Petrol in a Diesel Car in High Valleyfield: How Worried Should You Be?
Likely less than you already are — provided nobody has started the vehicle. Until your ignition primes your pump, your starter turns, or the vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just rests there and does no harm. Which means the truthful reply to that first High Valleyfield query — "have I ruined it?" — usually no. Keep it that way: leave your motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it's travelled, and how to stop it from happening again: that's the rest of this page.
Inside the motor: what petrol in a diesel really does
On its way through an engine, diesel does two jobs. It lubricates first, and only then does it burn. Built to very fine clearances, the injectors and your pump depend on the diesel flowing through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Of these two jobs, petrol manages the first poorly and the second not at all. A pump running on a petrol mix is wearing itself out, because petrol is thinner than diesel and strips out the lubrication your fuel system depends on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that is where any knocking comes.
Put those together and the shape of the trouble is clear. The damage is done by movement, not by contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel fault. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to your injectors downstream.
Petrol in a diesel in High Valleyfield: how serious is it? Four situations
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. On a forecourt, and truly only there, that petrol is still confined to that tank — since everywhere else the car was driven to reach it. The job is emptying and rinsing on the spot.
A moment's running, or just the ignition on. Petrol has come out of your tank and reached your filter and your lines, since your system has been primed. Still generally easy: drain, flush, and your filter dealt with.
The pump now worked a few miles on diluted fuel — that is what driving it meant. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the whole system: that's this work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the mileage. On the school run to the local primary school, the distance is small. Any miles on the M9, under 10 miles from High Valleyfield, means your engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Dunfermline, under 10 miles away, makes a very different job too.
Driven until it complained. Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The engine is telling you your fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Leave it wherever it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Woodhead Street. What goes first is still the fuel drain and flush, and that sorts it out, with permanent damage very unusual when a vehicle is pulled over soon.
High Valleyfield people and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It won't. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all you get, because topping up removes nothing. That advice assumes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
Not so: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the reverse. At higher pressure, through smaller components: that's how a modern diesel handles its fuel, so the lubrication matters for more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so no harm done" — the myth that catches more people than any other. Diesel in a petrol motor usually means a motor that won't run: the motorist stops, and so does the harm. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened, whilst your pump wears. Being able to run is not the same as being fine.
Not so: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It was an old fix, supposed for another problem. It does not put back what petrol has weakened, and that petrol is still in your tank afterwards.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump out of the fuel lines and the filter, where some of it ends up after the motor has run. That is why draining your tank yourself doesn't sort it — a myth. On top of that, petrol emptied into a can by the road is genuinely dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
A careless moment is rarely the cause, and nobody means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the mistake runs one way.
The moment habit stops matching the vehicle is the moment it takes place. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. Your normal forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. Filling up in a hurry on the way to Dunfermline City, with a train to catch. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Renault Megane in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that's when. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand repeats what it has always done.
High Valleyfield motorists: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — yet not on every forecourt. Go by the label on the pump, not the colour.
- Check the filler flap. Many cars state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on your first fill in a vehicle you do not know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of meaning to remember, for a house with one of each.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you pick up the nozzle — each time a new or hired car needs its first tank. It sounds daft. It works.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices exist for the remainder. Count it as a backstop, and keep reading the petrol pump.
- The moment you notice, stop: less petrol inside the tank makes a thinner blend. What to do next doesn't change, though — still do not fire it up.
High Valleyfield: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Do not switch your ignition on, and do not fire it up. If you are still on the forecourt — Thames Petroleum or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you push the vehicle away from the pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what went in, about how much, and if it has been run.
Corrosion and deposits form the issue with AdBlue, where petrol brings lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own High Valleyfield page.
High Valleyfield petrol in a diesel jobs: why one costs more than another
There is no honest single quote for this, since the four scenarios above are four different tasks. What shifts your cost is mostly which of them you are in. Next it's the proportion — how much petrol was put in against how much that tank holds — and after that where the vehicle is and whether a van can get to it safely.
That's why our engineers ask three queries before pricing instead of after: what got in, how much, and if it's run. Their replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About High Valleyfield
High Valleyfield is a coastal village in Fife, situated near the town of Dunfermline and overlooking the Firth of Forth. High Valleyfield has a mix of housing types, but semi-detached homes are particularly prevalent in the area. High Valleyfield sits at a relatively low elevation of 34 metres above sea level, close to nearby places like Low Valleyfield and Newmills.
High Valleyfield and Fife: where our fuel drain cover runs
The teams answering petrol in diesel calls in High Valleyfield, in the KY postcode area, equally work the places near it, Low Valleyfield, Shires Mill and Newmills among them. We drain wherever your vehicle is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
In High Valleyfield and still at the petrol pump?
Then, you could not be in a better position. Switched off it stays; then phone.