How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Glenavy
Provided it has not been started, you can worry less than you probably are. Until your ignition primes your pump, your starter turns, or the vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply rests there and does nothing. Which makes the honest reply to the first Glenavy question — "have I ruined it?" — usually no. Keep it like that: leave your engine off and call Petrol in Diesel. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the clues of how far it has got, and the way to make sure you never do it again.
The motor and petrol in a diesel: what happens
Diesel does two jobs on its way through an engine. Lubricating comes before burning; it does both. Made to extremely fine tolerances, the fuel injectors and the pump rely on the diesel moving through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
Of those two tasks, petrol manages the first poorly and the second not at all. A pump working on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, because petrol is runnier than diesel and strips out the protection your fuel system relies on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that's where the knocking comes.
Together, those leave the shape of the trouble plain. It is circulation that does the harm, not contact. Petrol in a tank is a fuel problem. Whatever a worn pump sheds travels on, borne by the fuel, into the injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has worked on the petrol is where a mechanical issue starts.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four situations we see around Glenavy
Fuelled but not once started — the best it gets. Being on a forecourt is what makes this the case: elsewhere, the vehicle has been driven there to begin with. With that petrol held inside the tank alone, it's cleared and cleaned on the spot, and nothing more is needed.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Petrol has left the tank and got to the filter and your lines, since your system has been bled. Still generally simple: drain, flush, and your filter dealt with.
The pump now worked a few miles on diluted fuel — that is what driving the car does. The work is the tank, the fuel lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the whole system, and how hard the car was driven matters as much as how far. The school run to the local primary school is one matter. Any mileage on the M77, over 50 miles from Glenavy, means your engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Lisburn, under 10 miles away, is a very different job too.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, knocking, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone uneven. The engine is telling you your fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Leave it wherever it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Chalet Road. What goes first is still the drain and flush, and that deals with it, with permanent damage very uncommon if a car is stopped quickly.
Myths Glenavy motorists hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. A bigger tank of the same mix is all you get, since topping up removes nothing. The idea behind the guidance — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. Finer parts and higher pressure are the way a current diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication count more, not less.
One myth that catches motorists off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it usually will not run, so the motorist stops — and the harm stops with them. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually does; meanwhile your pump wears. Running isn't the same as fine.
An outdated workaround for a different fault lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." None of what petrol diluted gets put back by it — and afterwards, the tank still contains that petrol.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol lies in the filter and lines, waiting to go straight back through the pump on your next start. Emptying petrol into a can at the roadside is also genuinely dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two and slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol vehicle at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the mistake runs one way.
It takes place when habit and the vehicle stop matching. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that's new. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. Rushing for a train at the nearest station and fuelling up en route. Years of petrol cars behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Passat in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand repeats what it has always done.
Glenavy people: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- The label is what counts, and so read the petrol pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on each forecourt.
- In a motor you do not know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before your first fill: plenty of motors state the fuel type there.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key achieves more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a house with one of each.
- It sounds daft and it works: on the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, so tuck your phone away and keep your mind on the pump.
- 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 safety net, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- Stop the moment you notice. Less petrol inside the tank means a thinner blend. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel in Glenavy?
The order of things is short, then. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off as well. Yet on the forecourt, at the nearest petrol station or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push the car away from the pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what got in, about how much, and if it's been run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a separate problem — Glenavy has a page all for it.
Why one petrol in a diesel task around Glenavy costs more than another
Four separate tasks sit behind the four scenarios above — which is why there's no fair single price. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving the cost. After that it is the share — how much petrol got in against how much the tank holds — and after that where the vehicle is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Three questions come first, before any quote, rather than after — what was put in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. The answers change a range into a straight figure.
About Glenavy, for a moment
Glenavy is a small locality in County Antrim, situated inland at an elevation of 72 metres, approximately 9 miles from Lisburn. Glenavy is characterised by its semi-detached housing and is located near other settlements such as Crumlin and Lower Ballinderry. Glenavy has a population of around 868 people and is part of the wider region surrounding Belfast. Glenavy is also close to Aldergrove, which is a notable nearby place.
Fuel drain cover across County Antrim, Glenavy included
Glenavy sits in the BT postcode area, and our teams that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the locations near it as well — Crumlin, Lower Ballinderry and Aldergrove among them. The vehicle does not need to move to us: we drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
Glenavy: still at the pump?
The best place there is, then — that's where you are. Switched off it remains; then call.