Petrol in a Diesel Car in Pottery Field: How Worried Should You Be?
Provided it has not been started, you can worry less than you probably are. Everyone in Pottery Field starts with "have I wrecked it?", and the honest answer is generally no: petrol left in that tank of a diesel stays harmless until priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. Leave your motor off and call Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it like that. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel engine, the signs of how far it has spread, and ways to make sure you don't repeat it.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
Passing through an engine, diesel is doing two things at the same time. It protects first, and only then does it burn. What keeps the surfaces inside your high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors from wearing against one another is the diesel passing through them — they are made to very fine tolerances.
Petrol does the first job badly and the second not at all. A pump running on a petrol mixture is wearing itself out, because petrol is thinner than diesel and takes away the protection your fuel system depends on. Petrol is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel — and that is where the rattling comes.
Taken together, they show the shape the trouble has. Not contact but circulation is what causes the damage. Where that petrol is only inside that tank, it's a problem of fuel, nothing more. Whatever a worn pump sheds travels on, borne by the fuel, into the fuel injectors further along, which is why a pump that has been working on the petrol is where a mechanical issue begins.
Pottery Field, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to major
Fuelled but never started — as good as it gets. The petrol is in your tank and just the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one situation that can only truly occur on a forecourt, because anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Your ignition turned on, or a short start. The system has been bled, and so petrol has left the tank and reached the fuel filter and your lines. Drain, flush, see to your filter: still usually easy.
Driven a few miles. Now the pump has spent those miles working on thinned fuel. Mileage is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters equally. Either way this work runs to that tank, the lines, the filter and clean fuel through the whole system. On the school run to St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Hunslet, the miles is short. Driving as far as Leeds, under 3 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any miles on the M621, under a mile from Pottery Field, with the motor running hard all the way.
Driven till it protested. Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. What you are hearing is your motor reporting fuel that no longer acts like diesel. Leave it wherever it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Butterley Street. The fuel drain and flush still go first, and they deal with it: if a car is pulled over quickly, permanent damage is very uncommon.
What Pottery Field drivers get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be." Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mix. A diesel fuel system doesn't tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice assumes.
"Modern diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the opposite. A newer diesel sends its fuel through more precise parts at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication count more, not less.
This is the one that fools motorists. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no harm done." A petrol motor fed diesel usually won't run, so the motorist stops and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol normally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened, while your pump grinds. Running does not mean fine.
Not so: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It was an old workaround, supposed for another fault. None of what petrol diluted gets put back by it — and later, that tank still contains the petrol.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol sits in your filter and lines, waiting to go straight back through the pump on your next start. It's also really risky to drain petrol into a can by the kerbside.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol motor at all. So the slip runs one way.
Habit and your car getting out of step is when it happens. Any car that's new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. A forecourt you know, only with its pumps arranged differently. Rushing for a train outside Leeds and filling up en route. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a driver accustomed to petrol: exactly when it takes place. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand repeats what it has always done.
Next time you fill up in Pottery Field: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most usually do. Check the petrol pump's label; the colour is just a hint.
- Plenty of cars state the fuel type inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in a motor you don't know.
- Good intentions count for less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on your diesel's key when a house has one of each. So label it.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" aloud. Daft, yes, yet it does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, so tuck your phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler built to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for the rest. Count it as a safety net, then keep checking the pump.
- Less petrol means a weaker blend, so stop the moment you notice — while remembering that the next stage is unchanged. It's still not to start the vehicle.
Pottery Field: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is short, then. Starting it is out, and so is turning on your ignition. Still on the forecourt, at JET or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push the vehicle away from the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has been run.
Corrosion and deposits form the problem with AdBlue, where petrol brings lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Pottery Field page.
One petrol in a diesel job in Pottery Field costs more than another. Why?
The four situations above are four separate jobs, so no single quote for this would be fair. Which of them you are in is chiefly what moves the cost. The share counts next, meaning how much of your tank is petrol, and then the position of your car and whether getting to it is safe for our van.
That is why our engineers ask three questions before quoting instead of after: what was put in, how much, and if it's run. The replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Pottery Field itself
Pottery Field is a suburban area located on the riverside in West Yorkshire, with a mix of residential and industrial spaces. Pottery Field sits at an elevation of 30 metres, close to the city centre of Leeds, and is characterised by predominantly flat-type housing. Pottery Field is situated near other local areas such as Hunslet and Fearns Island, and is part of the larger Leeds urban landscape. Pottery Field is approximately 1.1 miles from Leeds city centre, making it a convenient residential location.
Fuel drain cover across West Yorkshire, Pottery Field included
Hunslet, Steander and Fearns Island are among the spots near Pottery Field that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel jobs across Pottery Field's LS postcode area. The vehicle does not need to come to us: our engineers drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Still at the petrol pump in Pottery Field?
The best spot there is, then — that is where you are. Ring, and leave it switched off.