Petrol in a Diesel Car in Old Town: How Worried Should You Be?
Likely less than you are now — as long as nobody has started it. Till the ignition primes the pump, your starter turns, or the vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just waits there and does nothing. Which makes the truthful reply to that first Old Town question — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. To keep the car that way, ring Petrol in Diesel and leave your engine alone. Further down, this page sets out what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it may have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to your engine?
Two tasks fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. Made to very fine tolerances, your injectors and the pump depend on the diesel flowing 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. The clattering comes from petrol being made not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is thinner than diesel, it strips away the protection your system depends on, and any pump running on that mixture is wearing itself.
The shape of the issue is clear when you put those together. Contact doesn't do the harm — movement does. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. Whatever a worn pump sheds travels on, carried by your fuel, into the injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has been working on the petrol is where a mechanical problem starts.
Old Town, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to major
Filled up, never started. The best case there is. That petrol is in your tank and only that tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car stands. This is the one scenario that can only truly happen on a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Ignition on, or started for a second. The system has been bled, and so petrol has left the tank and got to the filter and your lines. Drain, flush, deal with your filter: still usually simple.
Driven a few miles. Now your pump has spent these miles working on thinned fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the entire circuit: that's the work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the distance. Short trips, such as the school run to St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Hartlepool, are one matter. Very different again: a run to Durham, under 25 miles away, or some mileage on the A1(M), under 15 miles from Old Town, where the engine never stopped working hard.
Driven on until it protested — knocking, smoke, an uneven idle, a dead throttle. What you are hearing is your motor signalling fuel that no longer acts like diesel. Whether it's the verge on Chandlers Close, a lay-by or a side street, stop where you are and leave it. Long-term damage is very uncommon if a car is pulled over quickly, and the drain and flush-through that still go first deal with it.
Petrol in a diesel myths Old Town drivers hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a bigger tank, still the same mix. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, whatever that guidance assumes.
Myth: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the reverse. Finer components and higher pressure are how a current diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so no harm done" — the myth that catches most drivers than any other. Diesel in a petrol motor generally means a motor that won't run: the motorist stops, and so does the harm. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened, while the pump grinds. Running is not the same as fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive makes it safe to drive home. It was an old workaround, meant for another fault. What petrol has diluted stays thinned, and that petrol stays in your tank anyway.
Myth: "Drain the tank yourself and you are sorted." After the engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer in your tank: it's in your filter and your lines, and it goes straight back through your pump at your next start. And, a can of petrol filled by the kerbside is genuinely risky.
How does petrol in a diesel occur?
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and nobody means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the error runs one way.
The moment habit stops matching the car is the moment it happens. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. Racing for a train at Hartlepool and filling up en route. Precisely the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. The hand repeats what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Old Town motorists: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- The label is what counts, and so check the petrol pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt.
- The first fill in an unfamiliar vehicle is the time to check your filler flap — on it, or on the cap, plenty of cars state the fuel to use.
- One of each in the home? Label the key to the diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since meaning to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, perhaps, yet it does the trick.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you are thinking about something else.
- Some diesels have a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for vehicles without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- As soon as you notice, stop: less petrol inside that tank means a weaker mixture. What to do next does not change, though — still don't crank it.
Already put petrol in a diesel in Old Town?
The order of things is brief, then. Starting it is out, and so is switching on your ignition. Ask the attendants to help you push it away from the pump if you are still on the forecourt, whether that's Morrisons or anywhere else. Ring 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — the fuel, the rough amount, and if it has run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost lubrication, make it a different problem — Old Town has a page just for it.
One petrol in a diesel job in Old Town costs more than another. Why?
The four scenarios above are four different jobs, so no single price for this would be fair. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving your cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that was put in as a proportion of what the tank takes, then the place the car is in and whether our van can reach it safely.
That's why our engineers ask three queries before pricing rather than after: what went in, how much, and whether it's run. The replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Old Town
Old Town is a coastal suburban area in County Durham, situated near the city of Durham and the town of Hartlepool. Old Town has a low elevation of around 5 metres, reflecting its coastal setting. Old Town is characterized by predominantly flat-type housing, which is common in many coastal areas of the North East. Old Town is located approximately 16.5 miles from the city of Durham and about 224 miles from London.
Fuel drain cover in Old Town and across Durham
Hartlepool, Bellevue and Middleton are among the locations around Old Town that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel call-outs across Old Town's TS postcode area. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own driveway are all spots our technicians work, and the vehicle doesn't need to move to us.
Still at the petrol pump around Old Town?
No position is better: that's where you now are. Turned off it stays; then phone.