Heath Town: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
If it has not been started, worry far less than you likely are. Until the ignition primes the pump, your starter turns, or your car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just waits there and does nothing. Which makes the truthful reply to the first Heath Town question — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with the motor kept off, so it remains that way. Below, this page sets out what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it may have got, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route round a motor. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. Extremely fine clearances go into the injectors and your high-pressure pump, and just the diesel running through stops their surfaces grinding together.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. It is runnier than diesel and takes away the lubrication your fuel system rests on, and so a pump running on a petrol mixture is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is designed to resist igniting under compression, which is the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That's where the clattering comes from.
Put these together and the shape of the trouble is clear. Contact doesn't do the harm — circulation does. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. Once the pump has been labouring on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: anything shed by a pump that is wearing down travels onward to the fuel injectors with the fuel.
Four situations our engineers see around Heath Town: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled but never started — the best it gets. Being at a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the car has been driven there to begin with. With that petrol kept inside your tank alone, it is cleared and cleaned right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Started for a moment, or only the ignition on. With the system primed, the fuel lines and filter already contain petrol that has come from that tank. Drain, flush, deal with the filter: still normally straightforward.
Driven a couple of miles. Now the pump has spent those miles labouring on thinned fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel put through the entire circuit: that's this work, and the way the vehicle was driven counts as much as the mileage. Driving the kids to Trinity CofE Primary Academy is one sort of trip. Very different a second time: a trip to Wolverhampton, under 3 miles away, or any distance on the M54, under 5 miles from Heath Town, where your engine never stopped running hard.
Driven on till it protested — clattering, smoke, a lumpy idle, a dead throttle. The fuel is not acting like diesel any more, and the engine is saying so. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Wolverhampton Road. The fuel drain and flush-through still go first, and they deal with it: if a vehicle is pulled over soon, lasting damage is very unusual.
What Heath Town motorists get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all it gives, since topping up takes out nothing. That guidance supposes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It does not.
If anything, the reverse holds. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." More precise components and higher pressure are how a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection matter more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches most drivers than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it usually will not run, and so the motorist stops — and the damage stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually starts, idles and pulls away as if nothing happened — all the while its pump wears. Being able to run isn't the same as being fine.
An outdated workaround for a separate problem lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." None of what petrol diluted is put back by it — and afterwards, that tank still contains that petrol.
Once the engine has run, part of that petrol is in the filter and the fuel lines, not your tank — and your next start sends it straight back through the pump. So the myth "drain the tank yourself and you are sorted" doesn't hold. Also, a can of petrol filled by the kerbside is truly dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. One way only, because of the nozzles: the smaller petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whereas the diesel one mostly won't fit a petrol car. That is how the forecourt makes it easy.
Habit and the vehicle getting out of step is how it happens. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. Your usual forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. A train to catch, and a rushed fill en route to Wolverhampton. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it occurs. Add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids, and the hand does what it has always done.
Heath Town motorists: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — yet not on every forecourt. Trust the label on the pump, not the colour.
- Check the filler flap. Many motors state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in any vehicle you do not know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, in a home with one of each.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the pump. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make while your mind is on something else, so your phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for the rest. Treat it as a safety net, then keep checking the petrol pump.
- As soon as you notice, stop: less petrol in that tank makes a weaker blend. What to do next doesn't change, though — still don't fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel in Heath Town?
Then the order of things is short. Don't switch the ignition on, and don't start it. Still on the forecourt, at Texaco or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll the car away from the pump. What went in, roughly how much, and whether it has run: tell us those when you ring 0333 366 0103.
Corrosion and deposits are the trouble with AdBlue, where petrol means lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Heath Town page.
Heath Town petrol in a diesel jobs: why one costs more than another
Four different tasks lie behind the four situations above — which is why there is no fair single quote. Which of them you're in is mostly what moves your cost. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a proportion of what your tank holds, then the spot your car is in and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, we ask three questions: the fuel that was put in, the amount, and whether it's run. That is why. Given those answers, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Heath Town itself
Heath Town is a suburban area located on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, near the River Tame, with a mix of residential and industrial land use. Heath Town sits at an elevation of around 144 metres, close to the city centre and other nearby suburbs like Park Village and Fallings Park. Heath Town is characterized by a high proportion of flat dwellings, reflecting its urban setting. Heath Town is situated approximately 1.2 miles from Wolverhampton city centre, making it a convenient residential location.
Fuel drain cover across West Midlands, Heath Town included
Heath Town waits in the WV postcode area, and the vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the locations around it as well — Park Village, Fallings Park and Springfield among them. The vehicle doesn't need to move to us: our engineers drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
Heath Town: still at the petrol pump?
Then, you could not be in a better place. Turned off it stays; then ring.