How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Kirriemuir
If it has not been started, worry far less than you likely are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine till something pulls it through the fuel system — your ignition priming the pump, the starter, or the drive on its own. So the fair answer to the first query everyone around Kirriemuir asks, "have I ruined it?", is usually no. Leave your motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the clues of how far it has got, and the way to make sure you never repeat it.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Passing through a motor, diesel is doing two jobs at the same time. Before it burns, it lubricates — then it burns. What keeps the surfaces inside the high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors from grinding against each other is your diesel flowing through them — they're built to very fine tolerances.
Of these two jobs, petrol manages the first badly and the second not at all. The clattering comes from petrol being made not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the opposite of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is thinner than diesel, it strips out the lubrication the fuel system depends on, and any pump working on such a blend is wearing itself.
The shape of the trouble is clear once you put those together. The damage is done by movement, not by contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel fault. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been labouring on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with the fuel to the fuel injectors downstream.
Four scenarios our engineers see in Kirriemuir: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Filled up, and not started: nothing beats it. Being at a forecourt is what makes this the case: elsewhere, the vehicle has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol held inside your tank alone, it is cleared and cleaned right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Started for a second, or only your ignition on. Your system has been bled, and so petrol has left the tank and reached the filter and your lines. Still usually simple: drain, flush, and the filter sorted.
The pump has worked a couple of miles on weakened fuel — that's what driving the vehicle does. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the whole circuit: that is this work, and the way your car was driven counts as much as the miles. Short trips, like the school run to the local primary school, are one matter. Any mileage on the M90, under 25 miles from Kirriemuir, means the engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Dundee, under 15 miles away, makes a very different task too.
Driven on till it protested — rattling, smoke, an uneven idle, a soft throttle. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and the motor is saying so. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on High Street, a lay-by, a side street — then leave the car where it is. A vehicle stopped quickly very seldom has lasting damage, because the drain and the flush, which still go first, sort it out.
Stories Kirriemuir motorists hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It does not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mixture. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that advice presumes.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. At higher pressure, through more precise parts: that is how a newer diesel handles its fuel, so the lubrication matters for more, not less.
The myth that catches drivers out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Any petrol engine fed diesel generally 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 the pump grinds. Being able to run is not 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 fault. None of what petrol weakened gets put back by it — and afterwards, your tank still contains that petrol.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you are sorted." After your engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer inside that tank: it is in the fuel filter and the lines, and it goes right back through the pump at your next start. Also, a can of petrol filled by the roadside is genuinely risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
It's seldom carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. The petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two and slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the error runs one way.
It takes place when habit and the vehicle stop matching. Any vehicle that is new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. A forecourt you know, but with its pumps laid out differently. A hurried fill on the way to the nearest station with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Passat, its first fuelling, and a motorist accustomed to petrol: exactly when it takes place. Throw in a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and habit wins.
Next time you fill up around Kirriemuir: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most generally do. Read the pump's label; the colour is only a hint.
- Check your filler flap. Plenty of cars state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in any motor you do not know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, in a home with one of each.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, yes, yet it works.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels have a filler built to block a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices are available for the remainder. Treat it as a safety net, then keep checking the pump.
- Less petrol means a weaker blend, and so stop the moment you notice — while remembering that the next step is unchanged. It's still not to fire it up.
Kirriemuir: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition off as well. The staff on the forecourt — whether at Autosales itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help roll it clear of the petrol pump if you ask. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — the fuel, the rough amount, and if it has run.
Corrosion and deposits form the trouble with AdBlue, where petrol brings lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Kirriemuir page.
One petrol in a diesel task around Kirriemuir costs more than another. Why?
Four separate jobs sit behind the four situations above — which is why there is no fair single price. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving your cost. After that it's the ratio — how much petrol was put in against how much your tank holds — and then where the car is and whether our van can get to it safely.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three questions: the fuel that went in, its quantity, and if it's run. That's why. Those replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Kirriemuir
Kirriemuir is a town situated in a riverside setting in Angus, with a mix of detached housing and other types of accommodation. Kirriemuir sits at an elevation of 133 metres, near the South Esk River, and is located close to the nearby places of Wellbank, Tillyloss, and Southmuir. Kirriemuir has a population of around 6011 people and is approximately 14.9 miles from the city of Dundee. Kirriemuir is also relatively distant from London, at a distance of 375.4 miles.
Fuel drain cover in Kirriemuir and across Angus
Kirriemuir sits in the DD postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the places around it as well — Wellbank, Tillyloss and Southmuir among them. Our technicians drain wherever the car is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
Kirriemuir: still at the pump?
Then, you couldn't be in a better position. Switched off it remains; then ring.