How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Ivy Cross
Less than you probably are, if it has not been started. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine until something draws it through the system — your ignition priming your pump, the starter, or driving on its own. So the honest answer to the first query everyone in Ivy Cross asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. Keep it like that: leave the motor off then ring Petrol in Diesel. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it's gone, and how to stop it from happening a second time: that is the remainder of this page.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the motor?
On its way through an engine, diesel does two tasks. It burns, and before it combusts it lubricates. Your high-pressure pump and your injectors are made to very fine tolerances, and your diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from grinding against one another.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. A pump working on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, because petrol is thinner than diesel and strips out the protection the fuel system relies on. Petrol is also made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that is where any rattling comes.
Put those together and the shape of the problem is plain. The damage is done by movement, not by contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to your injectors downstream.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios our technicians see around Ivy Cross
The best case there can be: filled up, not once started. That petrol is in that tank and just the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle stands. This is the one situation that can only really take place at a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
A brief spell of running, or just the ignition on. With the system primed, your lines and filter already hold petrol that has come from the tank. Drain, flush, deal with the fuel filter: still normally easy.
Driven a couple of miles. Now your pump has spent those miles running on diluted fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the whole circuit: that is this work, and the way your car was driven matters as much as the mileage. Driving the children to Shaftesbury Church of England Primary School is one kind of trip. Very different a second time: a trip to Salisbury, under 25 miles away, or any miles on the M27, under 50 miles from Ivy Cross, where your engine kept working hard.
Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and your motor is telling you. Pull up where you are — on the verge on Grosvenor Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it again. A vehicle pulled over quickly very seldom has long-term damage, since the fuel drain and the flush, which still go first, sort it out.
Petrol in a diesel stories Ivy Cross motorists hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mixture. That advice assumes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
Myth: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the reverse. Finer parts and higher pressure are how a modern diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, so there is no harm" — the myth that catches more people than any other. Diesel in a petrol motor generally means a motor that won't run: the motorist stops, and so does the damage. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally fires up, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened — all while its pump wears. Running is not the same as fine.
An outdated workaround for a different problem is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." That petrol is still in your tank after that, and what it has diluted isn't put back.
If your engine has run, part of the petrol sits in the fuel filter and the fuel lines, not the tank — and your next start sends it right back through the pump. So the myth "drain the tank yourself and you are sorted" doesn't stand up. Also, a can of petrol filled by the roadside is genuinely hazardous.
How does petrol in a diesel take place?
It's seldom carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. A diesel nozzle generally won't fit a petrol vehicle, but the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake simple, and only in one direction.
It happens when routine and the vehicle stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A hurried fill en route to Gillingham (Dorset) with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it takes place: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Skoda Octavia for the first time. The hand does what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Ivy Cross
- The label is what counts, so check the pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt.
- Many motors state the fuel type inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check it on the first fill in any vehicle you do not know.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a bright colour on your diesel's key if a house has one of each. So label it.
- Before the nozzle leaves the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new motor, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, yes, yet it does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, so tuck the phone away then keep your mind on the petrol pump.
- Add-on devices are available for motors without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't take a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a safety net only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol inside the tank makes a thinner blend. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Ivy Cross: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is short, then. Don't switch your ignition on, and don't start it. Yet on the forecourt, at Esso or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the petrol pump. What was put in, about how much, and whether it has run: tell us that when you call 0333 366 0103.
If it was AdBlue rather than petrol, say so. That's a separate problem — corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Ivy Cross.
One petrol in a diesel job in Ivy Cross costs more than another. Why?
The four situations above are four different tasks, so no single price for this would be honest. Which of them you are in is mostly what shifts the cost. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a share of what the tank takes, then the spot your car is in and whether a technician can reach it safely.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three questions: the fuel that went in, the quantity, and if it has run. That is why. Given the answers, you get a straight figure rather than a range.
About Ivy Cross itself
Ivy Cross is a locality in north Dorset, situated inland at an elevation of 219 metres, with views of the surrounding countryside. Ivy Cross is characterized by its terraced housing and is located near the historic town of Shaftesbury and the village of Enmore Green. Ivy Cross sits within commuting distance of Salisbury, which is approximately 17.7 miles away. Ivy Cross is also relatively close to the village of St James.
Ivy Cross and Dorset: where our fuel drain cover reaches
Shaftesbury, Enmore Green and St James are among the locations near Ivy Cross that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel jobs across Ivy Cross's SP postcode area. No need to move the car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all places we drain.
In Ivy Cross and still at the pump?
Then you're in the best position there is. Phone, and leave it switched off.