How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in High Pit
Likely less than you already are — as long as nobody has started it. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine till something draws 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 in High Pit asks, "have I ruined it?", is usually no. Keep it like that: leave your engine off then phone Petrol in Diesel. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it has travelled, and how to keep it from happening a second time: that's the remainder of this page.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Diesel has two tasks on its way through an engine. It protects to begin with, and after that does it burn. Your high-pressure pump and your injectors are built to very fine tolerances, and your diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing down against one another.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. A pump working on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, since petrol is thinner than diesel and takes away the lubrication your 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 the rattling starts.
Put these together and the shape of the trouble is plain. It is circulation that does the harm, not contact. Petrol in the tank is a fuel issue. 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 your injectors downstream.
High Pit, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to serious
Fuelled up, not once started. The best case there is. At a forecourt, and genuinely only there, that petrol is still confined to that tank — since everywhere else the car was driven to reach it. The job is draining and flushing on the spot.
A moment's running, or merely the ignition on. Petrol has left your tank and got to the fuel filter and your lines, since your system has been primed. That's normally still a straightforward task — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
Driven a couple of miles. Now the pump has spent these miles working on thinned fuel. How hard your car was driven counts as much as how far, and the work takes in the tank, the fuel lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the whole system. A school run to Cramlington Village Primary School is one thing. A run as far as Newcastle upon Tyne, under 10 miles away, is a very different job. So is any miles on the A167(M), under 10 miles from High Pit, where the engine has been labouring hard the whole time.
Driven till it complained. Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The motor is telling you the fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Stop on the spot — on the verge on Sea View Villas, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it. A vehicle pulled over soon very seldom has permanent damage, as the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, deal with it.
Stories High Pit drivers hear about petrol in a diesel
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be." Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mix. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that advice assumes.
If anything, the reverse holds. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." At higher pressure, through smaller components: that's how a modern diesel moves its fuel, so the lubrication counts for more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, so no harm done" — the myth that catches more drivers than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it normally won't run, and so the driver stops — and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, idles and drives away as if nothing has happened, while your pump grinds. Running is not the same as fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It is an outdated fix for a separate issue. It doesn't put back what petrol has diluted, and the petrol is still inside the tank later.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, since after it's been running some petrol lies in your filter and lines, waiting to go right back through your pump on the next start. On top of that, petrol drained into a can by the road is genuinely dangerous.
How does petrol in a diesel happen?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. A diesel nozzle generally will not fit a petrol motor, yet the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel almost without resistance — so forecourts make this one error simple, and only in that direction.
The moment routine stops matching the vehicle is the moment it takes place. Courtesy car, hire car, or a motor that's new. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. A forecourt you know, only with its pumps arranged differently. Rushing for a train at Cramlington and fuelling up en route. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Passat after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it takes place. Your hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel at your next fill-up around High Pit
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most usually do. Read the petrol pump's label; the colour is just a clue.
- Inspect the filler flap. Many cars state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in a vehicle you do not know.
- One of each in the home? Mark the key to your diesel — a bright fob, a sticker — because intending to remember is not enough.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you pick up the nozzle — each time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- While you're thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so put the phone away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for the remainder. Treat it as a safety net, and keep checking the petrol pump.
- Stop as soon as you realise. Less petrol in that tank makes a thinner blend. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to start it.
Petrol already in a diesel around High Pit? Begin here
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Don't turn your ignition on, and don't start it. Ask the attendants to help you roll it away from the petrol pump if you are still on the forecourt, whether that's Sainsbury's or somewhere else. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what went in, about how much, and if it's been run.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it's a different fault, with its own page for High Pit, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection.
What makes one High Pit petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
Four separate tasks lie behind the four scenarios above — which is why there's no honest single price. What moves your cost is chiefly which of them you're in. Where the car is matters too, and whether a technician can safely reach it, after the proportion of petrol to what that tank holds.
What went in, how much, and if it's run — three questions we ask before pricing, not after, for precisely that reason. A range becomes a straight figure once the answers are in.
About High Pit, briefly
High Pit is a suburban area located inland in Northumberland, sitting at an elevation of 62 metres and approximately 7.5 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne. High Pit forms part of the wider residential area surrounding Newcastle, with nearby places including Mayfield Grange, Mayfield Dale, and Eastfield Green. High Pit is characterised by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock, typical of many suburban areas in the North East of England.
Across Northumberland and around High Pit: fuel drain cover
The teams answering petrol in diesel call-outs in High Pit, in the NE postcode area, also work the places around it, Mayfield Grange, Mayfield Dale and Eastfield Green included. Our technicians drain wherever the vehicle is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
At the pump around High Pit, right now?
Then you are in the best spot there is. Ring, and keep it switched off.