Petrol in a Diesel Car in Selly Park: How Worried Should You Be?
Provided it has not been started, worry far less than you likely are. "Have I ruined it?" is the first question anyone around Selly Park asks, and the truthful answer is generally no, since petrol resting in a diesel tank harms nothing till it's drawn through the fuel system — by ignition priming, by the starter, or by being driven. Keep it that way: leave your motor off then call Petrol in Diesel. Below, this page sets out what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it might have got, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Passing through an engine, diesel is doing two jobs at once. It lubricates first, and only then does it burn. Your high-pressure pump and your injectors are built to extremely fine gaps, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing down against one another.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump running on the blend to wear itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is where you hear the rattling.
The shape of the problem is clear when you put those together. It is movement that causes the damage, not contact. Petrol in a tank is a fuel fault. Once your pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical issue has started: whatever is shed by a pump that is wearing down is carried downstream to your injectors with your fuel.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios our engineers see in Selly Park
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. Just your tank has petrol in it, and so the task is emptying your tank and purging your system where the car stands. This situation can only really take place on a forecourt: anywhere else, the vehicle got there by being driven.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Once primed, the fuel system has drawn petrol from the tank as far as the filter and the lines. Usually little more than draining, cleaning and seeing to your filter, and so still straightforward.
Those few miles on the road were your pump working on fuel diluted by petrol throughout. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel put through the entire circuit: that is this work, and the way the vehicle was driven matters as much as the mileage. Short trips, such as the school run to St Edward's Catholic Primary School, are one thing. Getting as far as Birmingham, under 3 miles away, makes a very different job — as does any miles on the Aston Expressway, under 5 miles from Selly Park, with your engine labouring hard the whole time.
Driven till it protested. Knocking, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. What you are hearing is the engine signalling fuel that no longer behaves like diesel. Whether it is the verge on Greenland Road, a lay-by or a side road, stop there and leave it. The drain and flush-through still go first, and they take care of it: when a vehicle is pulled over quickly, long-term damage is very rare.
Selly Park motorists and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a bigger tank, still the same mix. That advice supposes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It does not.
If anything, the opposite is true. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Protection counts more on modern diesels, not less, because their fuel runs through finer parts at higher pressure.
One myth that catches drivers off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it normally won't run, and so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually starts, idles and drives away like nothing has happened — all while its pump wears. Being able to run is not the same as being fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It was an old fix, meant for another fault. The petrol is still inside the tank afterwards, and what it has diluted isn't put back.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, since after it has been running some petrol lies in the fuel filter and lines, ready to go straight back through the pump on your next start. And, a can of petrol drained by the kerbside is genuinely risky.
Why petrol in a diesel occurs so easily
It is rarely carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. The petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the mistake runs one way.
When habit and the vehicle stop matching, it occurs. A vehicle that is new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Two vehicles on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. A rushed fill on the way to Pineapple Road with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Tiguan for the first time. The hand repeats what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
Next time you fill up in Selly Park: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, yet not on each forecourt. The label is what counts.
- In a car you don't know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before the first fill: many cars print the fuel there.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember, for a house with one of each.
- "Diesel", aloud, before you lift the nozzle — every time a new or hired car needs its first tank. It seems daft. It does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for motors without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Stop the moment you notice. Less petrol inside that tank makes a weaker mixture. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Put petrol in a diesel around Selly Park already?
Then the order of things is brief. Starting it is out, and so is switching on the ignition. If you are still on the forecourt — BP or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you roll the car clear of the pump. What got in, roughly how much, and whether it has run: tell us those when you ring 0333 366 0103.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a different problem, with its own page for Selly Park, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost lubrication.
One petrol in a diesel task in Selly Park costs more than another. Why?
An honest single quote does not exist here: four situations, four separate tasks. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving your cost. Beyond that it is the proportion — how much petrol got in against how much the tank holds — and after that where the vehicle is and whether our van can reach it safely.
Three queries come first, before any quote, instead of after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. Those answers turn a range into a straight figure.
About Selly Park and where it is
Selly Park is a suburban area in the West Midlands, situated on the banks of the River Rea, with a mix of terraced housing and local amenities. Selly Park sits approximately 2.9 miles southwest of Birmingham city centre, near the neighbouring areas of Ten Acres, Bournbrook, and Moor Green. Selly Park has a population of around 8443 residents, living in a relatively low-lying area at an elevation of 132 metres. Selly Park is connected to the wider region, with London being around 99.7 miles to the southeast.
Selly Park and West Midlands: where our fuel drain cover reaches
Petrol in diesel jobs in Selly Park — part of the B postcode area — go to vans that likewise cover the locations round it, Ten Acres, Bournbrook and Moor Green included. The vehicle doesn't need to come to us: our technicians drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
Still at the pump in Selly Park?
In that case, you could not be in a better spot. Call, and keep it switched off.