Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Pound Green
Not started? Then less anxious than you likely are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the engine till something pulls it through the fuel system — the ignition priming your pump, your starter, or driving itself. So the fair answer to the first question anyone in Pound Green asks, "have I ruined it?", is usually no. Keep it like that: leave the motor off then phone Petrol in Diesel. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it's travelled, and how to stop it from happening again: that's the remainder of this page.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Diesel has two jobs on its way through a motor. It lubricates first, and only then does it burn. Designed to extremely fine clearances, the injectors and the pump depend on the diesel moving through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. A pump running on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, because petrol is thinner than diesel and takes away the lubrication the 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's where any knocking starts.
The shape of the trouble is plain once you put those together. Not contact but movement is what does the damage. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel issue. The start of a mechanical one is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the fuel injectors beyond it.
Four situations our technicians see in Pound Green: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled up, not once started. The best case there can be. That petrol is inside the tank and just your tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the vehicle sits. This is the one situation that can only really take place on a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Ignition on, or started for a second. Once primed, your system has pulled petrol out of that tank up to the filter and the fuel lines. Usually nothing more than emptying, purging and seeing to the filter, so still straightforward.
A few miles driven, and the pump has spent each of them labouring on thinned fuel. How hard your car was driven counts as much as how far, and this work covers the tank, the fuel lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the entire system. A school run to Buxted CofE Primary School is one thing. Any miles on the M23, under 15 miles from Pound Green, means the motor working hard throughout, and a run to Brighton and Hove, under 25 miles away, is a very different job as well.
Driven on until it protested — clattering, smoke, an uneven idle, a soft throttle. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and your engine is saying so. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Limes Lane. The drain and flush still go first, and they sort it out: when a vehicle is stopped quickly, long-term damage is very unusual.
Petrol in a diesel stories Pound Green motorists hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It will not. Nothing comes out when you top up — the tank just holds more of the same blend. A diesel fuel system does not tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice supposes.
"Current diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and nearer the reverse. At higher pressure, through finer components: that's how a modern diesel moves its fuel, and so the lubrication counts more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that trips up most people than any other. The driver of a petrol engine fed diesel normally stops, since it will not run, and the damage stops with them. A diesel fed petrol normally starts, idles and drives away as if nothing has happened, while your pump wears. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a distinct problem. It does not put back what petrol has diluted, and the petrol is still in that tank afterwards.
Once the motor has been run, part of that petrol is in the fuel filter and the fuel lines, not that tank — and your next start pulls it right back through the pump. So the myth "drain that tank yourself and you're sorted" doesn't stand up. Draining petrol into a can at the kerbside is also truly risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol vehicle at all. So the slip runs one way.
When habit and the vehicle stop matching, it takes place. A new motor, a hire car or a courtesy car. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. A rushed fill on the way to Buxted with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it happens. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and your hand repeats what it has always done.
How to prevent petrol in a diesel at your next fill-up in Pound Green
- Read the petrol 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.
- Inspect the filler flap. Plenty of cars state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on your first fill in any vehicle you do not know.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on your diesel's key when a house has one of each. So mark it.
- Before the nozzle comes off the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" aloud. Daft, yes, yet it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make whilst your mind is on something else, so the phone goes away.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Noticing it mid-fill? Stop at once. A thinner mixture follows from less petrol inside that tank, yet the next step stays the same: don't crank it.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Pound Green?
Then, there is only a short order of things. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition switched off too. Still on the forecourt, at JET or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the petrol pump. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — your fuel, the rough volume, and if it has run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a separate issue — Pound Green has a page all for it.
Pound Green petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
A fair single price does not exist here: four scenarios, four separate jobs. Chiefly, your cost moves with which one you are in. The ratio counts next, meaning how much of the tank is petrol, followed by the location of the vehicle and whether reaching it is safe for a technician.
What was put in, how much, and if it's run — three queries our engineers ask before pricing, not after, for exactly that reason. A range becomes a straight figure once those replies are in.
About Pound Green itself
Pound Green is a small suburban area in East Sussex, situated inland at an elevation of around 100 metres. Pound Green lies within the South East region, approximately 37.6 miles from London and 17.3 miles from the city of Brighton and Hove. Pound Green is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock and is surrounded by nearby places such as Potters Green, Buxted, and Etchingwood.
Pound Green and East Sussex: where our fuel drain cover runs
The teams answering petrol in diesel call-outs in Pound Green, in the TN postcode area, also work the spots near it, Potters Green, Buxted and Etchingwood included. Our engineers drain where the car is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
At the pump around Pound Green, still?
Then you're in the best position there can be. Switched off it remains; then phone.