Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Shepherds Bush
If it has not been started, worry far less than you probably are. Everyone in Shepherds Bush starts with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is generally no: petrol left in your tank of a diesel stays harmless until priming, cranking or driving pulls it into the system. To keep the car that way, call Petrol in Diesel then leave your motor switched off. Below, this page sets out what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it might have gone, and how to stop it happening to you again.
What petrol in a diesel does to the motor
Passing through a motor, diesel is doing two things at once. It combusts, and before it burns it protects. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors from wearing against each other is your diesel passing through them — they're built to very fine gaps.
Petrol handles the first task badly and the second not at all. It's thinner than diesel and strips away the lubrication the fuel system depends on, 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 reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That's where the knocking comes from.
Seen together, they make clear the shape the trouble takes. Not contact but movement is what does the damage. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel issue. Once your pump has been working on that petrol, a mechanical fault has started: anything shed by a pump that's wearing down is carried onward to your injectors with your fuel.
Four situations our engineers see around Shepherds Bush: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled but not once started — as good as it gets. Just the tank has petrol in it, so the job is clearing that tank and cleaning your system where the car sits. This situation can only truly occur at a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
Your ignition turned on, or a short start. Petrol has come out of that tank and got to the fuel filter and the fuel lines, since the fuel system has been primed. That's generally still an easy job — a drain, a flush, and the filter seen to.
The pump has spent a couple of miles on diluted fuel — that's what driving the car does. How hard the car was driven matters as much as how far, and this work covers that tank, the lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the entire circuit. On the school run to Greenside Primary School, the miles is small. Driving as far as Westminster, under 5 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any mileage on the M4, under 3 miles from Shepherds Bush, with the engine labouring hard the whole time.
It protested, and only then stopped: smoke, knocking, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone lumpy. That's your motor telling you its fuel no longer is behaving like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Bloemfontein Avenue, a lay-by, a side street — then leave it there. A car pulled over early very seldom has long-term damage, since the fuel drain and the flush, which still go first, take care of it.
Myths Shepherds Bush people hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It does not. Nothing comes out when you top up — that tank just holds more of the same blend. That advice supposes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
If anything, the opposite holds. Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." At higher pressure, through more precise components: that is how a current diesel handles its fuel, so the protection matters more, not less.
This is the one that catches drivers. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no harm done." Any petrol motor fed diesel generally will not run, and so the motorist stops and the damage stops with them. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually will; meanwhile your pump wears. Fine and running aren't the same thing.
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 diluted, and the petrol is still inside that tank afterwards.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you're sorted." After the engine has been run, some of the petrol is no longer inside your tank: it's in the filter and your lines, and it goes straight back through the pump on your next start. On top of that, petrol drained into a can by the road is truly risky.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the smaller 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 vehicle at all. So the slip runs one way.
When routine and your car stop matching, it happens. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. Two motors on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to the nearest station. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Passat in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Your hand does what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel on your next fill-up around Shepherds Bush
- The label is what matters, so read the petrol pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt.
- The first fill in a new car is the time to check your filler flap — on it, or on the cap, plenty of vehicles state the fuel to use.
- Label 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 intending to remember.
- Say it before you lift it. On the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- Tuck your phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you are thinking about something else.
- Some diesels come with a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for vehicles without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- As soon as you realise, stop: less petrol in that tank makes a thinner blend. What to do next doesn't change, though — still do not crank it.
Shepherds Bush: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition off as well. Ask the attendants to help you roll it away from the pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that's BP or anywhere else. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what went in, about how much, and if it's been run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a different problem, with its own page for Shepherds Bush, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication.
Shepherds Bush petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
The four situations above are four separate tasks, so no single quote for this would be fair. What shifts the cost is chiefly which of them you're in. After that it is the share — how much petrol went in against how much the tank holds — and after that where the vehicle is and whether our van can get to it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, we ask three queries: the fuel that got in, its amount, and if it's run. That's why. Given those replies, there is a straight figure rather than a range.
About Shepherds Bush, for a moment
Shepherds Bush is a suburban area in west London, situated approximately 4.6 miles from the city centre. Shepherds Bush sits at a low elevation of around 9 metres, and is bordered by nearby places such as White City, Wormwood Scrubs, and East Acton. Shepherds Bush has a population of around 25,310 people, predominantly residing in flats. Shepherds Bush is close to Westminster, which is about 4.7 miles away.
Across Greater London and around Shepherds Bush: fuel drain cover
The vans answering petrol in diesel calls around Shepherds Bush, in the W postcode area, also work the places near it, White City, Wormwood Scrubs and East Acton included. You need not move your car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all spots we drain.
Shepherds Bush: still at the petrol pump?
Then you are in the best place there can be. Keep it off. Phone.