Petrol in a Diesel Car in Hockliffe: How Worried Should You Be?
If it hasn't been started, you can worry less than you probably are. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to the engine until something pulls it through the fuel system — the ignition priming the pump, your starter, or driving itself. So the truthful answer to the first query anyone around Hockliffe asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. To leave the car that way, ring Petrol in Diesel and leave your motor alone. Further down, this page sets out what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it may have gone, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel really does
Passing through an engine, diesel is doing two jobs at the same time. It combusts, and before it ignites it lubricates. The high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors are designed to very fine gaps, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing against one another.
The second job petrol does not do at all, and the first it does badly. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump running on the blend to wear itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the rattling.
The shape of the trouble is clear when you put those together. Contact does not do the damage — movement does. Where that petrol is only inside that tank, it's a problem of fuel, nothing more. Once the pump has been labouring on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: anything shed by a pump that is wearing travels onward to the fuel injectors with the fuel.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four situations we see around Hockliffe
The best case there is: filled up, never started. That petrol is inside the tank and only that tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one situation that can only truly occur at a forecourt, because anywhere else your car has been driven to get there.
Started for a second, or only your ignition on. The system has been primed, so petrol has left that tank and got to the fuel filter and the fuel lines. Normally nothing more than draining, rinsing and seeing to the fuel filter, and so still easy.
A couple of miles driven, and the pump has spent each of them running on diluted fuel. Miles is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way this work includes that tank, the fuel lines, the filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. Driving the kids to Hockliffe Lower School is one sort of trip. Very different once more: a trip to Milton Keynes, under 15 miles away, or some distance on the M1, under 5 miles from Hockliffe, where your engine never stopped running hard.
Knocking, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. That is the motor telling you its fuel has stopped acting like diesel. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Watling Street. Permanent damage is very unusual when a vehicle is pulled over early, and the fuel drain and flush that still go first take care of it.
Hockliffe motorists and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It won't. Nothing comes out when you top up — your tank simply carries more of the same mixture. That guidance supposes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
If anything, the reverse is true. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Protection counts more on modern diesels, not less, because their fuel runs through more precise components at higher pressure.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches most drivers than any other. Diesel in a petrol motor generally leaves a motor that will not run: the driver stops, and so does the damage. While your pump wears, a diesel fed petrol usually starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened. Being able to run isn't the same as being fine.
An outdated workaround for a distinct problem lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." What petrol has weakened remains diluted, and the petrol stays in the tank regardless.
The next start draws petrol back round the pump from your lines and the filter, where some of that ends up once the motor has run. That's why draining the tank yourself doesn't leave you sorted — a myth. Also, a can of petrol drained by the kerbside is genuinely risky.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
It is rarely carelessness, and nobody does it on purpose. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol motor at all. So the mistake runs one way.
It takes place when habit and your car stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. Rushing for a train outside Leighton Buzzard and filling up en route. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a driver used to petrol: exactly when it takes place. Add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids, and your hand does what it has always done.
Next time you fill up around Hockliffe: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- The label is what counts, so read the petrol pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on each forecourt.
- The first fill in a strange car is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, many motors state the fuel to use.
- One of each in the household? Label your key to the diesel — a bright fob, a sticker — because intending to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle leaves the pump the first time you fill a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" aloud. Daft, perhaps, yet it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make while your mind is on something else, so your phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices exist for the remainder. Count it as a safety net, and keep reading the petrol pump.
- Less petrol makes a thinner blend, so stop as soon as you realise — though remembering that your next step is unchanged. It's still not to start it.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Hockliffe?
Then, there is only a short order of things. Don't turn the ignition on, and don't crank it. Yet on the forecourt, at BP or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you push the car clear of the petrol pump. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the rough volume, and if it has run.
Corrosion and deposits form the problem with AdBlue, whereas petrol means lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Hockliffe page.
One petrol in a diesel job around Hockliffe costs more than another. Why?
Four different tasks lie behind the four scenarios above — which is why there is no fair single price. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving your cost. Where the vehicle is matters too, and whether our van can safely reach it, after the share of petrol to what that tank holds.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three questions: the fuel that got in, the quantity, and whether it's run. That's why. Those answers are what change a range into one firm number.
About Hockliffe
Hockliffe is a village in Bedfordshire, situated on the banks of a river at an elevation of around 102 metres. Hockliffe lies near the villages of Church End, Tebworth, and Eggington, and is approximately 10.7 miles from Milton Keynes. Hockliffe has a mix of housing types, with terraced houses being predominant, and is home to around 1068 residents. Hockliffe is also within commuting distance of London, being around 35.1 miles from the capital.
Fuel drain cover in Hockliffe and across Bedfordshire
Hockliffe rests in the LU postcode area, and the vans that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the locations near it as well — Church End, Tebworth and Eggington among them. Our engineers drain where your car is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
Still at the pump in Hockliffe?
In that case, you could not be in a better position. Keep it off. Ring.