Petrol in a Diesel Car in Kirkland Dam: How Worried Should You Be?
If it has not been started, worry less than you probably are. Everyone around Kirkland Dam starts with "have I wrecked it?", and the honest answer is normally no: petrol resting inside your tank of any diesel stays harmless until priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. Keep it that way: leave the engine off and ring Petrol in Diesel. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has spread, and the way to make sure you don't do it again.
The motor and petrol in a diesel: what happens
On its way through a motor, diesel has two jobs. Before it burns, it lubricates — then it combusts. What keeps the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors from wearing against one another is your diesel passing through them — they're designed to very fine clearances.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, leaving a pump on the mixture to wear itself. It is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the knocking.
Combined, those leave the shape of the trouble plain. The harm is done by circulation, not by contact. Where the petrol is only inside that tank, it is a problem of fuel, nothing more. A pump that has been labouring on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the fuel injectors further on.
Four scenarios our technicians see around Kirkland Dam: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled up, never started. The best case there can be. At a forecourt, and truly only there, that petrol is still limited to your tank — because everywhere else the vehicle was driven to reach it. The job is emptying and cleaning on the spot.
Ignition on, or started for a second. Once primed, the fuel system has drawn petrol from that tank up to the filter and the lines. Still generally straightforward: drain, flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
A couple of miles driven, and the pump has spent each of them labouring on weakened fuel. Distance is only half of it; how hard it was driven counts just as much. Either way the work includes the tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. Driving the children to the local primary school is one sort of trip. Any miles on the M90, under 15 miles from Kirkland Dam, means the motor working hard throughout, and a run to Edinburgh, under 25 miles away, makes a very different task too.
Driven till it complained. Rattling, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. That's your motor telling you its fuel no longer is behaving like diesel. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Willowbank. The drain and flush still go first, and they sort it out: if a vehicle is pulled over soon, lasting damage is very uncommon.
What Kirkland Dam drivers get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed when you top up — your tank simply holds more of the same mixture. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that guidance supposes.
Myth: a newer diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the reverse. At higher pressure, through smaller components: that's how a current diesel handles its fuel, so the lubrication matters more, not less.
This is the one that fools drivers. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." A petrol engine fed diesel usually will not run, so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually does; meanwhile your pump grinds. Running is not the same as fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It is an outdated workaround for a different issue. It does not put back what petrol has weakened, and that petrol is still inside the tank after that.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump out of the lines and the fuel filter, where some of it ends up after your engine has been run. That is why a DIY tank drain doesn't sort it — a myth. Clearing petrol into a can at the kerbside is also genuinely risky.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and nobody means to do it. One way only, because of the nozzles: the narrower petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whereas the diesel one generally won't fit a petrol car. That is how the forecourt makes it simple.
The moment habit stops matching the vehicle is the moment it happens. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and vehicles that are new to you. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A forecourt you know, but with its pumps arranged differently. A hurried fill en route to Cameron Bridge with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a driver accustomed to petrol: exactly when it happens. With rain, a call arriving, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand just does what it has always done.
Next time you fill up around Kirkland Dam: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- The label is what counts, and so check the petrol pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt.
- The first fill in a strange motor is the time to check your filler flap — on it, or on the cap, many vehicles state the fuel to use.
- Good intentions count for less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on your diesel's key when a house has one of each. So label it.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the pump. It seems daft and it works.
- Put the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you are thinking about something else.
- Add-on devices exist for vehicles without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Less petrol means a weaker mix, so stop as soon as you realise — though remembering that your next stage is unchanged. It's still not to crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Kirkland Dam already?
Then, there's just a short order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off too. Still at the forecourt, at JET or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push the vehicle away from the petrol pump. Call 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — your fuel, the rough quantity, and whether it's run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a separate problem — Kirkland Dam has a page all for it.
One petrol in a diesel task around Kirkland Dam costs more than another. Why?
There's no honest single price for this, since the four scenarios above are four separate tasks. The situation itself does most of the work of moving the cost. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a proportion of what that tank takes, then the spot your car is in and whether our van can reach it safely.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three queries: the fuel that got in, the amount, and whether it has run. That is why. The answers turn a range into a straight figure.
About Kirkland Dam, for a moment
Kirkland Dam is a coastal locality in Fife, situated near the towns of Methilhill and Windygates, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Kirkland Dam has a population of around 1201 people and is located at a low elevation of 11 metres above sea level. Kirkland Dam is close to the community of Pepper Hill and is within commuting distance of Edinburgh, which is 17.5 miles away. Kirkland Dam is part of the larger Fife region, which has a diverse landscape of coastal towns and rural areas.
Kirkland Dam and Fife: where our fuel drain cover reaches
Kirkland Dam waits in the KY postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the spots around it as well — Pepper Hill, Methilhill and Windygates among them. You need not move the vehicle to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all places we drain.
Kirkland Dam: still at the petrol pump?
Then you are in the best place there can be. Turned off it remains; then call.