How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Shareshill
Provided it hasn't been started, you can worry far less than you probably are. Everyone around Shareshill begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the honest answer is generally no: petrol left in that tank of any diesel remains harmless until priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. To keep the car like that, call Petrol in Diesel and leave the motor switched off. Further down, you will find what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it may have got, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the motor?
Diesel has two tasks on its way through an engine. It lubricates to begin with, and only then does it burn. Designed to very fine gaps, your injectors and the pump depend on the diesel moving through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump running on the mixture to wear itself. It's also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you hear the knocking.
Combined, those make the shape of the problem clear. Contact doesn't do the damage — circulation does. Petrol in the tank is a fuel issue. Whatever a worn pump sheds travels on, borne by your fuel, into the injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has been working on that petrol is where a mechanical issue begins.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios our technicians see in Shareshill
Filled up, and never started: nothing beats it. That petrol is inside that tank and only that tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the car stands. This is the one situation that can only truly occur at a forecourt, as anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Your ignition turned on, or a short start. The system has been bled, and so petrol has left your tank and got to the filter and the lines. Still normally easy: drain, flush, and the fuel filter seen to.
The pump has spent a couple of miles on thinned fuel — that's what driving the car does. The work is your tank, the lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit, and how hard the car was driven matters as much as how far. Driving the children to Havergal CofE (C) Primary School is one kind of trip. Very different again: a trip to Wolverhampton, under 10 miles away, or any miles on the M6, under a mile from Shareshill, where the motor kept working hard.
Driven until it complained. Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and the motor is telling you. Stop on the spot — on the verge on School Lane, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it again. A car stopped quickly very seldom has lasting damage, as the fuel drain and the flush, which still go first, sort it out.
Petrol in a diesel stories Shareshill drivers hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It won't. A fuller tank of the same mix is all it gives, because topping up removes nothing. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that guidance assumes.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. A modern diesel sends its fuel through finer components at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." This is the one that fools drivers. The driver of a petrol engine fed diesel normally has no choice but to stop, because it will not run, and the harm stops there. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually fires up, ticks over and pulls away like nothing has happened — all the while its pump is wearing. Being able to run is not proof of being fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive makes it safe to drive home. It was an old fix, meant for another issue. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and the petrol is still in that tank after that.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, since after it has been running some petrol lies in the fuel filter and lines, ready to go straight back through your pump on your next start. On top of that, petrol emptied into a can by the road is genuinely risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it take place?
A careless moment is rarely the cause, and nobody means to do it. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol car at all. So the error runs one way.
The moment habit stops matching the vehicle is the moment it occurs. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that's brand new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. Your normal forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Filling up in a hurry on the way to Landywood, with a train to catch. Precisely the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. Throw in a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and habit wins.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Shareshill
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most generally do. Check the petrol pump's label; the colour is just a hint.
- In a vehicle you don't know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before your first fill: plenty of vehicles state the fuel there.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, in a house with one of each.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the petrol pump. It sounds silly and it works.
- Whilst you're thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so put your phone away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels have a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for the rest. Treat it as a safety net, and keep checking the pump.
- Stop as soon as you realise. Less petrol inside the tank means a thinner mixture. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to start it.
Put petrol in a diesel around Shareshill already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition off as well. If you are still on the forecourt — M6 Diesel or anywhere else — ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what was put in, about how much, and if it has been run.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it is a separate fault, with its own page for Shareshill, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost lubrication.
One petrol in a diesel job in Shareshill costs more than another. Why?
The four situations above are four separate jobs, so no single quote for this would be honest. Mostly, the cost moves with which one you are in. After that it is the proportion — how much petrol went in against how much that tank takes — and then where your car is and whether a van can get to it safely.
That's why our engineers ask three queries before quoting instead of after: what was put in, how much, and whether it's run. Those replies are what turn a range into one firm number.
About Shareshill, briefly
Shareshill is a small village in Staffordshire, situated approximately 5 miles from Wolverhampton and 115 miles northwest of London. Shareshill sits at an elevation of around 138 metres, surrounded by nearby places such as Little Saredon, Latherford, and Featherstone. Shareshill has a population of around 767 people, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type in the village. Shareshill remains a quiet residential community on the outskirts of the West Midlands urban area.
Fuel drain cover around Shareshill and across Staffordshire
Little Saredon, Latherford and Featherstone are among the places near Shareshill that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel calls across Shareshill's WV postcode area. You need not bring your car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own drive are all places we drain.
Still at the pump around Shareshill?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better spot. Switched off it stays; then phone.