Petrol in a Diesel Car in Ivybridge: How Worried Should You Be?
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you likely feel. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to the motor till something pulls it through your fuel system — the ignition priming the pump, your starter, or the drive itself. So the fair answer to the first query everyone in Ivybridge asks, "have I ruined it?", is normally no. Leave your motor off then ring Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it like that. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it has travelled, and how to keep it from happening a second time: that is the remainder of this page.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to your engine?
Diesel does two jobs on its way through a motor. It protects to begin with, and after that does it burn. Very fine tolerances are built into the injectors and your high-pressure pump, and only the diesel running through stops those surfaces grinding together.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. A pump working on a petrol mix is wearing itself out, since petrol is runnier 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's where the clattering starts.
The shape of the issue is plain when you put those together. Contact doesn't do the harm — movement does. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel problem. After the pump has been working on that petrol, a mechanical issue has begun: whatever is shed by a pump that's wearing travels downstream to the injectors with the fuel.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios our technicians see in Ivybridge
Filled up, never started. The best case there can be. That petrol is in the tank and just your tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle sits. This is the one situation that can only truly happen at a forecourt, as anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
A brief spell of running, or just the ignition on. With your system primed, the fuel lines and filter already hold petrol that came from the tank. Drain, flush, see to your filter: still usually straightforward.
A few miles driven, and the pump has spent every one of them working on thinned fuel. Mileage is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way this work includes the tank, the fuel lines, your filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. Short trips, like the school run to The Erme Primary School, are one matter. Any distance on the M5, under 50 miles from Ivybridge, means your engine working hard throughout, and a run to Plymouth, under 10 miles away, is a very different job as well.
Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. That's the engine telling you its fuel has stopped acting like diesel. Whether it is the verge on Harford Road, a lay-by or a side street, stop where you are and leave it. A vehicle stopped soon very seldom has lasting damage, because the fuel drain and the flush, which still go first, deal with it.
Ivybridge people and that petrol in a diesel stories they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mixture. The assumption behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. More precise parts and higher pressure are how a current diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no harm done." This is the one that catches drivers. The driver of a petrol engine fed diesel usually has no choice but to stop, because it will not run, and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it generally starts, idles and drives away as if nothing happened — all the while its pump wears. Fine and running aren't the same at all.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a distinct issue. None of what petrol thinned gets put back by it — and later, that tank still holds the petrol.
If the engine has run, part of the petrol is in your filter and the lines, not that tank — and the next start sends it right back through your pump. So the myth "drain that tank yourself and you're sorted" does not hold. Besides, petrol drained into a can by the road is truly dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it take place?
No one does it on purpose, and it is rarely carelessness. The petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two and slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the error runs one way.
The moment habit stops matching your car is the moment it takes place. A new motor, a hire car or a courtesy car. Two motors on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Rushing for a train at the nearest station and filling up en route. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Tiguan, its first fuelling, and a motorist accustomed to petrol: exactly when it takes place. With rain, a call arriving, or children to deal with, the hand simply does what it always has.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Ivybridge
- The label is what matters, so check the petrol pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt.
- In a car you do not know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before your first fill: plenty of vehicles print the fuel type there.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a household 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 take the nozzle off the pump. It sounds silly and it works.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward 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 reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for motors without one. They are a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Less petrol means a thinner blend, and so stop the moment you realise — while remembering that the next step is unchanged. It's still not to crank it.
Petrol already in a diesel around Ivybridge? Start here
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition off as well. Still at the forecourt, at BP or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you roll the vehicle away from the pump. What was put in, about how much, and whether it has run: tell us those when you ring 0333 366 0103.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That is a separate problem — corrosion and deposits instead of lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Ivybridge.
One petrol in a diesel job around Ivybridge costs more than another. Why?
The four situations above are four different jobs, so no single price for this would be fair. What shifts your cost is chiefly which of them you're in. Two things come after that: the petrol that was put in as a share of what your tank takes, then the place the car is in and whether our van can reach it safely.
Three queries come first, before quoting, rather than after — what went in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. Their replies are what turn a range into one firm number.
About Ivybridge, briefly
Ivybridge is a town situated in a riverside location in Devon, England. It is positioned near the southern edge of Dartmoor National Park, an area of outstanding natural beauty. The town is close to the city of Plymouth and is served by a major road, making it an important stopping point for travellers. Ivybridge is nestled in the South Hams region of Devon, known for its picturesque countryside.
Across Devon and in Ivybridge: fuel drain cover
Ivybridge sits in the PL postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the locations near it as well — Godwell, Filham and Penquit among them. The vehicle doesn't need to move to us: we drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
Ivybridge: still at the petrol pump?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Switched off it remains; then phone.