Rotton Park: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you probably feel. Everyone around Rotton Park begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is usually no: petrol left in your tank of any diesel remains harmless till priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. To keep the car like that, call Petrol in Diesel and leave your engine alone. Keep reading for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has got, and ways to make sure you don't repeat it.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
Passing through a motor, diesel does two jobs at the same time. It lubricates first, and after that does it burn. Extremely fine clearances are built into your injectors and your high-pressure pump, and just your diesel flowing through keeps those surfaces from grinding together.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. A pump running on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, since petrol is runnier than diesel and strips out the lubrication your fuel system relies on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that is where the knocking comes.
Put these together and the shape of the problem is plain. It is circulation that causes the damage, not contact. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. The start of a mechanical one is a pump that has been labouring on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to your injectors downstream.
Petrol in a diesel in Rotton Park: how serious is it? Four cases
Filled up, never started. The best case there can be. On a forecourt, and truly only there, that petrol is still limited to the tank — because everywhere else your car was driven to get to it. The task is emptying and purging on the spot.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Your system has been primed, so petrol has left your tank and got to the fuel filter and the lines. Still generally simple: drain, flush, and your filter dealt with.
The pump now spent a few miles on weakened fuel — that's what driving the vehicle meant. How hard the vehicle was driven counts as much as how far, and this work covers your tank, the lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the whole circuit. On the school run to City Road Primary School, the mileage is short. Very different once more: a trip to Birmingham, under 3 miles away, or any mileage on the Aston Expressway, under 3 miles from Rotton Park, where the engine kept working hard.
Driven until it complained. Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. That's your engine telling you its fuel has stopped acting like diesel. Pull up on the spot — on the verge on Gillott Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it. Long-term damage is very uncommon when a vehicle is stopped quickly, and the drain and flush that still come first take care of it.
Stories Rotton Park people hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Nothing comes out when you top up — the tank simply holds more of the same blend. The assumption behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
If anything, the reverse holds. Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." A newer diesel sends its fuel through finer parts at higher pressure, which makes the protection matter more, not less.
The myth that catches people out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it usually won't run, and so the driver stops — and the harm stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually does; meanwhile your pump grinds. Running doesn't mean fine.
An outdated fix for a distinct issue lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." What petrol has thinned stays weakened, and the petrol stays inside that tank anyway.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, since after it's been running some petrol sits in the fuel filter and lines, ready to go right back through your pump on the next start. Emptying petrol into a can by the roadside is also truly dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
No one does it on purpose, and it is rarely carelessness. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol motor at all. So the slip runs one way.
It occurs 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. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to Jewellery Quarter. Years of petrol vehicles behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that's when. With rain, a call arriving, or a car full of children to deal with, your hand just does what it has always done.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel at your next fill-up around Rotton Park
- Check the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt. The label is what matters.
- The first fill in a strange motor is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, many vehicles state which fuel to use.
- One of each in the house? Label your key to your diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since intending to remember isn't enough.
- Before the nozzle leaves the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new motor, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, perhaps, but it works.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make while your mind is on something else, so the phone goes away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for cars without one. They are a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- As soon as you notice, stop: less petrol inside that tank makes a thinner mixture. What to do next does not change, though — still don't crank it.
Rotton Park: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is short, then. Don't fire it up, and don't turn the ignition on. Still at the forecourt, at Murco or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the pump. Then phone 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, about how much, and if it's run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That's a separate fault — corrosion and deposits and not lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Rotton Park.
Rotton Park petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
The four situations above are four different tasks, so no single price for this would be honest. Which of them you are in is mostly what shifts the cost. Beyond that it's the proportion — how much petrol was put in against how much the tank holds — and after that where the vehicle is and whether a van can get to it safely.
What got in, how much, and whether it's run — three questions our engineers ask before quoting, not after, for precisely that reason. Their replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Rotton Park, for a moment
Rotton Park is a suburban area in the West Midlands, situated near the lakeside and approximately 1.7 miles from Birmingham city centre. Rotton Park has a mix of terraced housing and is located near other local areas such as Summerfield Park and Winson Green. Rotton Park sits at an elevation of 161 metres, with Cape Hill nearby. Rotton Park is home to around 9493 residents.
Rotton Park and West Midlands: where our fuel drain cover runs
Petrol in diesel calls around Rotton Park — part of the B postcode area — go to teams that also cover the locations round it, Summerfield Park, Winson Green and Cape Hill included. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own driveway are all locations our engineers drain, and your car does not need to move to us.
In Rotton Park and still at the petrol pump?
The best position there is, then — that is where you are. Keep it off. Call.