How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Pitblae
Unstarted? Then less worried than you probably feel. Everyone around Pitblae starts with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is normally no: petrol resting in the tank of any diesel stays harmless until priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. Leave the engine off and call Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it like that. Further down, you will find what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it might have gone, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route through a motor. Lubricating comes before burning; it does both. Designed to extremely fine tolerances, the fuel injectors and the pump rely on the diesel moving through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
Of those two tasks, petrol handles the first badly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump running on that mixture wearing itself. It's equally made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the clattering.
Seen together, they make clear the shape the trouble takes. It is circulation that causes the damage, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the fuel injectors further on.
Petrol in a diesel in Pitblae: how bad is it? Four cases
Filled up, and not started: no case is better. Just the tank has petrol in it, and so the job is draining that tank and purging your system where the vehicle stands. This scenario can only really happen on a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
Ignition on, or started for a second. Petrol has left your tank and reached the fuel filter and the fuel lines, because the fuel system has been primed. Still generally easy: drain, flush, and the filter seen to.
A couple of miles driven, and the pump has spent every one of them working on diluted fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the whole circuit: that's the work, and the way the vehicle was driven matters as much as the mileage. Short trips, such as the school run to the local primary school, are one matter. Getting as far as Aberdeen, under 50 miles away, makes a very different job — as does any miles on the M90, over 50 miles from Pitblae, with the motor labouring hard the whole time.
Driven on until it complained — knocking, smoke, a lumpy idle, a soft throttle. The engine is telling you your fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Whether it's the verge on Smiddyhill Road, a lay-by or a side street, stop there and leave it. A car stopped soon very rarely has long-term damage, as the drain and the flush-through, which still go first, take care of it.
What Pitblae 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'll be fine." It will not. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all it gives, because topping up takes out nothing. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, whatever that guidance supposes.
"Modern diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the reverse. Lubrication matters more on modern diesels, not less, since their fuel runs through finer components at higher pressure.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." This is the one that fools people. A petrol engine fed diesel normally will not run, so the driver stops and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually fires up, idles and drives away like nothing happened — all while its pump is wearing. Fine and running are not the same thing.
An outdated fix for a separate issue lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It doesn't put back what petrol has weakened, and the petrol is still inside your tank afterwards.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol lies in your filter and lines, waiting to go straight back through your pump on the next start. And, a can of petrol filled at the roadside is truly dangerous.
Why petrol in a diesel occurs at all
Carelessness is rarely the cause, and no one means to do it. One way only, since of the nozzles: the smaller petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while the diesel one generally won't fit a petrol car. That is how the forecourt makes it straightforward.
It takes place when routine and the car stop matching. A new motor, a hire car or a courtesy car. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the drive. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A train to catch, and a rushed fill en route to the nearest station. A new-to-you diesel Renault Megane, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: precisely when it happens. Add a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and habit takes over.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Pitblae
- Check 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 counts.
- Check the filler flap. Many motors state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in a motor you don't know.
- Mark the key. In a household with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- It seems silly and it does the trick: on the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the pump.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make while your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- Add-on devices exist for vehicles without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that will not accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Less petrol means a weaker mix, and so stop as soon as you notice — while remembering that the next step is unchanged. It's still not to fire it up.
Pitblae: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then the order of things is short. Starting it is out, and so is turning on the ignition. The attendants on the forecourt — whether at Asda itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help roll it clear of the petrol pump if you ask. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the rough volume, and whether it has run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a different fault — Pitblae has a page just for it.
What makes one Pitblae petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
The four situations above are four separate jobs, so no single price for this would be fair. Chiefly, the cost shifts with which situation you are in. Where your car is counts too, and whether a van can safely get to it, after the ratio of petrol to what your tank holds.
That's why our engineers ask three questions before costing instead of after: what went in, how much, and if it has run. The replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Pitblae, briefly
Pitblae is a coastal suburban area in Aberdeenshire, situated near the towns of Broadsea and Fraserburgh. Pitblae sits at an elevation of 29 metres, overlooking the North Sea, and is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock. Pitblae is located approximately 36 miles from Aberdeen, the nearest city, and is part of the wider coastal community in northeastern Scotland.
Fuel drain cover around Pitblae and across Aberdeenshire
Pitblae sits in the AB postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the spots around it as well — Broadsea, Fraserburgh and Sandhaven among them. Our engineers drain wherever the vehicle is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
Still at the pump around Pitblae?
In that case, you could not be in a better place. Phone, and keep it turned off.