How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Hillpound
Not started? Then less worried than you probably feel. Till your ignition primes the pump, the starter turns, or the vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply rests there and does no harm. Which makes the truthful reply to that first Hillpound query — "have I ruined it?" — normally no. To keep the vehicle like that, call Petrol in Diesel then leave your motor alone. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel engine, the signs of how far it has spread, and the way to make sure you never do it again.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel really does
On its way through an engine, diesel does two tasks. It burns, and before it burns it protects. Very fine clearances go into the fuel injectors and the high-pressure pump, and only your diesel flowing through stops their surfaces grinding together.
Petrol handles the first job badly and the second not at all. It's thinner than diesel and takes away the protection your fuel system depends on, so a pump running on a petrol mixture is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is designed to resist igniting under compression, which is the opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That is where the clattering comes from.
Put these together and the shape of the issue is clear. Contact doesn't do the damage — circulation does. Where that petrol is only in your tank, it is a fault of fuel, nothing more. 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.
Hillpound, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to significant
Filled up, never started. The best case there can be. That petrol is inside the tank and only your tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where your car sits. This is the one situation that can only really occur on a forecourt, because anywhere else your car has been driven to get there.
A brief spell of running, or merely the ignition on. With your system primed, the fuel lines and filter now hold petrol that has come from your tank. Drain, flush, see to your filter: still normally straightforward.
Some miles driven, and your pump has spent each of them labouring on weakened fuel. How hard your car was driven matters as much as how far, and this work takes in the tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the whole circuit. Short trips, such as the school run to Swanmore Church of England Aided Primary School, are one thing. Very different once more: a run to Southampton, under 15 miles away, or some mileage on the M27, under 5 miles from Hillpound, where your engine kept running hard.
Rattling, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The fuel is not behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is telling you. Whether it is the verge on Droxford Road, a lay-by or a side street, stop there then leave it. The fuel drain and flush still go first, and they take care of it: when a vehicle is pulled over soon, permanent damage is very unusual.
Myths Hillpound motorists 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." A bigger tank of the same mixture is all you get, since topping up takes out nothing. The idea behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
"Modern diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the reverse. More precise components and higher pressure are how a current diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection matter more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." This is the one that catches motorists. The motorist of a petrol motor fed diesel normally has no choice but to stop, since it will not run, and the damage stops with them. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened, whilst the pump wears. Being able to run isn't proof of being fine.
An old workaround for a different issue lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." None of what petrol thinned gets put back by it — and later, the tank still contains that petrol.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol lies in your filter and lines, ready to go straight back through your pump on the next start. And, a can of petrol filled by the roadside is truly dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
Nobody does it on purpose, and it's seldom carelessness. One way only, since of the nozzles: the slimmer petrol one slips inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whereas the diesel one mostly will not fit a petrol motor. That's how the forecourt makes it straightforward.
When habit and the vehicle stop matching, it happens. Any vehicle that's new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or just bought. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Racing for a train outside Botley and filling up en route. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Tiguan after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it takes place. The hand does what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel on your next fill-up in Hillpound
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most generally do. Check the petrol pump's label; the colour is just a hint.
- Check your filler flap. Plenty of motors state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on your first fill in any motor you don't know.
- One of each in the household? Mark the key to the diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — because meaning to remember isn't enough.
- Before the nozzle leaves the pump the first time you fill a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, perhaps, but 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 have a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices exist for the remainder. Count it as a backstop, and keep checking the petrol pump.
- Spotting it halfway? Stop there and then. A weaker mix follows from less petrol in your tank, but your next stage stays the same: don't crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel around Hillpound already?
The order of things is brief, then. Starting it is out, and so is turning on your ignition. Still on the forecourt, at Sainsbury's or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you roll the vehicle away from the pump. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, about how much, and if it has run.
Corrosion and deposits form the trouble with AdBlue, where petrol means lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Hillpound page.
Why one petrol in a diesel task in Hillpound costs more than another
The four situations above are four separate tasks, so no single price for this would be fair. Which of them you're in is mostly what moves the cost. The proportion matters next, meaning how much of the tank is petrol, and then the location of the car and whether getting to it is safe for our van.
Three questions come first, before any quote, instead of after — what went in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. Those replies turn a range into a straight figure.
About Hillpound, for a moment
Hillpound is a suburban area in Hampshire, situated inland at an elevation of 44 metres, approximately 10 miles north of Southampton. Hillpound is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting the area's residential development. Hillpound sits within a network of nearby places, including Hill Grove, Swanmore, and Mislingford, and is about 60 miles south-west of London.
Fuel drain cover in Hillpound and across Hampshire
Hillpound waits in the SO postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the places near it as well — Hill Grove, Swanmore and Mislingford among them. We drain wherever the car is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
Hillpound: still at the pump?
The best spot there is, then — that is where you are. Turned off it remains; then phone.