Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Old Wives Lees
Less than you likely are, if it has not been started. Everyone in Old Wives Lees starts with "have I wrecked it?", and the honest answer is usually no: petrol left inside the tank of any diesel remains harmless until priming, cranking or driving draws it into the fuel system. To leave it that way, call Petrol in Diesel and leave your motor switched off. The rest of this page explains 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.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what happens
Passing through a motor, diesel does two jobs at the same time. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors from wearing down against one another is the diesel flowing through them — they are designed to extremely fine clearances.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. The rattling comes from petrol being designed not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the opposite of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is thinner than diesel, it strips out the protection the fuel system rests on, and any pump running on such a mix is wearing itself.
The shape of the trouble is plain once you put those together. The damage is done by movement, not by contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel problem. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to your injectors beyond it.
Petrol in a diesel around Old Wives Lees: how bad is it? Four situations
The best case there is: filled up, not once started. The petrol is in the tank and just your tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where your car stands. This is the one scenario that can only really occur on a forecourt, as anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Your ignition turned on, or a brief start. The system has been primed, so petrol has left your tank and reached the fuel filter and your lines. Usually nothing more than draining, flushing and sorting the filter, and so still easy.
Your pump now worked a few miles on weakened fuel — that's what driving the car does. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel put through the entire circuit: that's the work, and the way the car was driven counts as much as the distance. A school run to Chilham, St Mary's Church of England Primary School is one matter. Very different again: a run to Canterbury, under 5 miles away, or any miles on the M2, under 5 miles from Old Wives Lees, where the engine kept working hard.
Driven on till it complained — clattering, smoke, a lumpy idle, a soft throttle. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and your engine is telling you. Stop on the spot — on the verge on Lower Lees Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it again. The fuel drain and flush still come first, and they deal with it: when a vehicle is stopped quickly, long-term damage is very rare.
Myths Old Wives Lees motorists hear about petrol in a diesel
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be." Nothing comes out when you top up — the tank simply holds more of the same mixture. A diesel fuel system does not tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice supposes.
Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. At higher pressure, through finer parts: that's how a newer diesel moves its fuel, and so the protection matters for more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no harm done." This is the one that catches people. The motorist of a petrol motor fed diesel usually stops, since it will not run, and the harm stops there. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened, whilst your pump grinds. Running is not the same as fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It is an old workaround for a separate problem. It doesn't put back what petrol has diluted, and that petrol is still inside your tank later.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, since after it's been running some petrol lies in the fuel filter and lines, ready to go right back through your pump on the next start. It is also genuinely dangerous to drain petrol into a can by the kerbside.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol vehicle at all. So the error runs one way.
Routine and the vehicle getting out of step is how it takes place. Any car that is new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. A forecourt you know, but with its pumps laid out differently. A train to catch, and a hurried fill on the way to Chilham. Precisely the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Passat for the first time. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand does what it has always done.
Next time you fill up around Old Wives Lees: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- The label is what counts, and so read the pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt.
- Many vehicles state the fuel type inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in any car you do not know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for a home with one of each.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the pump. It sounds daft and it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make while your mind is on something else, so your phone goes away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for cars without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop there and then. A thinner mix follows from less petrol in the tank, yet your next stage stays the same: do not start the vehicle.
Petrol already in a diesel in Old Wives Lees? Start here
Then, there is only a short order of things. Do not switch your ignition on, and don't crank it. If you're still at the forecourt — Esso or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump. What went in, about how much, and whether it has run: tell us that when you call 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a different fault — Old Wives Lees has a page all for it.
What makes one Old Wives Lees petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
A fair single quote does not exist here: four situations, four separate jobs. What moves your cost is chiefly which of them you're in. Where your car is matters too, and whether a van can safely get to it, after the ratio of petrol to what that tank takes.
What was put in, how much, and whether it has run — three queries our engineers ask before quoting, not after, for precisely that reason. The replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Old Wives Lees, briefly
Old Wives Lees is a small village in Kent, situated inland at an elevation of 83 metres, approximately 4.9 miles from Canterbury. Old Wives Lees has a population of around 637 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Old Wives Lees is close to nearby places such as Bagham, Chilham, and Rhode Common, and is about 50.5 miles from London.
Across Kent and around Old Wives Lees: fuel drain cover
Old Wives Lees rests in the CT postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the locations near it as well — Bagham, Chilham and Rhode Common among them. The car doesn't need to come to us: our technicians drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Still at the petrol pump around Old Wives Lees?
The best spot there is, then — that is where you are. Keep it off. Call.