Leigh-on-Sea: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you probably feel. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the motor until something draws it through the fuel system — your ignition priming the pump, your starter, or the drive on its own. So the truthful answer to the first query anyone around Leigh-on-Sea asks, "have I wrecked it?", is normally no. To leave the car like that, phone Petrol in Diesel then leave the motor alone. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it has travelled, and how to stop it from happening again: that's the rest of this page.
What petrol in a diesel does to the motor
On its way through a motor, diesel does two tasks. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. What keeps the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors from wearing against each other is the diesel flowing through them — they're made to extremely fine clearances.
Petrol does the first job poorly and the second not at all. The knocking comes from petrol being designed 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 your system hinges on, and any pump working on such a blend is wearing itself.
Combined, those make the shape of the problem clear. Not contact but movement is what does the damage. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. Whatever a worn pump sheds travels on, carried by the fuel, into the injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has been working on that petrol is where a mechanical fault begins.
Leigh-on-Sea, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to significant
Filled up, and not started: no case is better. Being on a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the car has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol held inside your tank alone, it is emptied and cleaned right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Your ignition switched on, or a short start. Once primed, the fuel system has pulled petrol out of your tank up to the filter and the fuel lines. Usually little more than clearing, flushing and sorting the filter, and so still straightforward.
A couple of miles driven, and your pump has spent every one of them working on weakened fuel. How hard the car was driven matters as much as how far, and this work takes in the tank, the fuel lines, the filter and clean fuel through the whole system. The school run to Leigh North Street Primary School is one matter. A run as far as Southend-on-Sea, under 3 miles away, is a very different task. So is any mileage on the M2, under 15 miles from Leigh-on-Sea, where the motor has been working hard the whole time.
Driven on till it protested — clattering, smoke, a ragged idle, a soft throttle. That is the motor telling you its fuel has stopped acting like diesel. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on Hadleigh Road, a lay-by, a side street — then leave the car where it is. What comes first is still the drain and flush, and that deals with it, with permanent damage very rare when a car is stopped quickly.
Myths Leigh-on-Sea people hear about petrol in a diesel
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be." A bigger tank of the same mixture is all it gives, because topping up takes out nothing. That advice assumes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. At higher pressure, through finer parts: that's how a modern diesel handles its fuel, and so the protection counts more, not less.
This is the one that fools motorists. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." The driver of a petrol motor fed diesel usually stops, because it will not run, and the damage stops there. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing happened — all the while its pump is wearing. Running isn't the same as fine.
An old workaround for a different fault lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." That petrol is still inside the tank after that, and whatever it has weakened is not put back.
Myth: "Drain the tank yourself and you are sorted." After the motor has run, some of the petrol is no longer in your tank: it is in the filter and your lines, and it goes right back through your pump at the next start. Besides, petrol cleared into a can by the road is genuinely risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. 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 will not fit a petrol vehicle. That's how the forecourt makes it easy.
It occurs when habit and your car stop matching. Courtesy car, hire car, or a motor that is new. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the drive. A forecourt you know, only with its pumps laid out differently. Rushing for a train at the nearest station and filling up en route. The first fill-up in a diesel Renault Megane after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it takes place. Your hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Next time you fill up around Leigh-on-Sea: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — but not on every forecourt. Trust the label on the pump, not the colour.
- Many motors state the fuel type inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check it on your first fill in a car you do not know.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on your diesel's key if a house has one of each. So label it.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new car, say "diesel" aloud. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- Put your phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you're thinking about something else.
- Add-on devices exist for motors without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that will not accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a safety net only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Spotting it halfway? Stop at once. A weaker mixture results from less petrol inside the tank, yet the next step stays the same: don't crank it.
Leigh-on-Sea: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is short, then. Never crank it, and do not switch your ignition on. The staff at the forecourt — whether at Esso itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help push it clear of the pump if you ask. Then call 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it's run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost lubrication, make it a separate problem — Leigh-on-Sea has a page just for it.
Leigh-on-Sea petrol in a diesel jobs: why one costs more than another
The four situations above are four separate tasks, so no single price for this would be honest. What shifts your cost is chiefly which of them you are in. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a proportion of what the tank takes, then the place the vehicle is in and whether our van can reach it safely.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three questions: the fuel that got in, the volume, and if it has run. That is why. A range becomes a straight figure when the replies are in.
About Leigh-on-Sea
Leigh-on-Sea is a coastal locality in Essex, situated on the northern side of the Thames Estuary, with Chalkwell and Westcliff-on-Sea to the east and Eastwood to the west. Leigh-on-Sea has a relatively low elevation of around 39 metres and is approximately 2.7 miles from the city of Southend-on-Sea. Leigh-on-Sea is characterised by a high proportion of flat dwellings, reflecting its urbanised and densely populated nature. Leigh-on-Sea is also within commuting distance of London, being around 33.5 miles from the capital.
Across Essex and in Leigh-on-Sea: fuel drain cover
Leigh-on-Sea sits in the SS postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the places near it as well — Chalkwell, Westcliff-on-Sea and Eastwood among them. No need to bring your car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all places we drain.
Still at the petrol pump in Leigh-on-Sea?
Then you are in the best spot there can be. Turned off it remains; then ring.