Hall Cliffe: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Probably less than you are now — as long as no one has started the vehicle. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to the engine until something pulls it through the fuel system — the ignition priming your pump, the starter, or the drive on its own. So the fair answer to the first query everyone around Hall Cliffe asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. Leave the engine off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has spread, and the way to make sure you don't repeat it.
Inside the motor: what petrol in a diesel does
On its way through a motor, diesel has two jobs. It protects first, and only then does it burn. Very fine gaps are built into the injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and just the diesel running through stops those surfaces grinding together.
Of those two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second never. A pump working on a petrol mixture is wearing itself out, because petrol is runnier than diesel and strips out the protection the fuel system relies on. Petrol is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that is where any rattling starts.
The shape of the trouble is clear once you put those together. It is circulation that causes the damage, not contact. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel issue. Once your pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical issue has begun: anything shed by a pump that's grinding is carried onward to the fuel injectors with the fuel.
Hall Cliffe, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to significant
Filled up, and never started: nothing beats it. Only the tank has petrol in it, and so the job is clearing the tank and flushing the system where your car sits. This situation can only truly take place on a forecourt: anywhere else, the vehicle got there by being driven.
A brief spell of running, or just your ignition on. Once primed, the fuel system has pulled petrol from the tank as far as the fuel filter and the fuel lines. That is generally still a straightforward task — a drain, a flush, and the filter seen to.
A few miles driven, and your pump has spent every one of them labouring on weakened fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the whole circuit: that's this work, and the way the car was driven counts as much as the mileage. A school run to Horbury St Peter's and Clifton CofE (VC) Primary School is one thing. Driving as far as Wakefield, under 3 miles away, makes a very different job — as does any miles on the M1, under a mile from Hall Cliffe, with the motor labouring hard the whole time.
Knocking, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. That's your motor telling you its fuel no longer is behaving like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Dovecote Lane, a lay-by, a side street — then leave the vehicle there. What goes first is still the drain and flush-through, and that sorts it out, with long-term damage very uncommon if a vehicle is stopped soon.
Hall Cliffe motorists and the petrol in a diesel myths they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mix. The idea behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. More precise parts and higher pressure are how a current diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, so no harm done" — the myth that catches most drivers than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it normally won't run, so the driver stops — and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually starts, idles and pulls away like nothing happened — all the while its pump wears. Fine and running are not the same at all.
Not so: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It is an old fix, meant for another fault. The petrol is still in your tank after that, and what it has thinned is not put back.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump out of your lines and your filter, where some of that ends up after the engine has run. That's why a DIY tank drain does not sort it — a myth. And, a can of petrol drained by the roadside is truly risky.
Why petrol in a diesel occurs at all
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. A diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol car, yet the smaller petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel almost without resistance — so forecourts make this one error simple, and only in one direction.
It takes place when habit and the car stop matching. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. Two vehicles on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. Filling up in a rush on the way to Wakefield Westgate, with a train to catch. Precisely the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Passat for the first time. With rain, a call arriving, or children to deal with, the hand simply does what it always has.
Next time you fill up around Hall Cliffe: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Read the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt. The label is what matters.
- The first fill in a strange vehicle is the time to check the filler flap — on it, or on the cap, many vehicles state the fuel they take.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a house with one of each.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, perhaps, but it does the trick.
- Tuck 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 block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for vehicles without one. They are a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- As soon as you realise, stop: less petrol inside your tank means a thinner mix. What to do next doesn't change, though — still do not start the car.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Hall Cliffe?
The order of things is short, then. Starting it is out, and so is switching on the ignition. Still on the forecourt, at Asda Express or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it's been run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a separate fault — Hall Cliffe has a page all for it.
One petrol in a diesel task in Hall Cliffe costs more than another. Why?
There's no honest single price for this, because the four scenarios above are four separate jobs. Mostly, the cost moves with which one you're in. Two things follow that: the petrol that was put in as a proportion of what that tank takes, then the place the vehicle is in and whether a van can reach it safely.
That is why our technicians ask three questions before costing instead of after: what went in, how much, and whether it has run. Those replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Hall Cliffe itself
Hall Cliffe is a suburban area located near Wakefield in West Yorkshire, sitting at an elevation of 84 metres in the inland landscape. Hall Cliffe is characterized by its semi-detached housing stock, which reflects the typical residential development of the region. Hall Cliffe is close to nearby places such as Horbury, Spring End, and Addingford, and is situated approximately 2.7 miles from Wakefield. Hall Cliffe has a population of around 5024 residents.
Across West Yorkshire and around Hall Cliffe: fuel drain cover
Horbury, Spring End and Addingford are among the locations around Hall Cliffe that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel calls across Hall Cliffe's WF postcode area. The vehicle does not need to come to us: our technicians drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
At the petrol pump in Hall Cliffe, right now?
The best place there is, then — that's where you are. Turned off it remains; then call.