Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Selborne
Likely less than you are now — as long as nobody has started the car. Everyone around Selborne begins with "have I ruined it?", and the fair answer is usually no: petrol resting in that tank of any diesel stays harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into the fuel system. Keep it that way: leave your engine off and call Petrol in Diesel. Below, this page sets out what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it may have gone, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel really does
On its way through an engine, diesel does two tasks. Before it ignites, it lubricates — then it burns. Designed to extremely fine gaps, the fuel injectors and the pump rely on your diesel flowing through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
Of these two jobs, petrol handles 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 also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the clattering.
The shape of the problem is clear when you put those together. Contact doesn't do the harm — movement does. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel issue. After your pump has been working on that petrol, a mechanical issue has begun: whatever is shed by a pump that's wearing is carried onward to the injectors with the fuel.
Petrol in a diesel around Selborne: how bad is it? Four cases
Filled but never started — the best it gets. Being at a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the car has been driven there to begin with. With that petrol kept in that tank alone, it's drained and flushed on the spot, and nothing more is needed.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Once primed, the fuel system has drawn petrol from that tank up to the fuel filter and the fuel lines. Still usually straightforward: drain, flush, and the fuel filter seen to.
A couple of miles driven, and your pump has spent every one of them labouring on thinned fuel. The work is the tank, the fuel lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit, and how hard the vehicle was driven matters as much as how far. Driving the kids to Selborne Church of England Primary School is one sort of trip. Any miles on the M3, under 15 miles from Selborne, means your engine working hard throughout, and a run to Winchester, under 25 miles away, makes a very different task as well.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, clattering, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone ragged. What you are hearing is the engine reporting fuel that no longer acts like diesel. Whether it is the verge on B3006, a lay-by or a side road, stop where you are then leave it. The fuel drain and flush still go first, and they take care of it: when a car is pulled over soon, lasting damage is very rare.
Myths Selborne motorists hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mixture. That advice supposes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It does not.
If anything, the opposite holds. Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." At higher pressure, through finer components: that is how a current diesel moves its fuel, so the lubrication counts more, not less.
This is the one that catches motorists. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no harm done." The driver of a petrol engine fed diesel usually stops, since it will not run, and the damage stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it generally fires up, idles and pulls away as if nothing has happened — all the while its pump wears. A running engine does not mean fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It's an old fix for a separate fault. It does not put back what petrol has diluted, and the petrol is still in your tank afterwards.
Once the motor has been run, part of that petrol sits in the filter and the fuel lines, not the tank — and the next start pulls it right back through your pump. So the myth "drain your tank yourself and you're sorted" does not stand up. It's also genuinely risky to drain petrol into a can at the kerbside.
How does petrol in a diesel take place?
It is seldom carelessness, and nobody does it on purpose. A diesel nozzle mostly won't fit a petrol motor, but the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel almost without resistance — so forecourts make this one error simple, and only in one direction.
Routine and the vehicle falling out of step is how it takes place. Any motor that is new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or just bought. Two motors on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Filling up in a hurry on the way to Alton, with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it occurs. With rain, a call coming in, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand simply does what it always has.
Selborne people: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Plenty of cars state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check it on your first fill in any motor you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a house with one of each.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, yes, yet it works.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make while your mind is on something else, so the phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels have a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for the rest. Count it as a safety net, then keep checking the petrol pump.
- Spotting it halfway? Stop at once. A thinner mixture results from less petrol inside that tank, yet your next stage remains the same: don't crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Selborne already?
The order of things is brief, then. Never start the vehicle, and do not turn your ignition on. The staff on the forecourt — whether at Shell itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help roll it clear of the petrol pump if you ask. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, roughly how much, and if it's run.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it's a separate issue, with its own page for Selborne, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection.
Why one petrol in a diesel job around Selborne costs more than another
The four situations above are four different tasks, so no single price for this would be fair. Mostly, the cost moves with which one you're in. Where your car is counts too, and whether a van can safely get to it, after the share of petrol to what that tank takes.
What was put in, how much, and if it's run — three queries our engineers ask before costing, not after, for precisely that reason. Those answers are what change a range into one firm number.
About Selborne itself
Selborne is a small village situated in the South East of England, in the county of Hampshire, with a population of around 568 people. Selborne sits on the banks of a river, at an elevation of 123 metres, and is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock. Selborne is located near to several other small villages, including Empshott, Newton Valence, and Empshott Green, and is within commuting distance of the city of Winchester, which is 16.3 miles away. Selborne is also about 45.2 miles from London, making it a rural retreat within reach of the capital.
Across Hampshire and in Selborne: fuel drain cover
Petrol in diesel calls in Selborne — part of the GU postcode area — go to vans that likewise cover the locations around it, Empshott, Newton Valence and Empshott Green included. The vehicle doesn't need to move to us: we drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Selborne: still at the petrol pump?
The best position there is, then — that is where you are. Switched off it stays; then phone.