--- title: Worried? Petrol in a Diesel Car Lickey End canonical: https://www.petrolinadieselcar.co.uk/petrol-in-diesel/lickey-end-worcestershire/ location: Lickey End county: Worcestershire latitude: 52.350590 longitude: -2.042180 service: Petrol in a Diesel Car updated: 2026-10-11 --- # Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Lickey End Probably less than you already are — as long as no one has started the car. Until the ignition primes your pump, the starter cranks, or your vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply waits there and does nothing. Which means the honest reply to the first Lickey End query — "have I ruined it?" — usually no. Keep it like that: leave the engine off then ring Petrol in Diesel. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the clues of how far it has spread, and ways to make sure you never do it again. ## What petrol in a diesel does to your engine Two jobs fall to diesel on its route through a motor. Before it ignites, it lubricates — and then it combusts. Extremely fine gaps are built into the injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and just your diesel running through keeps their surfaces from grinding together. The second task petrol does not do at all, and the first it does badly. A pump running on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, since petrol is thinner than diesel and strips out the lubrication your 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 clattering comes. The shape of the trouble is plain when you put those together. It is circulation that does the harm, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel problem. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to the injectors downstream. ## Petrol in a diesel around Lickey End: how bad is it? Four situations The best case there can be: filled up, never started. Only that tank has petrol in it, so the task is emptying that tank and purging your system where the car stands. This scenario can only really happen on a forecourt: anywhere else, the car got there by being driven. A moment's running, or just your ignition on. The system has been bled, so petrol has left that tank and got to your filter and your lines. That's generally still a straightforward job — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter dealt with. Some miles driven, and the pump has spent each of them running on weakened fuel. How hard your car was driven counts as much as how far, and the work covers your tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the entire system. On the school run to Lickey End First School, the miles is small. Very different again: a trip to Birmingham, under 15 miles away, or some miles on the M42, under a mile from Lickey End, where the engine never stopped working hard. Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. That's the engine telling you its fuel no longer is behaving like diesel. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Littleheath Lane. The fuel drain and flush-through still come first, and they take care of it: when a car is stopped soon, lasting damage is very unusual. ## Lickey End people and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be." Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mixture. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that guidance presumes. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. At higher pressure, through more precise components: that's how a newer diesel handles its fuel, so the lubrication counts for more, not less. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." This is the one that fools drivers. A petrol engine fed diesel normally will not run, and so the driver stops and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it generally fires up, idles and drives away like nothing has happened — all while its pump wears. Running isn't the same as fine. Myth: a two-stroke additive makes it safe to drive home. It was an old fix, supposed for another fault. What petrol has thinned remains diluted, and that petrol remains in that tank regardless. The next start sends petrol back round the pump out of your lines and the filter, where some of it ends up once your engine has run. That's why a DIY tank drain does not leave you sorted — a myth. Clearing petrol into a can by the kerbside is also truly hazardous. ## How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel Nobody does it on purpose, and it's seldom carelessness. One way only, because of the nozzles: the slimmer petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while the diesel one mostly won't fit a petrol car. That's how the forecourt makes it easy. It occurs when routine and the car stop matching. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that is new. Two vehicles on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Racing for a train at Bromsgrove and fuelling up en route. The first fill-up in a diesel Renault Megane after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it occurs. With rain, a call coming in, or a car full of children to deal with, your hand just does what it has always done. ## How to prevent petrol in a diesel on your next fill-up in Lickey End - Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most usually do. Check the pump's label; the colour is only a clue. - Many vehicles state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check it on your first fill in any car you don't know. - One of each in the house? Label the key to your diesel — a bright fob, a sticker — since intending to remember isn't enough. - "Diesel", out loud, before you pick up the nozzle — each time a new or hired car needs its first tank. It sounds daft. It does the trick. - Put the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you are thinking about something else. - A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler built to block 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. - Spotting it halfway? Stop there and then. A weaker mixture results from less petrol inside that tank, but the next stage remains the same: don't crank it. ## Petrol already in a diesel around Lickey End? Start here The order of things is brief, then. Don't switch your ignition on, and don't crank it. The staff on the forecourt — whether at Esso itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help roll it away from the petrol pump if you ask. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what got in, about how much, and if it has been run. Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a different problem, with its own page for Lickey End, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection. ## Lickey End petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another A fair single quote does not exist here: four situations, four separate jobs. Chiefly, your cost shifts with which one you're in. Two things follow that: the petrol that got in as a proportion of what your tank takes, then the spot the vehicle is in and whether our van can reach it safely. Three questions come first, before any quote, instead of after — what was put in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. Given the answers, you get a straight figure instead of a range. ## About Lickey End itself Lickey End is a village in Worcestershire, situated inland at an elevation of 121 metres, approximately 10.7 miles southwest of Birmingham. Lickey End is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock and is located near other small settlements such as Hall Flat and Burcot. Lickey End sits within the West Midlands region, about 100 miles northwest of London. ## Fuel drain cover across Worcestershire, Lickey End included The teams answering petrol in diesel call-outs around Lickey End, in the B postcode area, also work the places near it, Hall Flat, Burcot and Apes Dale included. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all places our technicians drain, and the car doesn't need to come to us. ## At the petrol pump around Lickey End, right now? Nothing beats it: that is where you now are. Keep it off. Phone.