Petrol in a Diesel Car in Ham Common: How Worried Should You Be?
Far less than you likely are, if it hasn't been started. Till the ignition primes your pump, your starter turns, or the vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply waits there and does no harm. Which makes the honest reply to that first Ham Common query — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. Keep it like that: leave your engine off and phone Petrol in Diesel. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel engine, the clues of how far it has spread, and ways to make sure you don't do it again.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Passing through a motor, diesel is doing two things at the same time. It burns, and before it combusts it protects. The high-pressure fuel pump and your injectors are built to very fine clearances, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing against one another.
Petrol handles the first task badly and the second not at all. A pump working on a petrol mixture is wearing itself out, because petrol is thinner than diesel and strips out the protection the fuel system relies on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that is where any clattering starts.
Combined, those make the shape of the issue clear. The damage is done by circulation, not by contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with the fuel to the injectors downstream.
Ham Common, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to major
Fuelled up, not once started. The best case there is. The petrol is in the tank and just your tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one scenario that can only truly happen at a forecourt, because anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Your ignition switched on, or a brief start. The system has been bled, and so petrol has left that tank and reached your filter and the lines. Drain, flush, deal with the filter: still usually easy.
The pump now worked a few miles on thinned fuel — that's what driving the vehicle does. Distance is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters equally. Either way this work runs to that tank, the fuel lines, the filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. The school run to St Mary the Virgin Church of England Primary School is one thing. Very different again: a run to Salisbury, under 25 miles away, or any distance on the M27, under 50 miles from Ham Common, where your engine kept labouring hard.
Driven until it protested. Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The motor is telling you your fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Stop where you are — on the verge on Pheasant Way, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it again. A vehicle stopped early very seldom has permanent damage, as the drain and the flush, which still come first, sort it out.
Petrol in a diesel stories Ham Common motorists hear
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It does not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you're left with a fuller tank, still the same mixture. That guidance assumes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It does not.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. A current diesel sends its fuel through smaller parts at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
One myth that catches motorists out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor generally means a motor that will not run: the motorist stops, and so does the damage. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, idles and drives away as if nothing has happened, whilst the pump wears. Being able to run is not proof of being fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It's an outdated workaround for a distinct issue. That petrol is still in the tank after that, and what it has weakened is not put back.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you are sorted." After the engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer in that tank: it's in your filter and the lines, and it goes straight back through your pump on the next start. It's also really hazardous to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
It's seldom carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol vehicle at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the error runs one way.
The moment routine stops matching your car is the moment it takes place. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that is brand new. Two motors on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. Racing for a train outside Gillingham (Dorset) and fuelling up en route. Precisely the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Passat for the first time. Throw in a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and the hand wins.
Next time you fill up around Ham Common: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most generally do. Read the pump's label; the colour is only a hint.
- In a vehicle you do not know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before the first fill: many cars print the fuel there.
- Good intentions count for less than a sticker or a fob in a bright colour on the diesel's key if a house has one of each. So label it.
- Before the nozzle comes off the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" aloud. Silly, yes, yet it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put your phone away and keep your mind on the petrol pump.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices are available for the remainder. Treat it as a backstop, then keep checking the petrol pump.
- Spotting it mid-fill? Stop at once. A weaker blend follows from less petrol inside that tank, yet your next stage remains the same: do not crank it.
Ham Common: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is short, then. Never start it, and do not switch your ignition on. Yet at the forecourt, at Shell or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you push it clear of the pump. What got in, roughly how much, and if it's run: tell us those when you ring 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost lubrication, make it a separate issue — Ham Common has a page all for it.
What makes one Ham Common petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
The four situations above are four different tasks, so no single quote for this would be honest. Mostly, the cost moves with which situation you're in. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a share of what that tank holds, then the place the car is in and whether a van can get to it safely.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three queries: your fuel that went in, the volume, and whether it has run. That is why. A range turns into a straight figure once those replies are in.
About Ham Common and its setting
Ham Common is a locality situated on the riverside in Dorset, with an elevation of 71 metres, and is located near the villages of Ham and Madjeston. Ham Common has a population of approximately 844 residents, who mostly live in semi-detached houses. Ham Common is close to the town of Gillingham and is about 20 miles from the city of Salisbury, while being around 98 miles from London.
Fuel drain cover around Ham Common and across Dorset
Ham Common sits in the SP postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the locations near it as well — Ham, Madjeston and Gillingham among them. No need to bring the vehicle to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all places where we work.
Still at the petrol pump around Ham Common?
Nothing beats it: that's where you now are. Call, and keep it turned off.