Petrol in a Diesel Car in Nichols Town: How Worried Should You Be?
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you probably feel. Everyone in Nichols Town begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is generally no: petrol left in the tank of a diesel remains harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into the system. Leave the motor off then call Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it that way. The rest of this page sets out what petrol really does to a diesel, how to tell how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the motor?
Passing through a motor, diesel does two jobs at once. It burns, and before it ignites it protects. Made to very fine tolerances, the fuel injectors and your pump rely on your diesel moving through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
The second job petrol does not do at all, and the first it does badly. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, leaving a pump on the blend to wear itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the clattering.
Taken together, they show the shape the problem takes. It's movement 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 start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to the fuel injectors further on.
Four scenarios our engineers see around Nichols Town: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Filled up, and never started: nothing beats it. Only the tank has petrol in it, so the task is clearing your tank and flushing your system where your car stands. This situation can only truly take place at a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
Started for a moment, or just your ignition on. With the fuel system primed, your lines and filter now contain petrol that came from your tank. That's normally still a straightforward job — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter seen to.
Driven a couple of miles. Now the pump has spent those miles working on thinned fuel. The work is your tank, the lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the entire system, and how hard the vehicle was driven counts as much as how far. On the school run to St Mary's Church of England Primary School & Nursery, the mileage is short. Driving as far as Southampton, under a mile away, makes a very different task — as does any miles on the M27, under 3 miles from Nichols Town, with your engine labouring hard all the way.
Driven until it protested. Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. That is the engine telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Stop where you are — on the verge on Brintons Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it. A vehicle pulled over early very seldom has permanent damage, as the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, deal with it.
What Nichols Town drivers get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be." A fuller tank of the same mix is all you get, because topping up removes nothing. That advice assumes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It does not.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. At higher pressure, through smaller parts: that is how a modern diesel moves its fuel, so the lubrication matters for more, not less.
This is the one that fools people. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." The driver of a petrol motor fed diesel normally stops, because it will not run, and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol normally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened, whilst your pump wears. Fine and running are not the same thing.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a separate issue. The petrol is still in that tank afterwards, and what it has weakened isn't put back.
The next start draws petrol back round the pump from the fuel lines and your filter, where some of that ends up after your engine has run. That's why draining your tank yourself does not leave you sorted — a myth. Clearing petrol into a can by the kerbside is also really hazardous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
No one does it on purpose, and it is rarely carelessness. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol car at all. So the slip runs one way.
Routine and the car falling out of step is how it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that is brand new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. Your usual forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. A rushed fill en route to Southampton Central with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Renault Megane for the first time. The hand does what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Nichols Town
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most generally do. Check the pump's label; the colour is only a clue.
- The first fill in an unfamiliar car is the time to check the filler flap — on it, or on the cap, plenty of vehicles state which fuel to use.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, in a house with one of each.
- Before the nozzle leaves the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new motor, say "diesel" aloud. Daft, perhaps, yet it works.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make while your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away.
- Add-on devices are available for cars without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't take a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a backstop at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Less petrol makes a weaker mix, and so stop the moment you realise — though remembering that your next step is unchanged. It is still not to start the car.
Nichols Town: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Never crank it, and don't turn your ignition on. Ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the petrol pump if you're still at the forecourt, whether that is Esso or anywhere else. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it's been run.
If it was AdBlue and not petrol, say so. That's a separate issue — corrosion and deposits and not lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Nichols Town.
One petrol in a diesel job around Nichols Town costs more than another. Why?
There is no honest single quote for this, since the four scenarios above are four different tasks. What moves your cost is mostly which of them you are in. Where the vehicle is counts too, and whether our van can safely reach it, after the share of petrol to what your tank takes.
What got in, how much, and if it's run — three queries we ask before costing, not after, for exactly that reason. Their replies are what turn a range into one firm number.
About Nichols Town, for a moment
Nichols Town is a suburban area located on the coast of Hampshire, with an elevation of approximately 7 metres above sea level. Nichols Town sits adjacent to the city of Southampton, with which it is closely tied economically and socially. Nichols Town is characterized by a high proportion of flat housing, reflecting its urban setting. Nichols Town is one of several suburban areas in the vicinity, including Newtown and Kingsland Place.
Fuel drain cover around Nichols Town and across Hampshire
Petrol in diesel calls in Nichols Town — part of the SO postcode area — go to vans that also cover the locations around it, Newtown, Kingsland Place and Bellevue included. Our technicians drain where your vehicle is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
At the petrol pump in Nichols Town, still?
Nothing beats it: that is where you now are. Keep it off. Ring.