Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Portland Port
Less than you likely are, provided it hasn't been started. "Have I ruined it?" is the first thing anyone in Portland Port asks, and the honest answer is generally no, because petrol left in a diesel tank hurts nothing till it's dragged through the system — by ignition priming, by your starter, or by driving. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with the motor kept off, so it stays that way. 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.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
Two jobs fall to diesel on its route through a motor. It burns, and before it combusts it lubricates. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors from wearing down against each other is your diesel passing through them — they are designed to extremely fine clearances.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump running on that mixture wearing itself. It's equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the knocking.
Combined, those leave the shape of the problem clear. Contact does not do the harm — movement does. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been working on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the fuel injectors downstream.
Portland Port, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to significant
Fuelled, and never started: no case is better. On a forecourt, and really only there, the petrol is still limited to your tank — since everywhere else the car was driven to get to it. The task is emptying and purging on the spot.
Started for a moment, or just the ignition on. With the fuel system primed, the lines and filter already hold petrol that came from your tank. Still generally straightforward: drain, flush, and the filter dealt with.
Some miles driven, and your pump has spent every one of them running on weakened fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the entire system: that's this work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the miles. The school run to St George's Foundation Primary School is one thing. A run as far as Salisbury, under 50 miles away, is a very different job. So is any distance on the M5, under 50 miles from Portland Port, where the motor has been running hard throughout.
Driven on till it protested — rattling, smoke, an uneven idle, a soft throttle. That is your engine telling you its fuel has stopped behaving like diesel. Stop on the spot — on the verge on Incline Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it. The drain and flush-through still go first, and they sort it out: when a vehicle is pulled over soon, lasting damage is very rare.
Petrol in a diesel myths Portland Port people hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It will not. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all you get, because topping up takes out nothing. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, whatever that advice supposes.
Not so: a newer diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the opposite. A modern diesel runs its fuel through more precise parts at higher pressure, which makes the protection count more, not less.
One myth that catches drivers out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor usually means a motor that will not run: the driver stops, and so does the damage. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally starts, ticks over and drives away like nothing happened — all while its pump is wearing. Running doesn't mean fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It's an old fix for a different issue. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and that petrol is still in that tank later on.
Once the engine has been run, part of that petrol sits in the filter and the fuel lines, not your tank — and your next start sends it right back through your pump. So the myth "drain your tank yourself and you're sorted" doesn't stand up. Emptying petrol into a can by the kerbside is also genuinely dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
Nobody does it on purpose, and it's rarely carelessness. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the error runs one way.
When routine and the car stop matching, it happens. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Rushing for a train at Weymouth and filling up en route. Precisely the moment it takes place: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. Your hand does what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Portland Port
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Inspect your filler flap. Plenty of vehicles state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in any vehicle you don't know.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a bright colour on your diesel's key if a house has one of each. So label it.
- It seems silly and it does the trick: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make while your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for motors without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Less petrol makes a thinner blend, and so stop as soon as you notice — while remembering that your next stage is unchanged. It is still not to fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Portland Port?
The order of things is brief, then. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition switched off too. If you are still at the forecourt — Shell or anywhere else — ask the attendants to help you roll the car clear of the petrol pump. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what got in, roughly how much, and whether it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it's a different problem, with its own page for Portland Port, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection.
One petrol in a diesel task in Portland Port costs more than another. Why?
The four situations above are four separate tasks, so no single price for this would be fair. What shifts the cost is mostly which of them you're in. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a share of what the tank takes, then the spot the vehicle is in and whether a technician can reach it safely.
Three questions come first, before quoting, rather than after — what went in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. A range becomes a straight figure when those replies are in.
About Portland Port
Portland Port is a small suburban area situated on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, with a population of around 860 people. Portland Port sits at a low elevation of 8 metres, close to the sea and near the villages of Castletown and Fortuneswell. Portland Port is characterized by its predominantly flat housing stock, which reflects its coastal location and history of development. Portland Port is located near Chiswell, another nearby settlement on the Isle of Portland.
Fuel drain cover around Portland Port and across Dorset
Portland Port waits in the DT postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the places near it as well — Castletown, Fortuneswell and Chiswell among them. We drain wherever the car is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
In Portland Port and still at the pump?
Nothing beats it: that's where you now are. Turned off it stays; then phone.