Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Shiney Row
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you likely are. Until the ignition primes the pump, your starter turns, or the car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply waits there and does nothing. Which means the truthful reply to the first Shiney Row question — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. Keep it that way: leave your engine off and call Petrol in Diesel. Further down, you will find what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it might have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to your engine?
Two jobs fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. Before it burns, it protects — and then it burns. The high-pressure pump and your injectors are built to extremely fine clearances, and your diesel passing through them is what keeps those surfaces from grinding against each other.
Of these two jobs, petrol handles the first poorly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump running on the mixture wearing itself. It's equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the rattling.
Combined, those make the shape of the problem clear. It's circulation that does the damage, not contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to the injectors downstream.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios our technicians see around Shiney Row
The best case there is: filled up, not once started. Just that tank has petrol in it, and so the task is draining your tank and cleaning the fuel system where your car sits. This scenario can only really happen on a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
The ignition switched on, or a short start. Petrol has come out of that tank and reached the filter and the fuel lines, since the system has been primed. Usually nothing more than clearing, rinsing and seeing to the fuel filter, so still easy.
Your pump now spent a few miles on weakened fuel — that is what driving it does. Miles is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way the work includes the tank, your lines, your filter and clean fuel through the entire system. On the school run to Shiney Row Primary School, the distance is small. A run as far as Sunderland, under 10 miles away, is a very different job. So is any distance on the A1(M), under 3 miles from Shiney Row, where the motor has been labouring hard the whole time.
Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The motor is telling you the fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on Chester Road, a lay-by, a side street — and leave the car there. A car pulled over soon very rarely has lasting damage, because the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, sort it out.
Petrol in a diesel myths Shiney Row motorists hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. A bigger tank of the same mixture is all you get, because topping up takes out nothing. The idea behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. Smaller components and higher pressure are the way a current diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection count more, not less.
The myth that catches motorists off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. A petrol engine fed diesel normally will not run, and so the motorist stops and the harm stops with them. Whilst the pump wears, a diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened. Fine and running are not the same at all.
Myth: a two-stroke additive makes it safe to drive home. It is an old fix, supposed for another problem. None of what petrol weakened gets put back by it — and afterwards, the tank still contains the petrol.
Once the motor has run, part of the petrol is in the fuel filter and the fuel lines, not your tank — and your next start sends it straight back through your pump. So the myth "drain your tank yourself and you're sorted" doesn't hold. Also, a can of petrol filled at the kerbside is genuinely risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
A careless moment is rarely the cause, and nobody means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol vehicle at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the error runs one way.
The moment routine stops matching the car is the moment it happens. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. Filling up in a hurry on the way to Chester-Le-Street, with a train to catch. Precisely the moment it takes place: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. With rain, a call arriving, or children to deal with, the hand just does what it has always done.
Shiney Row people: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Check 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 matters.
- The first fill in a new motor is the time to check the filler flap — on it, or on the cap, many cars state which fuel they take.
- 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.
- It sounds daft and it works: on the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you take the nozzle off the petrol pump.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so tuck your phone away and keep your mind on the pump.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Less petrol means a weaker mix, so stop the moment you notice — while remembering that your next stage is unchanged. It's still not to fire it up.
Put petrol in a diesel in Shiney Row already?
Then the order of things is brief. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off too. The attendants at the forecourt — whether at Gulf itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help roll it clear of the pump if you ask. What went in, about how much, and whether it's run: tell us that when you phone 0333 366 0103.
Corrosion and deposits are the problem with AdBlue, where petrol means lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Shiney Row page.
One petrol in a diesel job around Shiney Row costs more than another. Why?
The four situations above are four separate jobs, so no single quote for this would be honest. Which of them you're in is mostly what moves the cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that got in as a proportion of what the tank holds, then the place the car is in and whether a van can get to it safely.
That's why our technicians ask three questions before pricing instead of after: what went in, how much, and whether it has run. Their replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Shiney Row
Shiney Row is a village in Tyne and Wear, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 61 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Shiney Row lies approximately 5 miles from Sunderland and is close to nearby places such as New Herrington, Penshaw, and Philadelphia. Shiney Row has a population of around 3868 residents and is located in the North East region of England, about 239 miles north of London.
Fuel drain cover across Tyne and Wear, Shiney Row included
New Herrington, Penshaw and Philadelphia are among the locations around Shiney Row that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel call-outs across Shiney Row's DH postcode area. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all spots our technicians drain, and the car does not need to move to us.
At the pump around Shiney Row, right now?
Nothing beats it: that's where you now are. Turned off it stays; then call.