How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Old Hatfield
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you probably feel. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the motor until something draws it through the fuel system — your ignition priming your pump, the starter, or driving itself. So the fair answer to the first query anyone in Old Hatfield asks, "have I ruined it?", is usually no. Keep it like that: leave the engine off and phone Petrol in Diesel. 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 things at once. It lubricates to begin with, and after that does it burn. Very fine clearances are built into the fuel injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and just the diesel flowing through stops those surfaces grinding together.
Of these two tasks, petrol manages the first badly and the second never. The clattering comes from petrol being made not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the opposite of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is runnier than diesel, it strips away the lubrication the system rests on, and any pump running on that blend is wearing itself.
The shape of the issue is plain when you put those together. Not contact but circulation is what causes the damage. Where that petrol is only in your tank, it is a problem of fuel, nothing more. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, borne by your fuel, into your injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has worked on the petrol is where a mechanical problem starts.
Petrol in a diesel in Old Hatfield: how bad is it? Four cases
Filled up, not once started. The best case there can be. The petrol is in the tank and only the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle sits. This is the one scenario that can only really take place at a forecourt, as anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
The ignition switched on, or a brief start. Once primed, the system has pulled petrol from that tank as far as your filter and the fuel lines. Usually little more than draining, flushing and seeing to the fuel filter, so still simple.
Driven a few miles. Now the pump has spent those miles running on diluted fuel. How hard your car was driven matters as much as how far, and this work covers the tank, your lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit. Short trips, like the school run to Countess Anne Church of England School, are one matter. Any distance on the Hatfield Tunnel, under a mile from Old Hatfield, means the motor has worked hard throughout, and a run to St Albans, under 10 miles away, is a very different job as well.
Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. That is your engine telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on Beaconsfield Road, a lay-by, a side street — then leave it there. The fuel drain and flush-through still go first, and they deal with it: if a car is pulled over soon, permanent damage is very unusual.
What Old Hatfield people get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. A bigger tank of the same mixture is all you get, since topping up removes nothing. The idea behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: a newer diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the opposite. A modern diesel sends its fuel through finer parts at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
The myth that catches people out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor usually leaves a motor that will not run: the motorist stops, and so does the damage. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually will; meanwhile your pump wears. Being able to run is not proof of being fine.
An old fix for a distinct problem is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." What petrol has diluted remains diluted, and that petrol stays in your tank regardless.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, because after it has been running some petrol sits in your filter and lines, waiting to go right back through your pump on the next start. It's also truly hazardous to drain petrol into a can by the kerbside.
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 narrower of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol vehicle at all. So the mistake runs one way.
Habit and your car falling out of step is when it takes place. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that is brand new. Two vehicles on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A rushed fill on the way to Hatfield with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it takes place. The hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Old Hatfield
- The label is what counts, so read the pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on each forecourt.
- The first fill in a new vehicle is the time to check your filler flap — on it, or on the cap, many vehicles state the fuel to use.
- 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 leaves the pump the first time you fill a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make while your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away.
- Some diesels have a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for motors without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- Less petrol makes a thinner mix, so stop the moment you notice — while remembering that the next stage is unchanged. It is still not to crank it.
Already put petrol in a diesel in Old Hatfield?
The order of things is brief, then. Don't switch your ignition on, and do not fire it up. Yet on the forecourt, at Asda or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll the vehicle away from the petrol pump. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — your fuel, the approximate quantity, and whether it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a different problem, with its own page for Old Hatfield, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection.
One petrol in a diesel job in Old Hatfield costs more than another. Why?
There is no fair single price for this, because the four situations above are four different tasks. Which of them you are in is chiefly what moves your cost. After that it is the ratio — how much petrol went in against how much that tank holds — and then where the car is and whether a technician can reach it safely.
Three questions come first, before any quote, instead of after — what went in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. With the replies, there is a straight figure rather than a range.
About Old Hatfield
Old Hatfield is a suburban area in Hertfordshire, situated approximately 18 miles north of London and 5 miles east of St Albans. Old Hatfield sits at an elevation of around 82 metres, characterised by its predominantly terraced housing stock. Old Hatfield is located near the towns of Hatfield and St Albans, with nearby neighbourhoods including Birchwood and The Ryde.
Fuel drain cover in Old Hatfield and across Hertfordshire
Old Hatfield waits in the AL postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the locations around it as well — Hatfield, Birchwood and The Ryde among them. No need to bring the car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all locations we drain.
Old Hatfield: still at the petrol pump?
The best position there is, then — that is where you are. Call, and keep it switched off.