Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Hargate Hill
Likely less than you are now — provided nobody has started it. Everyone in Hargate Hill starts with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is generally no: petrol resting inside your tank of any diesel remains harmless till priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with the engine kept off, so it stays that way. Below, this page sets out what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it might have gone, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Two tasks fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. Before it ignites, it lubricates — and then it combusts. The high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors are made to very fine tolerances, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing down against one another.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. It's thinner than diesel and takes 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 reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That is where the clattering comes from.
Seen together, they make clear what shape the issue has. The damage is done by circulation, not by contact. Where the petrol is only in your tank, it's an issue of fuel, nothing more. The start of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the injectors beyond it.
Four scenarios our engineers see around Hargate Hill: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
Filled up, and never started: no case is better. On a forecourt, and genuinely only there, the petrol is still confined to the tank — since everywhere else the vehicle was driven to get to it. The job is emptying and purging on the spot.
Your ignition turned on, or a short start. Once primed, your system has pulled petrol from that tank as far as your filter and the fuel lines. Drain, flush, see to the fuel filter: still usually easy.
Driven a few miles. Now the pump has spent those miles running on diluted fuel. The work is your tank, the lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit, and how hard the car was driven counts as much as how far. Driving the kids to St Margaret's Catholic Voluntary Academy is one kind of trip. Getting as far as Manchester, under 15 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any miles on the M67, under 3 miles from Hargate Hill, with the engine working hard all the way.
Driven on till it protested — knocking, smoke, a lumpy idle, a soft throttle. The engine is telling you the fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Pull up on the spot — on the verge on Storth Meadow Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it. A vehicle pulled over early very rarely has lasting damage, as the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still go first, deal with it.
Petrol in a diesel stories Hargate Hill drivers hear
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a fuller tank, still the same mixture. The assumption behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Not so: a modern diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the opposite. A modern diesel sends its fuel through finer parts at higher pressure, which makes the protection count more, not less.
One myth that catches motorists off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Any petrol engine fed diesel generally 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 does; meanwhile the pump wears. Fine and running are not the same at all.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, borrowed from a fix from years ago, for a separate issue. None of what petrol diluted gets put back by it — and later, the tank still holds that petrol.
Once the engine has run, part of the petrol is in the fuel filter and your lines, not your tank — and your next start pulls it straight back through your pump. So the myth "drain your tank yourself and you are sorted" does not stand up. It is also truly dangerous to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and nobody means to do it. One way only, since of the nozzles: the narrower petrol one slips inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while the diesel one mostly won't fit a petrol motor. That is how the forecourt makes it easy.
It occurs when routine and your car stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to Dinting. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it occurs. With rain, a call arriving, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand just does what it always has.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Hargate Hill
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most generally do. Check the pump's label; the colour is only a clue.
- Many cars state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in any motor you do not know.
- Mark your key. In a house with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- It seems silly and it works: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Tuck your phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you're thinking about something else.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for vehicles without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- Stop the moment you notice. Less petrol inside your tank makes a thinner blend. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Hargate Hill: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then, there's only a short order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off as well. Ask the attendants to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump if you are still on the forecourt, whether that's Tesco or somewhere else. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — your fuel, the rough volume, and if it's run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a different issue — Hargate Hill has a page all for it.
Why one petrol in a diesel job around Hargate Hill costs more than another
An honest single price does not exist here: four scenarios, four separate jobs. Mostly, your cost shifts with which situation you're in. Two things come after that: the petrol that got in as a proportion of what your tank holds, then the spot the vehicle is in and whether our van can get to it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, we ask three queries: your fuel that went in, its amount, and whether it has run. That is why. Those answers change a range into a straight figure.
About Hargate Hill, for a moment
Hargate Hill is a locality in Derbyshire, situated inland at an elevation of 178 metres, with detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Hargate Hill lies approximately 11 miles from Manchester and is surrounded by nearby places such as Simmondley, Higher Gamesley, and Hobroyd. Hargate Hill has a population of around 950 residents and is located in the East Midlands region, about 154 miles from London.
Fuel drain cover across Derbyshire, Hargate Hill included
The teams answering petrol in diesel calls around Hargate Hill, in the SK postcode area, also work the places near it, Simmondley, Higher Gamesley and Hobroyd among them. We drain wherever the car is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
At the pump around Hargate Hill, right now?
The best spot there is, then — that is where you are. Leave the car turned off, then ring.