How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Rubery
Probably less than you already are — provided nobody has started the car. Till the ignition primes your pump, the starter turns, or the car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just rests there and does no harm. Which means the truthful reply to that first Rubery query — "have I wrecked it?" — normally no. To leave it like that, ring Petrol in Diesel then leave your engine alone. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it has gone, and how to keep it from happening a second time: that is the remainder of this page.
What petrol in a diesel does to your engine
Two jobs fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. The high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors are designed to extremely fine gaps, and your diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing down against one another.
Of these two tasks, petrol manages the first badly and the second never. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, leaving a pump on the mixture wearing itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is where you hear the rattling.
Together, those leave the shape of the problem clear. Contact doesn't do the harm — movement does. Petrol in the tank is a fuel issue. After your pump has been labouring on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: anything shed by a pump that is wearing travels downstream to the fuel injectors with the fuel.
Rubery, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to serious
Fuelled, and never started: nothing beats it. That petrol is inside that tank and only the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car stands. This is the one scenario that can only really occur on a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
The ignition turned on, or a short start. Petrol has left that tank and reached the fuel filter and your lines, because your system has been bled. Drain, flush, deal with the fuel filter: still normally straightforward.
Some miles driven, and your pump has spent each of them labouring on thinned fuel. The work is your tank, your lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit, and how hard the car was driven matters as much as how far. A school run to St James Catholic Primary School is one thing. Very different again: a trip to Birmingham, under 10 miles away, or some distance on the M5, under 3 miles from Rubery, where your engine kept running hard.
Driven until it complained. Knocking, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. What you are hearing is your engine reporting fuel that no longer runs like diesel. Leave it where it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Leach Heath Lane. A vehicle stopped soon very rarely has permanent damage, since the drain and the flush, which still come first, take care of it.
Petrol in a diesel stories Rubery motorists hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It will not. A bigger tank of the same mixture is all it gives, because topping up takes out nothing. That guidance supposes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It does not.
If anything, the opposite holds. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." More precise parts and higher pressure are the way a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
The myth that catches motorists off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor generally leaves a motor that will not run: the motorist stops, and so does the harm. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually does; meanwhile your pump wears. Running isn't the same as fine.
An old workaround for a distinct fault lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." What petrol has diluted stays diluted, and that petrol remains in that tank regardless.
The next start draws petrol back round your pump out of the lines and the fuel filter, where some of that sits after your engine has been run. That's why draining the tank yourself does not sort it — a myth. On top of that, petrol emptied into a can by the road is genuinely dangerous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it take place?
Nobody does it on purpose, and it is seldom carelessness. A diesel nozzle mostly will not fit a petrol motor, but the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one error straightforward, and just in one direction.
Routine and the vehicle falling out of step is when it occurs. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Rushing for a train at Longbridge and filling up en route. Exactly the moment it takes place: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Renault Megane for the first time. With rain, a call coming in, or a car full of children to deal with, your hand just does what it always has.
Rubery motorists: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- Check the petrol 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.
- Plenty of vehicles state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check there on the first fill in any vehicle you do not know.
- Mark your 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.
- "Diesel", aloud, before you lift the nozzle — every time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It seems daft. It works.
- Tuck your phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you are thinking about something else.
- Some diesels have a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- As soon as you realise, stop: less petrol inside your tank makes a weaker mixture. What to do next does not change, though — still do not fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Rubery?
Then the order of things is short. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off too. Yet on the forecourt, at Murco or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll the vehicle away from the pump. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — your fuel, the rough volume, and whether it's run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That is a separate issue — corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection — and it has its own page for Rubery.
Rubery petrol in a diesel jobs: why one costs more than another
There's no honest single price for this, since the four scenarios above are four separate jobs. Mostly, the cost shifts with which situation you are in. Where the vehicle is counts too, and whether a van can safely get to it, after the share of petrol to what the tank holds.
Three questions come first, before any quote, instead of after — what went in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. Those answers change a range into a straight figure.
About Rubery, for a moment
Rubery is a suburban area in the West Midlands, situated near the River Rea and overlooking the surrounding countryside from an elevation of 206 metres. Rubery is located approximately 7.5 miles southwest of Birmingham and is bordered by nearby places such as Eachway, Frankley, and the Lickey Hills. Rubery has a population of around 7516 people and is characterised by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock. Rubery is also relatively close to the national motorway network, with London about 100 miles to the southeast.
Fuel drain cover in Rubery and across West Midlands
Petrol in diesel calls in Rubery — part of the B postcode area — go to vans that likewise cover the locations round it, Eachway, Frankley and Lickey Hills included. The car doesn't need to move to us: our engineers drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
At the pump around Rubery, right now?
Then you're in the best place there can be. Keep it off. Ring.