Petrol in a Diesel Car in Grigg: How Worried Should You Be?
Probably less than you are now — provided no one has started it. Everyone around Grigg begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the honest answer is generally no: petrol left inside the tank of any diesel remains harmless till priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. Leave your engine off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it like that. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has spread, and ways to make sure you don't repeat it.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what happens
On its way through an engine, diesel has two tasks. It lubricates first, and after that does it burn. Built to very fine gaps, the fuel injectors and the pump depend on the diesel moving through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Petrol handles the first job poorly and the second not at all. The knocking comes from petrol being designed not to ignite when compressed, which is exactly the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is runnier than diesel, it strips out the protection your system depends on, and any pump working on such a mixture is wearing itself.
The shape of the problem is plain once you put those together. Not contact but movement is what causes the damage. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel fault. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, carried by your fuel, into your injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has been working on the petrol is where a mechanical fault begins.
Grigg, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to significant
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. That petrol is in that tank and only the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one scenario that can only really take place at a forecourt, as anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Your system has been primed, so petrol has left that tank and got to the fuel filter and your lines. Usually little more than clearing, purging and sorting the filter, and so still straightforward.
Those few miles driven meant your pump labouring on fuel weakened by petrol the whole way. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel put through the entire system: that's the work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the miles. A school run to Headcorn Primary School is one matter. Very different once more: a run to Canterbury, under 25 miles away, or some distance on the M20, under 5 miles from Grigg, where your engine never stopped labouring hard.
Knocking, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. That is the motor telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Whether it's the verge on Grigg Lane, a lay-by or a side road, stop there then leave it. Permanent damage is very uncommon if a car is pulled over quickly, and the drain and flush that still go first sort it out.
Grigg drivers and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll 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 accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
If anything, the reverse is true. Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Lubrication counts more on newer diesels, not less, because their fuel passes through finer components at higher pressure.
This is the one that catches people. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." Any petrol motor fed diesel normally will not run, so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually does; meanwhile the pump grinds. Running doesn't mean fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a different fault. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and that petrol is still in the tank after that.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump out of your lines and the filter, where some of it sits after the engine has been run. That is why a DIY tank drain doesn't leave you sorted — a myth. Besides, petrol cleared into a can by the road is truly dangerous.
Why petrol in a diesel occurs so easily
No one does it on purpose, and it's seldom carelessness. One way only, since of the nozzles: the slimmer petrol one slips inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whereas the diesel one generally will not fit a petrol motor. That is how the forecourt makes it easy.
When routine and the car stop matching, it takes place. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. Your normal forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to Headcorn. Exactly the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand does what it has always done.
Next time you fill up in Grigg: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Check the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Check your filler flap. Plenty of cars state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on your first fill in any car you do not know.
- Label your key. In a household with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- Say it before you lift it. On the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the pump. It sounds silly and it works.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you're thinking about something else.
- Add-on devices are available for cars without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't take a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol in the tank makes a thinner mixture. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Grigg?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Don't start the car, and don't turn your ignition on. The attendants on the forecourt — whether at Texaco itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help roll it clear of the petrol pump if you ask. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has been run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That is a separate problem — corrosion and deposits and not lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Grigg.
Why one petrol in a diesel task around Grigg costs more than another
A fair single quote does not exist here: four scenarios, four separate tasks. What shifts the cost is chiefly which of them you are in. Next it's the ratio — how much petrol went in against how much your tank holds — and after that where your car is and whether our van can get to it safely.
Three queries come first, before quoting, rather than after — what got in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. Those answers turn a range into a straight figure.
About Grigg, for a moment
Grigg is a small locality in Kent, situated on the riverside at an elevation of around 25 metres. Grigg lies near the villages of Swifts Green, Southernden, and Smarden Bell, and is approximately 20 miles from Canterbury. Grigg has a population of around 581 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Grigg is also within commuting distance of London, being around 41 miles from the capital.
Fuel drain cover in Grigg and across Kent
Grigg rests in the TN postcode area, and the vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the locations near it as well — Swifts Green, Southernden and Smarden Bell among them. The car does not need to come to us: our technicians drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
In Grigg and still at the petrol pump?
The best place there is, then — that's where you are. Keep it off. Call.