Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Odiham
Likely less than you are now — provided no one has started it. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first question everyone around Odiham asks, and the honest answer is usually no, since petrol resting in a diesel tank harms nothing till it is dragged through the fuel system — by ignition priming, by the starter, or by being driven. Keep it that way: leave the motor off and call Petrol in Diesel. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the clues of how far it has spread, and the way to make sure you don't repeat it.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
On its way through a motor, diesel has two jobs. Before it combusts, it lubricates — then it combusts. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors from wearing against one another is your diesel flowing through them — they're made to very fine clearances.
The second job petrol does not do at all, and the first it does badly. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, leaving a pump running on the blend wearing itself. It's equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the rattling.
The shape of the trouble is clear once you put those together. Contact does not do the damage — circulation does. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. A pump that has been labouring on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with the fuel to your injectors downstream.
Odiham, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to major
Filled but not once started — as good as it gets. Only that tank has petrol in it, and so the task is clearing the tank and purging your system where your car stands. This scenario can only really happen on a forecourt: anywhere else, the car got there by being driven.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. The system has been primed, so petrol has left that tank and got to your filter and the lines. That is normally still an easy job — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
Driven a few miles. Now the pump has spent those miles working on thinned fuel. Miles is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters equally. Either way the work runs to your tank, the lines, the filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. Short trips, like the school run to Mayhill Junior School, are one thing. Any miles on the M3, under 3 miles from Odiham, means the motor working hard throughout, and a run to Winchester, under 25 miles away, makes a very different job as well.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, knocking, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone lumpy. That is the motor telling you its fuel no longer is behaving like diesel. Whether it's the verge on Palace Gate, a lay-by or a side road, stop where you are and leave it. Lasting damage is very uncommon if a car is pulled over early, and the drain and flush-through that still come first sort it out.
Stories Odiham motorists hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It does not. A bigger tank of the same mixture is all it gives, because topping up takes out nothing. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that advice assumes.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. Lubrication matters more on modern diesels, not less, since their fuel passes through smaller parts at higher pressure.
This is the one that catches motorists. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it normally won't run, so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually does; meanwhile the pump wears. Running is not the same as fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a different issue. It does not put back what petrol has diluted, and the petrol is still inside your tank later on.
Myth: "Drain the tank yourself and you are sorted." After the motor has been run, some of the petrol is no longer inside your tank: it is in the fuel filter and your lines, and it goes straight back through your pump on your next start. Besides, petrol cleared into a can by the road is truly hazardous.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol vehicle at all. So the slip runs one way.
The moment routine stops matching the car is the moment it takes place. A new vehicle, a hire car or a courtesy car. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. A hurried fill on the way to Hook with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. With rain, a call arriving, or children to deal with, the hand just does what it always has.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Odiham
- Check the petrol 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.
- Many vehicles state the fuel inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in any car you do not know.
- Label your key. In a household with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- It sounds silly and it works: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the pump.
- 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 petrol pump.
- Some diesels come with a filler built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for vehicles without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Stop as soon as you realise. Less petrol in your tank makes a weaker mixture. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Odiham?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition switched off as well. Still at the forecourt, at Texaco or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll the vehicle away from the petrol pump. What went in, about how much, and if it has run: tell us that when you phone 0333 366 0103.
Corrosion and deposits form the issue with AdBlue, where petrol means lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Odiham page.
One petrol in a diesel job in Odiham costs more than another. Why?
A fair single price doesn't exist here: four scenarios, four separate tasks. The situation itself does most of the work of moving the cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that was put in as a proportion of what the tank takes, then the place your car is in and whether a van can reach it safely.
Three questions come first, before any quote, rather than after — what was put in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. With those replies, you get a straight figure instead of a range.
About Odiham itself
Odiham is a rural village in north Hampshire, situated near the towns of Hook and Basingstoke, and approximately 20 miles from Winchester. Odiham sits in a valley at an elevation of around 98 metres, surrounded by rolling countryside and nearby villages such as Colt Hill and North Warnborough. Odiham has a population of around 972 people, predominantly living in detached houses, and is located about 39 miles from London.
Fuel drain cover across Hampshire, Odiham included
Petrol in diesel call-outs in Odiham — part of the RG postcode area — go to teams that likewise cover the locations about it, Colt Hill, North Warnborough and Broad Oak included. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all locations we drain, and the car does not need to come to us.
Odiham: still at the pump?
Then, you could not be in a better spot. Turned off it stays; then phone.