Freeport Village: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Not started? Then less worried than you probably are. Till your ignition primes your pump, your starter turns, or your vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply waits there and does nothing. Which makes the honest reply to that first Freeport Village query — "have I ruined it?" — normally no. Keep it like that: leave the motor off then ring Petrol in Diesel. The remainder of this page explains what petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it does not happen to you again.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel does
On its way through a motor, diesel has two jobs. It burns, and before it burns it lubricates. The high-pressure pump and the injectors are built to very fine tolerances, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from grinding against each other.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. It is runnier than diesel and strips away the lubrication the 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 opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That is where the clattering comes from.
The shape of the issue is clear when you put those together. The harm is done by circulation, not by contact. Where the petrol is only inside the tank, it is a problem of fuel, nothing more. The start of a mechanical one is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the injectors downstream.
Petrol in a diesel in Freeport Village: how bad is it? Four situations
Fuelled up, never started. The best case there can be. That petrol is in the tank and just the tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the car stands. This is the one scenario that can only really happen at a forecourt, as anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Started for a moment, or just your ignition on. The system has been bled, and so petrol has left that tank and got to your filter and the lines. Normally little more than draining, rinsing and sorting your filter, so still simple.
Driven a couple of miles. Now your pump has spent those miles running on diluted fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel put through the entire circuit: that's the work, and the way your car was driven matters as much as the miles. Driving the children to the local primary school is one sort of trip. Any distance on the M8, under 3 miles from Freeport Village, means the engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Dunfermline, under 25 miles away, makes a very different job too.
Driven on till it protested — rattling, smoke, a lumpy idle, a dead throttle. That is your engine telling you its fuel has stopped acting like diesel. Stop on the spot — on the verge on B792, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it. The drain and flush still go first, and they sort it out: if a vehicle is pulled over quickly, permanent damage is very uncommon.
Stories Freeport Village motorists hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a bigger tank, still the same mixture. The assumption behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
"Modern diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and nearer the opposite. Protection counts more on current diesels, not less, since their fuel runs through more precise parts at higher pressure.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." This is the one that catches motorists. A petrol engine fed diesel normally will not run, and so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually will; meanwhile the pump grinds. Running isn't the same as fine.
An old fix for a different fault lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." That petrol is still in your tank after that, and what it has diluted is not put back.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol lies in your filter and lines, ready to go right back through the pump at the next start. Clearing petrol into a can by the kerbside is also really hazardous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
Carelessness is rarely the cause, and nobody means to do it. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol motor at all. So the slip runs one way.
It happens when routine and the vehicle stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A train to catch, and a rushed fill on the way to West Calder. Precisely the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Passat for the first time. Your hand repeats what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Next time you fill up in Freeport Village: preventing petrol in a diesel
- The label is what matters, and so read the petrol pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt.
- Inspect your filler flap. Plenty of cars state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it 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 the diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- Before the nozzle comes off the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" aloud. Silly, perhaps, yet it does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, so put your phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- Add-on devices exist for cars without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a safety net at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop there and then. A weaker mix results from less petrol inside that tank, yet the next step stays the same: don't fire it up.
Put petrol in a diesel in Freeport Village already?
Then the order of things is short. Do not crank it, and do not turn the ignition on. The staff on the forecourt — whether at BP itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help push it away from the petrol pump if you ask. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — your fuel, the approximate quantity, and whether it has run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That's a separate problem — corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection — and it has its own page for Freeport Village.
Freeport Village petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
Four different tasks sit behind the four scenarios above — which is why there is no fair single price. Which of them you are in is mostly what shifts your cost. Two things come after that: the petrol that was put in as a proportion of what that tank takes, then the spot your car is in and whether a van can get to it safely.
That is why we ask three questions before pricing rather than after: what was put in, how much, and if it has run. A range turns into a straight figure when the answers are in.
About Freeport Village
Freeport Village is a small locality situated on the riverside in West Lothian, with a mix of detached housing and a population of around 651 residents. Freeport Village sits at an elevation of 159 metres, near the towns of Mossend, West Calder, and Addiewell. Freeport Village is located approximately 15.8 miles from Dunfermline, the nearest city, and is part of the wider Scottish landscape. Freeport Village has a relatively rural setting, despite being within commuting distance of larger towns.
Fuel drain cover across West Lothian, Freeport Village included
Freeport Village rests in the EH postcode area, and our teams that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the locations around it as well — Mossend, West Calder and Addiewell among them. The car doesn't need to move to us: we drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
In Freeport Village and still at the pump?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Ring, and keep it switched off.