Hillside: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Likely less than you already are — as long as no one has started it. Everyone in Hillside begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the honest answer is usually no: petrol left inside the tank of a diesel remains harmless until priming, cranking or driving pulls it into your fuel system. To keep the vehicle that way, call Petrol in Diesel then leave your motor alone. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the clues of how far it has got, and the way to make sure you never repeat it.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Passing through a motor, diesel is doing two jobs at the same time. Before it ignites, it protects — then it ignites. The high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors are made to very fine tolerances, and your diesel passing through them is what keeps those surfaces from wearing down against each other.
Of those two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second not at all. It's thinner than diesel and removes the lubrication your fuel system rests on, so a pump running on a petrol blend is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is designed to resist igniting under compression, which is the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That is where the rattling comes from.
Put those together and the shape of the problem is clear. Contact doesn't do the harm — movement does. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the fuel injectors downstream.
Petrol in a diesel in Hillside: how serious is it? Four situations
Fuelled but never started — as good as it gets. Being at a forecourt is what makes this the case: elsewhere, your car has been driven there to begin with. With that petrol held inside that tank alone, it is emptied and purged on the spot, and nothing more is needed.
A moment's running, or merely the ignition on. Once primed, the system has drawn petrol from that tank as far as your filter and the fuel lines. Normally little more than draining, flushing and sorting the fuel filter, and so still straightforward.
Driven a few miles. Now the pump has spent these miles labouring on weakened fuel. The work is that tank, your lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the entire system, and how hard the car was driven matters as much as how far. Short trips, such as the school run to the local primary school, are one thing. Driving as far as Dundee, under 50 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any miles on the M90, under 50 miles from Hillside, with your engine working hard all the way.
Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. That is your engine telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Pull up on the spot — on the verge on Loan Dykes, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it. The fuel drain and flush-through still come first, and they sort it out: when a car is pulled over soon, long-term damage is very uncommon.
Hillside motorists and the petrol in a diesel myths they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed when you top up — the tank just carries more of the same blend. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol, whatever that guidance presumes.
If anything, the reverse is true. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Smaller components and higher pressure are how a modern diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." This is the one that catches motorists. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it normally won't run, so the motorist stops — and the damage stops with them. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually does; meanwhile your pump grinds. Fine and running are not the same at all.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a different problem. What petrol has weakened stays weakened, and that petrol remains in that tank regardless.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you are sorted." Once your engine has run, some of the petrol is no longer in your tank: it is in the filter and the fuel lines, and it goes straight back through your pump at the next start. Also, a can of petrol drained at the roadside is truly risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it take place?
No one does it on purpose, and it is seldom carelessness. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol motor at all. So the mistake runs one way.
Routine and the car getting out of step is how it occurs. A vehicle that's new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Two vehicles on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Rushing for a train outside Montrose and fuelling up en route. Years of petrol cars behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Tiguan in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that's when. Add a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and habit wins.
Next time you fill up in Hillside: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, yet not on each forecourt. The label is what matters.
- Check the filler flap. Plenty of vehicles state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on your first fill in any motor you do not know.
- One of each in the household? Mark the key to your diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since intending to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, yes, but it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make while your mind is on something else, so your phone goes away.
- Add-on devices exist for vehicles without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that will not take a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Less petrol means a thinner mix, so stop as soon as you notice — while remembering that your next step is unchanged. It's still not to fire it up.
Hillside: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then the order of things is short. Do not switch the ignition on, and don't fire it up. If you are still at the forecourt — Asda or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you roll the car away from the pump. Then phone 0333 366 0103 and tell us what got in, about how much, and if it has run.
Corrosion and deposits form the trouble with AdBlue, whereas petrol brings lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Hillside page.
Hillside petrol in a diesel jobs: why one costs more than another
Four separate tasks lie behind the four scenarios above — which is why there's no honest single quote. Mostly, your cost moves with which situation you're in. Two things come after that: the petrol that got in as a share of what that tank takes, then the place your car is in and whether a van can reach it safely.
That's why we ask three queries before quoting rather than after: what was put in, how much, and whether it has run. The replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Hillside
Hillside is a small coastal village in Angus, situated near the towns of Montrose and Borrowfield, with a population of around 693 people. Hillside has a mix of housing types, but detached homes are predominant, and the village is located at a relatively low elevation of 23 metres. Hillside is close to the city of Dundee, which is 27 miles away, and is part of the wider coastal community in the area. Hillside benefits from its scenic coastal setting, with views out to the North Sea.
Hillside and Angus: where our fuel drain cover reaches
Our vans answering petrol in diesel call-outs around Hillside, in the DD postcode area, equally work the locations near it, Borrowfield, Logie and Montrose among them. The car does not need to come to us: our technicians drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
In Hillside and still at the petrol pump?
The best position there is, then — that's where you are. Keep it off. Phone.