How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Hockley Heath
Far less than you probably are, provided it hasn't been started. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your motor until something draws it through your fuel system — your ignition priming your pump, the starter, or driving itself. So the truthful answer to the first query everyone around Hockley Heath asks, "have I ruined it?", is normally no. Leave the motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. The rest of this page explains what petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you again.
The engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Diesel does two jobs on its way through a motor. Before it combusts, it lubricates — and then it burns. Extremely fine clearances are built into your injectors and your high-pressure pump, and just your diesel flowing through keeps their surfaces from grinding together.
The second task petrol doesn't do at all, and the first it does poorly. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump on the blend to wear itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the knocking.
Combined, those make the shape of the trouble clear. Not contact but circulation is what causes the damage. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel issue. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, carried by your fuel, into the injectors further along, which is why a pump that has been working on that petrol is where a mechanical problem begins.
Four scenarios we see in Hockley Heath: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Filled but not once started — the best it gets. Being at a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the vehicle has been driven there to begin with. With that petrol held in that tank alone, it's drained and flushed on the spot, and nothing more is needed.
A moment's running, or merely the ignition on. Petrol has left the tank and got to the filter and your lines, since your system has been primed. Still generally easy: drain, flush, and the filter sorted.
Those few miles driven were the pump running on fuel thinned by petrol the whole way. Distance is only half of it; how hard it was driven counts just as much. Either way the work runs to that tank, your lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the entire system. The school run to Tudor Grange Primary Academy Hockley Heath is one matter. Very different once more: a run to Birmingham, under 15 miles away, or any miles on the M40, under a mile from Hockley Heath, where the engine kept labouring hard.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, clattering, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone lumpy. That's your motor telling you its fuel has stopped acting like diesel. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on Shelfield Close, a lay-by, a side street — and leave it there. A vehicle pulled over early very rarely has lasting damage, as the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, take care of it.
What Hockley Heath people get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be." A fuller tank of the same mixture is all you get, since topping up takes out nothing. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that advice presumes.
If anything, the opposite holds. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." A newer diesel runs its fuel through smaller components at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication count more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." This is the one that fools people. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it normally will not run, and so the motorist stops — and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, idles and drives away as if nothing has happened, whilst your pump wears. Being able to run isn't proof of being fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It is an outdated fix for a separate problem. What petrol has weakened stays weakened, and that petrol remains in your tank regardless.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." After the engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer in the tank: it is in the filter and your lines, and it goes right back through the pump on your next start. Clearing petrol into a can at the kerbside is also really risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
Nobody does it on purpose, and it is seldom carelessness. The petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol vehicle at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the slip runs one way.
When habit and the car stop matching, it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that's brand new. Two vehicles on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to Dorridge. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Passat after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it occurs. Add a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and habit wins.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Hockley Heath
- The label is what matters, and so read the petrol pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt.
- Inspect the filler flap. Plenty of vehicles state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in any car you don't know.
- Mark the key. In a house with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- "Diesel", aloud, before you pick up the nozzle — each time a new or hired car needs its first tank. It sounds silly. It works.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make whilst your mind is on something else, so your phone goes away.
- Some diesels have a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for vehicles without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Stop as soon as you realise. Less petrol in the tank makes a thinner mix. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to crank it.
Petrol already in a diesel in Hockley Heath? Begin here
The order of things is short, then. Starting it is out, and so is switching on the ignition. If you're still on the forecourt — Shell or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump. What was put in, roughly how much, and whether it has run: tell us that when you call 0333 366 0103.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a separate fault, with its own page for Hockley Heath, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection.
One petrol in a diesel task in Hockley Heath costs more than another. Why?
There is no fair single quote for this, since the four situations above are four different tasks. The situation itself does most of the work of moving your cost. Where your car is counts too, and whether a technician can safely reach it, after the share of petrol to what that tank takes.
Three questions come first, before quoting, instead of after — what went in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. Their answers are what change a range into one firm number.
About Hockley Heath itself
Hockley Heath is a village in the West Midlands, situated on the banks of a river at an elevation of around 144 metres. Hockley Heath lies approximately 10 miles southwest of Birmingham and 91 miles northwest of London, with nearby villages including Nuthurst and Lapworth. Hockley Heath has a population of around 1629 people, predominantly living in detached houses.
Hockley Heath and West Midlands: where our fuel drain cover runs
Nuthurst, Box Trees and Lapworth are among the spots near Hockley Heath that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel call-outs across Hockley Heath's B postcode area. The car doesn't need to come to us: we drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
Still at the petrol pump in Hockley Heath?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Turned off it stays; then ring.