Petrol in a Diesel Car in Heytesbury: How Worried Should You Be?
Far less than you probably are, if it has not been started. Until your ignition primes your pump, your starter cranks, or the car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply waits there and does no harm. Which means the honest reply to that first Heytesbury question — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. Petrol in Diesel is who to phone, with your engine left off, and so it remains that way. The rest of this page covers what petrol really does to a diesel, how to tell how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you again.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what happens
Passing through a motor, diesel does two things at once. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. Designed to very fine clearances, the fuel injectors and the pump rely on your diesel moving through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
Of those two jobs, petrol manages the first poorly and the second not at all. It is runnier than diesel and takes away the protection the fuel system depends 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.
The shape of the problem is plain once you put those together. It's circulation that does the damage, not contact. Where that petrol is only in your tank, it's a problem of fuel, nothing more. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with the fuel to the fuel injectors further on.
Heytesbury, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to serious
Fuelled up, never started. The best case there can be. That petrol is in the tank and only that tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where your car stands. This is the one situation that can only really take place on a forecourt, as anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Your ignition turned on, or a brief start. With your system primed, the fuel lines and filter now contain petrol that has come from the tank. That is generally still a simple job — a drain, a flush, and your filter seen to.
Those few miles on the road meant your pump labouring on fuel diluted by petrol throughout. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the whole circuit: that's this work, and the way your car was driven counts as much as the distance. Short trips, like the school run to Heytesbury Church of England Primary School, are one matter. Very different a second time: a trip to Salisbury, under 25 miles away, or some miles on the M4, under 25 miles from Heytesbury, where your engine kept working hard.
Driven until it protested. Rattling, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The fuel is not behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is telling you. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on High Street, a lay-by, a side street — and leave it there. Long-term damage is very rare when a vehicle is stopped soon, and the fuel drain and flush that still go first deal with it.
Myths Heytesbury people hear about petrol in a diesel
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're left with a fuller tank, still the same mix. That advice supposes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It does not.
Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. Protection counts more on current diesels, not less, because their fuel passes through smaller components at higher pressure.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." This is the one that catches drivers. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it normally won't run, and so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. While your pump wears, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened. A running engine does not mean fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a distinct fault. What petrol has thinned remains diluted, and that petrol remains inside the tank anyway.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." Once the engine has been run, some of the petrol is no longer inside that tank: it is in the filter and the lines, and it goes right back through the pump on your next start. It is also genuinely dangerous to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
Why petrol in a diesel takes place at all
No one does it on purpose, and it is seldom carelessness. One way only, since of the nozzles: the smaller petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while the diesel one generally won't fit a petrol vehicle. That is how the forecourt makes it easy.
The moment routine stops matching your car is the moment it occurs. Any motor that's new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Rushing for a train outside Warminster and fuelling up en route. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a motorist accustomed to petrol: precisely when it takes place. With rain, a call arriving, or children to deal with, the hand just does what it always has.
Heytesbury motorists: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Check the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt. The label is what counts.
- The first fill in a strange car is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, plenty of cars state the fuel they take.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves 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 fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, yes, but it does the trick.
- Put 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 are built with a filler that will not accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a safety net at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Stop as soon as you realise. Less petrol inside that tank means a weaker blend. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Heytesbury?
In that case, there is only a short order of things. Starting it is out, and so is switching on the ignition. The attendants at the forecourt — whether at New Road Service Station itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help push it away from the petrol pump if you ask. What got in, about how much, and if it's run: tell us that when you phone 0333 366 0103.
If it was AdBlue rather than petrol, say so. That's a different fault — corrosion and deposits and not lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Heytesbury.
Why one petrol in a diesel job around Heytesbury costs more than another
There is no honest single price for this, since the four situations above are four separate tasks. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving your cost. After that it is the proportion — how much petrol was put in against how much that tank takes — and after that where the vehicle is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
What was put in, how much, and if it's run — three queries our technicians ask before quoting, not after, for exactly that reason. Given those replies, you get a straight figure rather than a range.
About Heytesbury itself
Heytesbury is a village in Wiltshire, situated on the banks of the River Wylye at an elevation of around 97 metres. Heytesbury lies near the villages of Knook, West Hill, and Norton Bavant, and is approximately 15.5 miles from Salisbury. Heytesbury has a population of around 792 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Heytesbury is also within commuting distance of London, being around 88.2 miles away.
Fuel drain cover across Wiltshire, Heytesbury included
The vans answering petrol in diesel calls around Heytesbury, in the BA postcode area, also work the spots around it, Knook, West Hill and Norton Bavant among them. The vehicle 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 drive.
Heytesbury: still at the petrol pump?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Switched off it stays; then ring.