Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Nettlestead
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you likely feel. Everyone in Nettlestead begins with "have I ruined it?", and the honest answer is generally no: petrol left in your tank of any diesel stays harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into your fuel system. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with your motor kept off, and so it stays that way. 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.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the motor?
On its way through a motor, diesel has two tasks. Lubricating comes before burning; it does both. Very fine clearances are built into the injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and just your diesel flowing through stops their surfaces grinding together.
Of those two jobs, petrol handles the first badly and the second never. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump running on the blend to wear itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the rattling.
Put those together and the shape of the problem is clear. The damage is done by circulation, not by contact. Where that petrol is only in that tank, it's a problem of fuel, nothing more. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the injectors downstream.
Nettlestead, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to serious
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. At a forecourt, and genuinely only there, the petrol is still confined to that tank — since anywhere else the vehicle was driven to reach it. The task is emptying and purging on the spot.
Your ignition turned on, or a brief start. The fuel system has been primed, so petrol has left your tank and got to the filter and the fuel lines. That is normally still an easy task — a drain, a flush, and your filter seen to.
Those few miles on the road meant the pump running on fuel weakened by petrol throughout. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the entire circuit: that's the work, and the way your car was driven counts as much as the miles. On the school run to Wateringbury Church of England Primary School, the miles is short. Any distance on the M20, under 5 miles from Nettlestead, means the motor working hard throughout, and a run to Southend-on-Sea, under 25 miles away, makes a very different task too.
Driven until it protested. Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The engine is telling you the fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Stop on the spot — on the verge on Bishops Close, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it again. What comes first is still the drain and flush-through, and that takes care of it, with long-term damage very uncommon when a car is stopped early.
Myths Nettlestead people hear about petrol in a diesel
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all you get, because topping up removes nothing. A diesel fuel system doesn't tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice presumes.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. A newer diesel runs its fuel through more precise 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 fools drivers. Any petrol engine fed diesel normally won't run, and so the driver stops and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened, while the pump grinds. Being able to run isn't the same as being fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It's an outdated fix for a different problem. It does not put back what petrol has weakened, and that petrol is still in the tank after that.
The next start draws petrol back round your pump out of your lines and the fuel filter, where some of that sits once the engine has been run. That is why draining the tank yourself doesn't sort it — a myth. Also, a can of petrol drained by the roadside is genuinely hazardous.
Why petrol in a diesel takes place at all
A careless moment is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the mistake runs one way.
Routine and the vehicle falling out of step is when it takes place. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and vehicles that are new to you. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. A hurried fill on the way to Wateringbury with a train to catch. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Add a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and the hand takes over.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Nettlestead
- A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — but not on each forecourt. Go by the label on the pump, not the colour.
- In a vehicle you do not know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before the first fill: many vehicles state the fuel there.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, for a household with one of each.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put your phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for the remainder. Treat it as a backstop, and keep reading the petrol pump.
- Stop the moment you notice. Less petrol in the tank makes a thinner blend. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Nettlestead: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Don't turn the ignition on, and don't fire it up. The staff at the forecourt — whether at JET itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help roll it away from the petrol pump if you ask. What went in, about how much, and whether it's run: tell us that when you phone 0333 366 0103.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it is a different issue, with its own page for Nettlestead, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection.
What makes one Nettlestead petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
An honest single price does not exist here: four situations, four separate tasks. What moves your cost is chiefly which of them you are in. The proportion counts next, meaning how much of that tank is petrol, and then the position of the vehicle and whether getting to it is safe for our van.
Ahead of any quote, not after, we ask three queries: your fuel that was put in, its amount, and if it's run. That's why. The replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Nettlestead itself
Nettlestead is a small village in Kent, situated on the banks of the River Medway at an elevation of 21 metres. Nettlestead lies near the villages of Wateringbury and Nettlestead Green, and is characterized by its terraced housing. Nettlestead is located approximately 29.5 miles from London and 24 miles from Southend-on-Sea, making it a rural community within commuting distance of larger urban areas.
Fuel drain cover across Kent, Nettlestead included
Our teams answering petrol in diesel call-outs around Nettlestead, in the ME postcode area, also work the spots near it, Wateringbury, Pizien Well and Nettlestead Green among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all spots our technicians drain, and the vehicle doesn't need to come to us.
At the petrol pump around Nettlestead, still?
Nothing beats it: that's where you are. Turned off it remains; then call.