostly which of them you're in. Two things follow that: the petrol that got in as a proportion of what your tank takes, then the place your car is in and whether a technician can reach it safely.
Three queries come first, before any quote, rather than after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. The replies turn a range into a straight figure.
About Ferryhill Station, briefly
Ferryhill Station is a small locality in County Durham, situated inland at an elevation of 81 metres, approximately 7.3 miles from the city of Durham. Ferryhill Station lies near several nearby villages, including Chilton Lane, Mainsforth, and Great Chilton, and is characterized by its predominantly terraced housing. Ferryhill Station is a relatively small community, with a population of around 562 people, and is located about 226.6 miles north of London.
Across Durham and around Ferryhill Station: fuel drain cover
Ferryhill Station rests in the DL postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the locations around it as well — Chilton Lane, Mainsforth and Great Chilton among them. The vehicle does not need to come to us: our engineers drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
At the pump around Ferryhill Station, still?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better place. Keep the car turned off, and ring.