How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Higham
If it has not been started, worry less than you probably are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the engine till something pulls it through the fuel system — your ignition priming the pump, the starter, or driving itself. So the truthful answer to the first question everyone around Higham asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. To keep the vehicle like that, ring Petrol in Diesel then leave the engine switched off. The remainder of this page covers what petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
Two jobs fall to diesel on its journey round a motor. It ignites, and before it burns it lubricates. Built to extremely fine clearances, the injectors and the pump rely on the diesel moving through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
The second job petrol does not do at all, and the first it does poorly. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, leaving a pump running on the blend wearing itself. It's equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the rattling.
Put these together and the shape of the trouble is plain. It's circulation that causes the damage, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. After the pump has been labouring on that petrol, a mechanical problem has begun: whatever is shed by a pump that is wearing is carried downstream to the fuel injectors with your fuel.
Higham, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to significant
Fuelled, and never started: no case is better. The petrol is in that tank and just your tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car stands. This is the one scenario that can only really happen at a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
A brief spell of running, or merely your ignition on. Once primed, the system has pulled petrol out of your tank as far as your filter and the lines. That's usually still an easy job — a drain, a flush, and your filter seen to.
Those few miles on the road meant the pump labouring on fuel weakened by petrol throughout. How hard the car was driven counts as much as how far, and the work covers your tank, your lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. On the school run to Higham St John's Church of England Primary School, the distance is short. Any mileage on the M65, under 3 miles from Higham, means your engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Preston, under 25 miles away, makes a very different task too.
Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. That's your engine telling you its fuel no longer is behaving like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Chapel Street, a lay-by, a side street — then leave the vehicle there. A car pulled over quickly very seldom has lasting damage, because the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, take care of it.
Petrol in a diesel myths Higham people hear
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It does not. Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mix. That advice assumes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It does not.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. At higher pressure, through smaller parts: that's how a modern diesel handles its fuel, so the protection matters for more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so no harm done" — the myth that trips up more drivers than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it generally will not run, so the driver stops — and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened, while your pump wears. Being able to run isn't proof of being fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It was an old workaround, meant for another fault. What petrol has weakened remains thinned, and the petrol stays inside the tank anyway.
If your engine has been run, part of that petrol is in your filter and your lines, not your tank — and the next start pulls it straight back through the pump. So the myth "drain the tank yourself and you are sorted" does not stand up. On top of that, petrol drained into a can by the road is truly risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. A diesel nozzle generally will not fit a petrol vehicle, yet the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel almost without resistance — so forecourts make this one error straightforward, and only in that direction.
Habit and your car getting out of step is how it takes place. A new vehicle, a hire car or a courtesy car. Two motors on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. A forecourt you know, but with its pumps laid out differently. Filling up in a rush on the way to Brierfield, with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it takes place. The hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
How to prevent petrol in a diesel on your next fill-up around Higham
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — but not on each forecourt. Trust the label on the pump, not the colour.
- In a vehicle you don't know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before your first fill: many cars print the fuel there.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for a household with one of each.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new car, say "diesel" aloud. Silly, yes, yet it does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put your phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- Some diesels come with a filler built to block a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Noticing it mid-fill? Stop at once. A weaker blend results from less petrol in your tank, yet the next step stays the same: don't fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Higham?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Never crank it, and don't switch the ignition on. Still on the forecourt, at Valero or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you push the car away from the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what was put in, about how much, and if it's been run.
Corrosion and deposits form the issue with AdBlue, where petrol means lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Higham page.
One petrol in a diesel task around Higham costs more than another. Why?
The four scenarios above are four separate jobs, so no single quote for this would be fair. What moves your cost is mostly which of them you are in. Where your car is matters too, and whether a technician can safely get to it, after the ratio of petrol to what that tank holds.
That is why our technicians ask three queries before quoting rather than after: what got in, how much, and if it has run. Those replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Higham
Higham is a village in Lancashire, situated on the riverside in the North West of England, with a population of around 845 people. Higham has a mix of housing types, but detached homes are the most common, and the village is located near to Fence, Wheatley Lane, and Spen Brook. Higham sits at an elevation of 200 metres, and is approximately 17 miles from Preston, the nearest city. Higham is also around 184 miles from London, making it a relatively rural community.
Fuel drain cover across Lancashire, Higham included
The vans answering petrol in diesel call-outs around Higham, in the BB postcode area, equally work the places around it, Fence, Wheatley Lane and Spen Brook included. Our technicians drain where the vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
At the pump in Higham, still?
The best place there is, then — that's where you are. Call, and keep it switched off.