Petrol in a Diesel Car in High Spen: How Worried Should You Be?
Probably less than you are now — as long as nobody has started it. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first question anyone around High Spen asks, and the truthful answer is usually no, since petrol left in a diesel tank hurts nothing until it's drawn through the system — by ignition priming, by your starter, or by driving. Leave your motor off then ring Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it like that. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has gone, and how to keep it from happening a second time: that is the rest of this page.
The motor and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Passing through a motor, diesel is doing two things at once. It lubricates to begin with, and after that does it burn. The high-pressure pump and your injectors are made to extremely fine gaps, and your diesel passing through them is what keeps those surfaces from wearing down against each other.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump on the blend to wear itself. It's also made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the clattering.
Put these together and the shape of the problem is clear. Contact doesn't do the damage — movement does. Where the petrol is only in that tank, it's a problem of fuel, nothing more. Once the pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical problem has started: whatever is shed by a pump that's wearing down is carried onward to your injectors with your fuel.
Four situations our technicians see around High Spen: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled, and never started: nothing beats it. Being at a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, your car has been driven there to begin with. With that petrol held in your tank alone, it's drained and flushed right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Your ignition turned on, or a brief start. With your system primed, the fuel lines and filter already contain petrol that has come from your tank. Normally little more than emptying, cleaning and seeing to the filter, so still straightforward.
Those few miles driven meant the pump working on fuel thinned by petrol the whole way. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the whole circuit: that's this work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the distance. Driving the kids to High Spen Primary School is one sort of trip. Any mileage on the Central Motorway East, under 10 miles from High Spen, means your engine working hard throughout, and a run to Newcastle upon Tyne, under 10 miles away, is a very different task as well.
It protested, and only then stopped: smoke, clattering, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone ragged. The fuel is not behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is telling you. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Glossop Street. Permanent damage is very rare if a vehicle is pulled over early, and the fuel drain and flush that still go first sort it out.
Myths High Spen 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." Nothing is removed when you top up — the tank simply carries more of the same mixture. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, whatever that advice presumes.
If anything, the reverse is true. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." At higher pressure, through finer components: that's how a newer diesel moves its fuel, so the protection counts for more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches more people than any other. The driver of a petrol engine fed diesel usually has no choice but to stop, since it will not run, and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened, while your pump grinds. Fine and running aren't the same thing.
An outdated fix for a distinct issue lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It doesn't put back what petrol has diluted, and that petrol is still in the tank after that.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol sits in the fuel filter and lines, waiting to go straight back through the pump on the next start. On top of that, petrol emptied into a can by the road is truly dangerous.
How does petrol in a diesel happen?
A careless moment is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol motor at all. So the slip runs one way.
Routine and your car getting out of step is when it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that is new. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Fuelling up in a hurry on the way to Wylam, with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it takes place. Add a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and the hand wins.
Next time you fill up in High Spen: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most usually do. Read the pump's label; the colour is only a clue.
- The first fill in an unfamiliar car is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, plenty of cars state the fuel to use.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, in a house with one of each.
- It sounds daft and it does the trick: on the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Whilst you are thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so put your phone away.
- Add-on devices are available for cars without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that will not accept a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a safety net at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop at once. A thinner blend results from less petrol inside the tank, yet the next step remains the same: do not start the vehicle.
Already put petrol in a diesel around High Spen?
Then, there's only a short order of things. Starting it is out, and so is turning on your ignition. Ask the staff to help you push it clear of the petrol pump if you're still at the forecourt, whether that's JET or anywhere else. Call 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — your fuel, the rough volume, and whether it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a separate problem, with its own page for High Spen, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection.
One petrol in a diesel task around High Spen costs more than another. Why?
The four situations above are four separate jobs, so no single quote for this would be honest. What moves the cost is chiefly which of them you are in. Next it is the proportion — how much petrol was put in against how much that tank holds — and after that where your car is and whether our van can reach it safely.
Before any quote, not after, come three queries: your fuel that went in, the volume, and if it's run. That is why. The replies turn a range into a straight figure.
About High Spen and where it is
High Spen is a village in Tyne and Wear, situated near the River Derwent in the North East of England. High Spen sits at an elevation of 153 metres, with terraced housing being the predominant type of accommodation. High Spen is located near several other small settlements, including Hooker Gate, Highfield, and Barlow, and is approximately 7.6 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne. High Spen has a population of around 1439 residents.
Across Tyne and Wear and in High Spen: fuel drain cover
Petrol in diesel call-outs in High Spen — part of the NE postcode area — go to vans that also cover the spots round it, Hooker Gate, Highfield and Barlow among them. Our technicians drain where your vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
In High Spen and still at the petrol pump?
Then you are in the best spot there can be. Phone, and keep it turned off.