Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Houghton on the Hill
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you probably feel. Till the ignition primes your pump, the starter turns, or the car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just rests there and does no harm. Which makes the truthful reply to that first Houghton on the Hill query — "have I ruined it?" — usually no. To keep the vehicle like that, phone Petrol in Diesel and leave the motor switched off. The rest of this page covers what petrol really does to a diesel, how to tell how far it has got, and how to make sure it does not happen to you a second time.
Inside the motor: what petrol in a diesel does
Diesel has two tasks on its way through an engine. It combusts, and before it combusts it protects. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors from wearing down against each other is your diesel passing through them — they are made to extremely fine tolerances.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. A pump running on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, since petrol is runnier than diesel and takes away the lubrication the fuel system depends on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that's where any knocking starts.
Put these together and the shape of the issue is plain. Contact does not do the harm — movement does. Where that petrol is only in the tank, it's a problem of fuel, nothing more. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, carried by the fuel, into the injectors further along, which is why a pump that has worked on that petrol is where a mechanical issue begins.
Petrol in a diesel around Houghton on the Hill: how serious is it? Four cases
Fuelled, and not started: nothing beats it. The petrol is in that tank and just your tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one situation that can only really happen on a forecourt, as anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Started for a second, or only your ignition on. Petrol has come out of that tank and got to the fuel filter and the lines, because the fuel system has been primed. That is usually still a simple job — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
Those few miles driven meant the pump labouring on fuel weakened by petrol throughout. The work is the tank, your lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the whole system, and how hard your car was driven counts as much as how far. Short trips, like the school run to Houghton-on-the-Hill Church of England Primary School, are one matter. A run as far as Leicester, under 10 miles away, is a very different job. So is any miles on the M1, under 10 miles from Houghton on the Hill, where the motor has been labouring hard throughout.
Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. What you are hearing is your engine reporting fuel that no longer acts like diesel. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Scotland Lane. A vehicle stopped early very seldom has lasting damage, as the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still come first, take care of it.
Houghton on the Hill motorists and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It does not. Nothing comes out when you top up — that tank simply holds more of the same mixture. That advice presumes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It does not.
If anything, the opposite holds. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." At higher pressure, through finer parts: that's how a newer diesel moves its fuel, so the protection matters for more, not less.
This is the one that catches drivers. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it normally won't run, and so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually does; meanwhile your pump grinds. Being able to run isn't the same as being fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a different problem. None of what petrol thinned gets put back by it — and afterwards, the tank still holds that petrol.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you're sorted." Once your engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer in your tank: it is in the filter and the lines, and it goes straight back through the pump at the next start. Also, a can of petrol drained at the kerbside is genuinely hazardous.
How does petrol in a diesel happen?
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. One way only, since of the nozzles: the narrower petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while the diesel one mostly won't fit a petrol motor. That is how the forecourt makes it simple.
It happens when habit and the vehicle stop matching. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that's brand new. Two vehicles on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. Your usual forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Filling up in a hurry on the way to Leicester, with a train to catch. Precisely the moment it takes place: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel BMW 3 Series for the first time. Add a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and the hand wins.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Houghton on the Hill
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Plenty of vehicles state the fuel inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on the first fill in a vehicle you don't know.
- Mark your key. In a house with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- "Diesel", aloud, before you pick up the nozzle — every time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make while your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for vehicles without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol inside your tank means a thinner mixture. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to crank it.
Houghton on the Hill: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then, there's just a short order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off too. Still at the forecourt, at BP or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you push the vehicle away from the petrol pump. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, roughly how much, and whether it has run.
Corrosion and deposits form the problem with AdBlue, where petrol brings lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Houghton on the Hill page.
What makes one Houghton on the Hill petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
There's no fair single quote for this, since the four scenarios above are four separate jobs. The situation 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 proportion of petrol to what the tank takes.
Three questions come first, before quoting, rather than after — what was put in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. A range turns into a straight figure once those answers are in.
About Houghton on the Hill, for a moment
Houghton on the Hill is a village in Leicestershire, situated near the River Soar and close to the city of Leicester. Houghton on the Hill has a mix of old and new housing, with detached homes being the predominant type, and it sits at an elevation of around 169 metres. Houghton on the Hill is located near several other small villages, including Old Ingarsby, Bushby, and Gaulby, and is about 5.7 miles from Leicester. Houghton on the Hill has a population of approximately 1738 people.
Fuel drain cover around Houghton on the Hill and across Leicestershire
Petrol in diesel jobs in Houghton on the Hill — part of the LE postcode area — go to vans that likewise cover the places about it, Old Ingarsby, Bushby and Gaulby included. Our technicians drain wherever the vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
At the petrol pump around Houghton on the Hill, still?
Then you're in the best spot there can be. Keep it turned off, then ring.