How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Holmbridge
Probably less than you are now — provided no one has started the car. Everyone around Holmbridge begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is normally no: petrol left inside the tank of a diesel stays harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into the fuel system. Keep it like that: leave your engine off and phone Petrol in Diesel. The remainder of this page sets out 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 a second time.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the motor?
Two jobs fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. Before it combusts, it lubricates — then it combusts. What keeps the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors from wearing against each other is the diesel flowing through them — they are built to extremely fine tolerances.
Of these two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second not at all. It's thinner than diesel and strips away the protection the 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 opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That is where the clattering comes from.
The shape of the issue is plain when you put those together. It's movement that causes the damage, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, borne by the fuel, into the injectors further along, which is why a pump that has worked on that petrol is where a mechanical fault starts.
Holmbridge, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to significant
Filled up, and not started: nothing beats it. The petrol is inside your tank and just your tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where your car sits. This is the one scenario that can only really take place at a forecourt, because anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
The ignition turned on, or a short start. With the fuel system primed, the lines and filter already hold petrol that has come from that tank. Still usually straightforward: drain, flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
Your pump now spent a couple of miles on weakened fuel — that's what driving the car does. Distance is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way the work runs to that tank, your lines, the filter and clean fuel through the entire system. On the school run to Hinchliffe Mill Junior and Infant School, the miles is short. Any mileage on the M62, under 10 miles from Holmbridge, means the engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Wakefield, under 25 miles away, makes a very different task as well.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, clattering, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone ragged. The motor is telling you the fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Pull up where you are — on the verge on Woodhead Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it. What comes first is still the fuel drain and flush-through, and that deals with it, with long-term damage very unusual when a car is stopped early.
Myths Holmbridge drivers hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. A bigger tank of the same mix is all you get, since topping up removes nothing. A diesel fuel system does not tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice assumes.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. At higher pressure, through more precise parts: that is how a newer diesel handles its fuel, so the lubrication counts for more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches more motorists than any other. Any petrol motor fed diesel generally will not run, and so the driver stops and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally starts, idles and drives away as if nothing happened — all the while its pump is wearing. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
An outdated workaround for a distinct problem is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It doesn't put back what petrol has diluted, and the petrol is still inside the tank later on.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol sits in the fuel filter and lines, ready to go straight back through the pump on your next start. It is also really hazardous to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
Nobody 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, while a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol car at all. So the slip runs one way.
The moment habit stops matching the vehicle is the moment it happens. A new vehicle, a hire car or a courtesy car. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A train to catch, and a rushed fill en route to Brockholes. Exactly the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and your hand does what it has always done.
Next time you fill up around Holmbridge: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most generally do. Read the petrol pump's label; the colour is only a hint.
- The first fill in a strange car is the time to check the filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, many cars state the fuel to use.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, for a house with one of each.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump. It sounds silly and it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put the phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for motors without one. They are a safety net, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- Stop as soon as you notice. Less petrol in your tank means a thinner mix. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to start it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Holmbridge already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Don't start the car, and do not turn your ignition on. Ask the attendants to help you push it away from the pump if you're still at the forecourt, whether that's Murco or somewhere else. Then call 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, about how much, and whether it has run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a different problem — Holmbridge has a page just for it.
One petrol in a diesel job in Holmbridge costs more than another. Why?
There's no honest single price for this, because the four scenarios above are four separate tasks. Chiefly, the cost shifts with which one you are in. Where your car is matters too, and whether a van can safely reach it, after the ratio of petrol to what that tank takes.
What was put in, how much, and whether it has run — three queries we ask before pricing, not after, for exactly that reason. A range turns into a straight figure when those replies are in.
About Holmbridge and where it is
Holmbridge is a village in West Yorkshire, situated near several small lakes and reservoirs at an elevation of around 190 metres. Holmbridge has a mix of housing types, but terraced houses are particularly prevalent in the village. Holmbridge is located near other small settlements, including Hogley Green and Hinchliffe Mill, and is around 15.8 miles from Wakefield. Holmbridge has a population of approximately 1219 residents.
Across West Yorkshire and around Holmbridge: fuel drain cover
Petrol in diesel call-outs in Holmbridge — part of the HD postcode area — go to teams that also cover the places about it, Hogley Green, Hinchliffe Mill and Flush House included. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all places we work, and your car does not need to come to us.
At the pump around Holmbridge, right now?
Then, you could not be in a better place. Ring, and keep it turned off.