Petrol in a Diesel Car in Newtown: How Worried Should You Be?
Probably less than you are now — as long as nobody has started the car. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to your motor until something pulls it through your fuel system — the ignition priming your pump, your starter, or driving itself. So the fair answer to the first question everyone in Newtown asks, "have I wrecked it?", is normally no. Leave the motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it that way. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has travelled, and how to stop it from happening a second time: that is the rest of this page.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
Diesel does two tasks on its way through an engine. It burns, and before it combusts it lubricates. Very fine clearances go into your injectors and your high-pressure pump, and only the diesel flowing through keeps those surfaces from grinding together.
Petrol does the first job poorly and the second not at all. It's runnier than diesel and strips away the lubrication the system depends on, and so a pump running on a petrol blend is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is made to resist igniting under compression, which is the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That's where the clattering comes from.
Combined, those make the shape of the problem plain. Not contact but circulation is what does the harm. Where the petrol is only in your tank, it is an issue of fuel, nothing more. 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 your fuel to the injectors downstream.
Four situations our technicians see in Newtown: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled, and not started: no case is better. Only that tank has petrol in it, so the task is draining the tank and flushing your system where the car stands. This scenario can only really occur at a forecourt: anywhere else, the vehicle got there by being driven.
Your ignition switched on, or a short start. Once primed, your system has pulled petrol from that tank as far as the filter and your lines. Drain, flush, deal with the fuel filter: still usually straightforward.
A few miles driven, and the pump has spent every one of them working on thinned fuel. The work is your tank, your lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the entire system, and how hard the vehicle was driven matters as much as how far. On the school run to the local primary school, the mileage is short. A run as far as Newport, under 25 miles away, is a very different task. So is any mileage on the M4, under 25 miles from Newtown, where the engine has been running hard the whole time.
It protested, and only then stopped: smoke, knocking, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone uneven. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and the motor is telling you. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Louvain Terrace, a lay-by, a side street — then leave the car there. Long-term damage is very unusual when a vehicle is stopped soon, and the drain and flush-through that still go first deal with it.
Newtown drivers and that petrol in a diesel stories they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a bigger tank, still the same mixture. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that advice supposes.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. At higher pressure, through finer parts: that's how a newer diesel moves its fuel, so the protection counts more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, so no harm done" — the myth that catches most motorists than any other. The driver of a petrol motor fed diesel usually has no choice but to stop, because it will not run, and the damage stops there. While the pump grinds, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened. Fine and running are not the same at all.
Not so: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It is an old fix, supposed for another issue. None of what petrol thinned gets put back by it — and later, that tank still holds that petrol.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you're sorted." After the engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer in the tank: it is in the fuel filter and the lines, and it goes straight back through your pump at the next start. And, a can of petrol filled by the roadside is truly hazardous.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
Nobody does it on purpose, and it's seldom carelessness. A diesel nozzle mostly won't fit a petrol vehicle, yet the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake easy, and just in that direction.
Habit and the car falling out of step is how it occurs. Courtesy car, hire car, or a motor that's brand new. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. A train to catch, and a rushed fill on the way to Ebbw Vale Town. A new-to-you diesel Renault Megane, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: precisely when it takes place. Add a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and the hand takes over.
Next time you fill up around Newtown: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most generally do. Read the pump's label; the colour is only a clue.
- The first fill in a new car is the time to check your filler flap — on it, or on the cap, many vehicles state the fuel they take.
- Mark the key. In a household with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- Say it before you lift it. On the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump. It seems silly and it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so tuck the phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- Add-on devices exist for cars without one, and some diesels come with a filler that will not take a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a backstop at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- As soon as you notice, stop: less petrol inside your tank means a weaker mixture. What to do next does not change, though — still do not crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Newtown already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Do not switch your ignition on, and do not crank it. If you're still on the forecourt — Gulf or anywhere else — ask the attendants to help you push the car away from the petrol pump. Then call 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a separate issue, with its own page for Newtown, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection.
Why one petrol in a diesel task around Newtown costs more than another
The four situations above are four different tasks, so no single quote for this would be honest. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving the cost. The share counts next, meaning how much of that tank is petrol, followed by the location of the car and whether getting to it is safe for a van.
That's why we ask three questions before costing rather than after: what got in, how much, and if it's run. Given the answers, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Newtown
Newtown is a suburban area situated in the county of Blaenau Gwent in Wales, with a riverside setting and an elevation of 299 metres. Newtown lies near several nearby places, including Pont-y-Gof, Ebbw Vale, and Newchurch, and is approximately 16 miles from the city of Newport. Newtown has a population of around 2772 people and is characterised by predominantly terraced housing. Newtown is located in a region with strong industrial heritage, close to the South Wales Valleys.
Across Blaenau Gwent and in Newtown: fuel drain cover
Newtown sits in the NP postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the places around it as well — Pont-y-Gof, Ebbw Vale and Newchurch among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all locations our engineers work, and the vehicle does not need to move to us.
At the petrol pump in Newtown, still?
Then, you could not be in a better spot. Leave it switched off, then ring.