--- title: Worried? Petrol in a Diesel Car Selston Green canonical: https://www.petrolinadieselcar.co.uk/petrol-in-diesel/selston-green-nottinghamshire/ location: Selston Green county: Nottinghamshire latitude: 53.072720 longitude: -1.319070 service: Petrol in a Diesel Car updated: 2026-10-27 --- # Petrol in a Diesel Car in Selston Green: How Worried Should You Be? If it has not been started, you can worry less than you likely are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the engine till something pulls it through your fuel system — the ignition priming the pump, your starter, or driving itself. So the truthful answer to the first query everyone around Selston Green asks, "have I ruined it?", is usually no. To leave it like that, ring Petrol in Diesel and leave the engine switched off. The rest of this page explains what petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you a second time. ## Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the motor? On its way through a motor, diesel has two tasks. It lubricates first, and after that does it burn. What stops the surfaces inside your high-pressure pump and the injectors from grinding against each other is your diesel flowing through them — they are built to very fine gaps. Of these two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second never. It's thinner than diesel and removes the protection the system depends on, and so a pump running on a petrol mix is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is made to resist igniting under compression, which is the opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That is where the rattling comes from. Seen together, they show the shape the problem takes. The damage is done by circulation, not by contact. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. A pump that has been labouring on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to your injectors downstream. ## Selston Green, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to major The best case there is: filled up, never started. That petrol is inside your tank and only the tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one situation that can only really take place on a forecourt, since anywhere else your car has been driven to get there. Ignition on, or started for a moment. Once primed, the system has pulled petrol from your tank up to your filter and your lines. Still normally easy: drain, flush, and the filter sorted. The pump has worked a couple of miles on diluted fuel — that is what driving the car does. How hard the vehicle was driven matters as much as how far, and this work covers the tank, the fuel lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. On the school run to Selston Church of England Infant and Nursery School, the mileage is small. A run as far as Nottingham, under 15 miles away, is a very different task. So is any mileage on the M1, under 3 miles from Selston Green, where the motor has been labouring hard the whole time. Driven on until it complained — clattering, smoke, an uneven idle, a dead throttle. That's your motor telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Pull up where you are — on the verge on St Helens Drive, at the kerb, down a side road — and don't move it. Lasting damage is very uncommon if a vehicle is stopped quickly, and the drain and flush that still go first take care of it. ## Myths Selston Green drivers hear about petrol in a diesel "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're left with a bigger tank, still the same mix. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that guidance supposes. Myth: a modern diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the opposite. A modern diesel sends its fuel through more precise parts at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication count more, not less. This is the one that fools people. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it generally will not 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, which it usually will; meanwhile the pump wears. Running isn't the same as fine. Myth: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It was an old workaround, supposed for another problem. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and that petrol is still in the tank afterwards. "Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, since after it's been running some petrol sits in the filter and lines, waiting to go right back through the pump on the next start. It is also truly risky to drain petrol into a can at the roadside. ## Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen? On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. A diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol vehicle, yet the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one error simple, and just in one direction. Routine and the vehicle getting out of step is how it occurs. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that's brand new. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. A hurried fill on the way to Alfreton with a train to catch. Precisely the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Tiguan for the first time. Your hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children. ## Selston Green people: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time - A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — yet not on each forecourt. Trust the label on the petrol pump, not the colour. - The first fill in a new car is the time to check your filler flap — on it, or on the cap, plenty of motors state the fuel to use. - 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 label it. - It seems daft and it works: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump. - Mistakes like this are straightforward to make while your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away. - A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for vehicles without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump. - Spotting it halfway? Stop there and then. A weaker mix results from less petrol in your tank, but your next step stays the same: do not start it. ## Petrol already in a diesel in Selston Green? Start here The order of things is brief, then. Do not turn your ignition on, and do not crank it. Yet at the forecourt, at BP or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll the car clear of the petrol pump. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what got in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a separate fault — Selston Green has a page all for it. ## What makes one Selston Green petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next There's no honest single price for this, because the four situations above are four separate tasks. Chiefly, the cost moves with which situation you are in. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a proportion of what that tank takes, then the spot the vehicle is in and whether a technician can get to it safely. That's why our technicians ask three questions before pricing rather than after: what got in, how much, and if it's run. Their replies are what turn a range into one firm number. ## About Selston Green Selston Green is a suburban area in Nottinghamshire, situated approximately 10.7 miles from Nottingham and 119.3 miles from London. Selston Green has a population of around 1331 people and is characterised by semi-detached housing. Selston Green is located near other small suburban areas, including Toadhole, Dove Green, and Barrows Green, in the East Midlands region. Selston Green sits at an elevation of 126 metres, in a gently rolling inland landscape. ## Across Nottinghamshire and in Selston Green: fuel drain cover Selston Green waits in the NG postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the locations around it as well — Toadhole, Dove Green and Barrows Green among them. The car does not need to come to us: our engineers drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway. ## Still at the pump in Selston Green? The best place there is, then — that's where you are. Call, and leave it turned off.