Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Orbiston
Likely less than you already are — as long as nobody has started the car. Till your ignition primes your pump, the 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 Orbiston query — "have I ruined it?" — normally no. Leave the engine off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it like that. The remainder 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.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route round a motor. It lubricates first, and after that does it burn. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors from wearing down against each other is your diesel flowing through them — they're designed to extremely fine tolerances.
Of these two jobs, petrol handles the first badly and the second never. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump on the mixture wearing itself. It is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the rattling.
Seen together, they show what shape the problem has. Not contact but movement is what does the harm. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel issue. After your pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical fault has started: whatever is shed by a pump that's wearing travels downstream to the injectors with your fuel.
Orbiston, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to major
Fuelled, and not started: no case is better. Just that tank has petrol in it, and so the job is draining the tank and flushing your system where your car stands. This situation can only really occur at a forecourt: anywhere else, the car got there by being driven.
Started for a second, or just the ignition on. Once primed, your system has drawn petrol out of the tank as far as your filter and your lines. Usually little more than draining, cleaning and seeing to the filter, and so still straightforward.
Driven a couple of miles. Now your pump has spent these miles working on diluted fuel. Mileage is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way this work runs to your tank, the fuel lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. On the school run to the local primary school, the miles is small. Very different once more: a trip to Glasgow, under 10 miles away, or any distance on the M74, under 3 miles from Orbiston, where the engine never stopped running hard.
Driven until it protested. Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. That's your motor telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Whether it is the verge on B7070, a lay-by or a side road, stop there then leave it. Long-term damage is very unusual if a vehicle is pulled over soon, and the fuel drain and flush that still come first deal with it.
Petrol in a diesel myths Orbiston drivers hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. A bigger tank of the same mix is all you get, because topping up removes nothing. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that advice supposes.
Myth: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the reverse. Lubrication matters more on current diesels, not less, because their fuel runs through smaller components at higher pressure.
"It starts, it drives, so there is no harm" — the myth that catches more drivers than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it generally won't run, and so the driver stops — and the harm stops with them. Whilst your pump grinds, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
Not so: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It is an old workaround, supposed for another fault. It does not put back what petrol has thinned, and that petrol is still inside the tank after that.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, since after it's been running some petrol sits in the filter and lines, waiting to go straight back through your pump at the next start. Also, a can of petrol drained at the roadside is genuinely risky.
How does petrol in a diesel occur?
It's seldom carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. The petrol nozzle is the smaller 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 vehicle is the moment it takes place. A car that's new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Rushing for a train at Bellshill and fuelling up en route. Years of petrol cars behind you, a diesel Renault Megane in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Throw in a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and the hand wins.
Orbiston people: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt. The label is what matters.
- The first fill in an unfamiliar motor is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, plenty of vehicles state the fuel they take.
- Good intentions count for less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on your diesel's key if a house has one of each. So label it.
- It sounds daft and it works: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump.
- Put your phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you're thinking about something else.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed 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 checking the pump.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol in that tank means a thinner blend. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to start it.
Orbiston: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then the order of things is brief. Do not fire it up, and do not turn the ignition on. If you are still on the forecourt — Morrisons or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you push it clear of the pump. What got in, roughly how much, and whether it's run: tell us that when you phone 0333 366 0103.
Corrosion and deposits form the problem with AdBlue, whereas petrol brings lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Orbiston page.
What makes one Orbiston petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
Four different jobs sit behind the four situations above — which is why there's no fair single price. Which of them you're in is mostly what shifts the cost. Where your car is matters too, and whether our van can safely reach it, after the ratio of petrol to what that tank holds.
That's why we ask three queries before pricing rather than after: what got in, how much, and whether it has run. Those answers turn a range into a straight figure.
About Orbiston itself
Orbiston is a suburban area in North Lanarkshire, situated approximately 8.7 miles east of Glasgow. Orbiston sits inland at an elevation of around 73 metres, near the towns of Bellshill and Motherwell. Orbiston has a mix of housing types, but terraced housing is predominant in the area. Orbiston is part of the larger Glasgow urban conurbation, but retains its own local character.
Orbiston and North Lanarkshire: where our fuel drain cover reaches
Orbiston waits in the ML postcode area, and the vans that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the spots near it as well — Bellshill, Hattonrigg and Fallside among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own driveway are all spots our engineers work, and the vehicle does not need to come to us.
In Orbiston and still at the petrol pump?
Then, you could not be in a better place. Keep it off. Call.