Petrol in a Diesel Car in Morley Hole: How Worried Should You Be?
Less than you probably are, provided it has not been started. Everyone in Morley Hole begins with "have I ruined it?", and the honest answer is usually no: petrol resting inside your tank of a diesel remains harmless until priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. Keep it that way: leave your motor off and call Petrol in Diesel. Further down, you will find what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it may have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what happens
Diesel does two tasks on its way through a motor. It protects first, and after that does it burn. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors from wearing down against one another is your diesel passing through them — they are built to extremely fine gaps.
The second task petrol does not do at all, and the first it does poorly. It is runnier than diesel and strips away the lubrication your fuel system rests on, and so a pump running on a petrol mixture is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is made to resist igniting under compression, which is the opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That's where the clattering comes from.
Put those together and the shape of the issue is plain. Not contact but movement is what causes the harm. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to your injectors further on.
Four scenarios we see in Morley Hole: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Filled but not once started — the best it gets. On a forecourt, and really only there, that petrol is still confined to that tank — since anywhere else your car was driven to reach it. The task is emptying and cleaning on the spot.
A brief spell of running, or just your ignition on. With the system primed, the lines and filter now hold petrol that came from that tank. Usually nothing more than emptying, flushing and sorting the filter, and so still straightforward.
Some miles driven, and your pump has spent every one of them running on diluted fuel. How hard your car was driven matters as much as how far, and this work takes in your tank, the lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. Driving the children to Morley Victoria Primary School is one kind of trip. Getting as far as Leeds, under 5 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any distance on the M621, under a mile from Morley Hole, with the engine working hard all the way.
Driven on till it protested — clattering, smoke, an uneven idle, a dead throttle. That is the motor telling you its fuel has stopped behaving like diesel. Stop where you are — on the verge on Pembroke Close, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it again. Long-term damage is very unusual when a car is stopped soon, and the fuel drain and flush-through that still go first take care of it.
Morley Hole motorists 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 will be." Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a fuller tank, still the same mixture. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that guidance presumes.
Not so: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the reverse. A current diesel runs its fuel through smaller parts at higher pressure, which makes the protection count more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." This is the one that catches motorists. Diesel in a petrol motor generally means a motor that won't run: the driver stops, and so does the damage. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened, whilst your pump grinds. Fine and running are not the same at all.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It is an old fix for a distinct issue. It does not put back what petrol has weakened, and the petrol is still inside the tank later on.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." After the engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer inside your tank: it is in the filter and your lines, and it goes right back through your pump on your next start. It is also truly dangerous to drain petrol into a can at the roadside.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol vehicle at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the slip runs one way.
The moment habit stops matching the car is the moment it happens. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A rushed fill on the way to Morley with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Passat for the first time. 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 in Morley Hole: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Check the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Plenty of vehicles state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check it on your first fill in a car you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key achieves more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a house with one of each.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fuel 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 are available for vehicles without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a safety net at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- The moment you realise, stop: less petrol inside the tank means a weaker mixture. What to do next doesn't change, though — still don't crank it.
Petrol already in a diesel around Morley Hole? Begin here
The order of things is brief, then. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off too. If you are still at the forecourt — Shell or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you roll the vehicle away from the pump. Ring 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — your fuel, the rough volume, and if it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it is a different issue, with its own page for Morley Hole, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication.
What makes one Morley Hole petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
There's no honest single quote for this, since the four scenarios above are four different jobs. Mostly, the cost shifts with which one you are in. Where the car is counts too, and whether a technician can safely reach it, after the proportion of petrol to what the tank holds.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three questions: the fuel that was put in, its quantity, and whether it has run. That's why. Those answers change a range into a straight figure.
About Morley Hole itself
Morley Hole is a suburban area situated on the riverside in West Yorkshire, with a mix of semi-detached housing and local amenities. Morley Hole sits near the city of Leeds, approximately 4 miles from the city centre, and is close to nearby places such as New Brighton and Morley. Morley Hole has a population of around 5798 people and is located at an elevation of 140 metres. Morley Hole is part of the wider Leeds urban area, with easy access to the city's facilities and services.
Fuel drain cover in Morley Hole and across West Yorkshire
Morley Hole sits in the LS postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the places near it as well — New Brighton, Morley and Troy Hill among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own driveway are all places we drain, and the car doesn't need to come to us.
Morley Hole: still at the petrol pump?
The best position there is, then — that's where you are. Keep it off. Phone.