Petrol in a Diesel Car in Hillington: How Worried Should You Be?
Likely less than you are now — provided nobody has started the car. Everyone around Hillington begins with "have I ruined it?", and the honest answer is generally no: petrol left inside that tank of a diesel stays harmless until priming, cranking or driving pulls it into the fuel system. Leave your engine off and ring Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. Below, this page sets out what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it might have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Inside the motor: what petrol in a diesel really does
Passing through a motor, diesel does two things at the same time. Before it ignites, it lubricates — then it combusts. Extremely fine gaps go into the fuel injectors and your high-pressure pump, and just your diesel running through keeps those surfaces from grinding together.
Petrol does the first task poorly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, leaving a pump on the mixture wearing itself. It is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the clattering.
Together, those make the shape of the problem plain. It is movement that does the harm, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel problem. After the pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical problem has started: whatever is shed by a pump that is wearing travels downstream to the injectors with the fuel.
Petrol in a diesel around Hillington: how serious is it? Four situations
Filled up, never started. The best case there can be. At a forecourt, and really only there, the petrol is still confined to that tank — since anywhere else your car was driven to get to it. The task is emptying and flushing on the spot.
The ignition switched on, or a brief start. Once primed, the fuel system has pulled petrol from that tank as far as the fuel filter and the fuel lines. Normally nothing more than draining, purging and sorting the filter, and so still straightforward.
A few miles driven, and your pump has spent each of them running on thinned fuel. Miles is only half of it; how hard it was driven counts just as much. Either way this work includes the tank, your lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the entire system. Driving the children to the local primary school is one sort of trip. Very different again: a trip to Glasgow, under 5 miles away, or any miles on the M8, under a mile from Hillington, where the engine kept working hard.
Rattling, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. What you are hearing is your engine reporting fuel that no longer runs like diesel. Pull up on the spot — on the verge on Thurston Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it again. Lasting damage is very uncommon if a car is pulled over quickly, and the fuel drain and flush-through that still go first sort it out.
Myths Hillington drivers hear about petrol in a diesel
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It will not. A fuller tank of the same mix is all you get, because topping up removes nothing. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that advice supposes.
"Newer diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the opposite. At higher pressure, through smaller parts: that's how a modern diesel moves its fuel, and so the lubrication counts for more, not less.
This is the one that catches people. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it usually won't run, so the driver stops — and the harm stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually will; meanwhile your pump grinds. Running doesn't mean fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It's an outdated workaround for a separate fault. What petrol has thinned remains diluted, and the petrol remains in that tank regardless.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump from your lines and the fuel filter, where some of it ends up once the engine has run. That is why draining your tank yourself does not sort it — a myth. It is also truly dangerous to drain petrol into a can at the roadside.
How does petrol in a diesel occur?
Carelessness is rarely the cause, and nobody means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the slip runs one way.
When habit and the car stop matching, it takes place. A vehicle that is new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or just bought. Two cars on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to Hillington East. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a driver used to petrol: precisely when it happens. Add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and your hand repeats what it has always done.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Hillington
- A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — but not on each forecourt. Trust the label on the petrol pump, not the colour.
- Inspect the filler flap. Plenty of vehicles 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 home with one of each.
- It seems daft and it works: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so tuck your phone away and keep your mind on the pump.
- Some diesels come with a filler built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for vehicles without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Stop as soon as you notice. Less petrol in that tank makes a thinner mixture. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to start the vehicle.
Hillington: already put petrol in a diesel?
In that case, there is just a short order of things. Starting it is out, and so is switching on the ignition. The attendants on the forecourt — whether at BP itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help push it clear of the pump if you ask. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has been run.
Corrosion and deposits are the trouble with AdBlue, where petrol brings lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Hillington page.
One petrol in a diesel job around Hillington costs more than another. Why?
Four different tasks lie behind the four situations above — which is why there's no honest single price. Chiefly, the cost shifts with which situation you're in. Two things follow that: the petrol that was put in as a proportion of what the tank holds, then the spot the car is in and whether a van can get to it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, we ask three questions: your fuel that went in, its quantity, and if it's run. That's why. A range turns into a straight figure when the answers are in.
About Hillington itself
Hillington is a suburban area in Glasgow City, situated approximately 4.7 miles southwest of Glasgow's city centre. Hillington sits at an elevation of around 25 metres, in a relatively flat area of the Scottish Lowlands. Hillington is characterised by its predominantly flat-type housing and is located near other suburban areas such as Penilee and Cardonald. Hillington is home to a population of around 7154 people.
Hillington and Glasgow City: where our fuel drain cover runs
Petrol in diesel jobs around Hillington — part of the G postcode area — go to teams that also cover the spots round it, Penilee, Cardonald and North Cardonald among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all spots we work, and your car does not need to move to us.
Still at the pump around Hillington?
Then you're in the best spot there can be. Ring, and leave it turned off.