How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Hooley
Less than you probably are, provided it hasn't been started. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first thing everyone in Hooley asks, and the truthful answer is usually no, because petrol resting in a diesel tank harms nothing till it's dragged through the fuel system — by ignition priming, by the starter, or by driving. To keep it like that, phone Petrol in Diesel then leave the motor alone. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the clues of how far it has spread, and the way to make sure you don't do it again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to your engine?
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route through a motor. It lubricates first, and only then does it burn. The high-pressure pump and the injectors are made to extremely fine gaps, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing down against one another.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. The rattling comes from petrol being designed not to ignite when compressed, which is exactly the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is thinner than diesel, it strips out the protection the fuel system depends on, and any pump working on such a mix is wearing itself.
Together, those make the shape of the issue plain. Not contact but circulation is what causes the harm. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to the injectors downstream.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios we see around Hooley
Filled up, never started. The best case there can be. On a forecourt, and genuinely only there, the petrol is still limited to the tank — since anywhere else the vehicle was driven to get to it. The task is emptying and cleaning on the spot.
A brief spell of running, or merely the ignition on. Petrol has left your tank and reached the filter and the fuel lines, since the fuel system has been bled. That is normally still a simple task — a drain, a flush, and your filter dealt with.
Those few miles on the road were your pump running on fuel weakened by petrol throughout. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the entire circuit: that is this work, and the way the vehicle was driven counts as much as the mileage. Driving the kids to Chipstead Valley Primary School is one sort of trip. Very different once more: a run to Westminster, under 15 miles away, or some mileage on the M23, under a mile from Hooley, where the engine never stopped labouring hard.
Knocking, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. The engine is telling you your fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Forge Bridge Lane. Permanent damage is very unusual if a vehicle is stopped quickly, and the drain and flush-through that still go first take care of it.
Myths Hooley 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." Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mixture. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, whatever that advice presumes.
Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. A newer diesel sends its fuel through smaller components at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." This is the one that catches drivers. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it normally won't run, so the motorist stops — and the damage stops with them. Whilst your pump grinds, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, idles and drives away as if nothing has happened. Running is not the same as fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It is an outdated fix for a distinct fault. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and the petrol is still in your tank afterwards.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, since after it has been running some petrol sits in the filter and lines, ready to go right back through your pump at your next start. Clearing petrol into a can by the roadside is also truly risky.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
A careless moment is rarely the cause, and nobody means to do it. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol car at all. So the error runs one way.
Habit and your car falling out of step is when it occurs. A car that is new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Two motors on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. Your usual forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. A train to catch, and a hurried fill on the way to Woodmansterne. Exactly the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Renault Megane for the first time. With rain, a call coming in, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand just does what it always has.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Hooley
- Read the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt. The label is what matters.
- Inspect the filler flap. Many motors state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in any motor you do not know.
- One of each in the household? Label your key to your 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" aloud. Daft, yes, yet it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put your phone away and keep your mind on the pump.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler built 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 pump.
- As soon as you realise, stop: less petrol inside your tank means a thinner mix. What to do next does not change, though — still do not crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Hooley already?
The order of things is brief, then. Starting it is out, and so is switching on your ignition. Yet on the forecourt, at BP or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump. What was put in, roughly how much, and if it's run: tell us those when you phone 0333 366 0103.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a separate problem, with its own page for Hooley, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection.
What makes one Hooley petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
An honest single quote does not exist here: four situations, four separate jobs. What moves your cost is mostly which of them you're in. The proportion counts next, meaning how much of your tank is petrol, followed by the position of the vehicle and whether getting to it is safe for a van.
What got in, how much, and if it has run — three queries our engineers ask before costing, not after, for exactly that reason. A range becomes a straight figure once the answers are in.
About Hooley and its setting
Hooley is a small village in Surrey, situated inland at an elevation of 121 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Hooley lies approximately 14.9 miles from London and is close to nearby places such as Netherne on-the-Hill, Chipstead, and Old Coulsdon. Hooley has a population of around 1273 residents, who live in a quiet, residential environment. Hooley is also near the city of Westminster, which is about 14.4 miles away.
Fuel drain cover across Surrey, Hooley included
Hooley rests in the CR postcode area, and the vans that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the locations near it as well — Netherne on-the-Hill, Chipstead and Old Coulsdon among them. You need not bring your car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all spots where we work.
Hooley: still at the petrol pump?
Then, you couldn't be in a better place. Call, and leave it turned off.