Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Sillerhole
Probably less than you already are — provided nobody has started the vehicle. Till your ignition primes the pump, your starter turns, or your vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply sits there and does nothing. Which makes the honest reply to the first Sillerhole question — "have I ruined it?" — usually no. To keep the vehicle that way, phone Petrol in Diesel and leave the engine switched off. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel motor, the signs of how far it has spread, and ways to make sure you don't repeat it.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to your engine?
On its way through an engine, diesel has two tasks. It ignites, and before it burns it protects. Designed to extremely fine gaps, the injectors and the pump rely on your diesel flowing through them to keep their surfaces from wearing against one another.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. A pump running on a petrol mix is wearing itself out, because petrol is runnier than diesel and takes away the protection your fuel system relies on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel — and that's where the knocking comes.
Together, those make the shape of the issue clear. The harm is done by movement, not by contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, borne by the fuel, into the fuel injectors further along, which is why a pump that has worked on the petrol is where a mechanical problem starts.
Four situations our technicians see in Sillerhole: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Filled but never started — as good as it gets. Just your tank has petrol in it, and so the job is draining your tank and flushing the fuel system where the car sits. This situation can only really occur on a forecourt: anywhere else, the vehicle got there by being driven.
A brief spell of running, or just your ignition on. Petrol has come out of that tank and got to your filter and the fuel lines, since the system has been bled. That's usually still an easy task — a drain, a flush, and the fuel filter seen to.
Some miles driven, and your pump has spent each of them labouring on thinned fuel. How hard your car was driven matters as much as how far, and the work covers your tank, the fuel lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit. Short trips, like the school run to the local primary school, are one thing. Any miles on the M90, under 15 miles from Sillerhole, means your engine working hard throughout, and a run to Dundee, under 25 miles away, is a very different job as well.
Clattering, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is saying so. Leave it where it has stopped: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Glencairn Gardens. Permanent damage is very uncommon if a vehicle is pulled over soon, and the drain and flush that still come first take care of it.
What Sillerhole motorists get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It does not. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all you get, because topping up removes nothing. A diesel fuel system does not tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that guidance supposes.
If anything, the reverse holds. Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." More precise parts and higher pressure are the way a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
The myth that catches drivers off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor usually means a motor that will not run: the motorist stops, and so does the damage. Whilst your pump grinds, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as though nothing has happened. Fine and running are not the same thing.
Not so: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It is an old workaround, meant for another problem. It does not put back what petrol has thinned, and that petrol is still inside the tank later.
If the engine has been run, part of the petrol sits in the filter and the lines, not that tank — and the next start pulls it straight back through the pump. So the myth "drain your tank yourself and you are sorted" does not hold. Emptying petrol into a can by the kerbside is also 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 petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the slip runs one way.
The moment routine stops matching the car is the moment it happens. Any motor that's new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A train to catch, and a rushed fill on the way to Leven. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: exactly when it takes place. With rain, a call arriving, or children to deal with, the hand just does what it always has.
Sillerhole drivers: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — yet not on each forecourt. Go by the label on the petrol pump, not the colour.
- Inspect your filler flap. Many cars state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in a vehicle you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, in a household with one of each.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you lift the nozzle — every time a new or hired car needs its first tank. It sounds silly. It does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make while your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- Some diesels come with a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for motors without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol inside the tank means a thinner blend. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Put petrol in a diesel in Sillerhole already?
Then the order of things is brief. Starting it is out, and so is switching on the ignition. If you're still on the forecourt — Sainsbury's or anywhere else — ask the staff to help you push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump. What went in, about how much, and whether it has run: tell us that when you ring 0333 366 0103.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a different issue, with its own page for Sillerhole, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication.
What makes one Sillerhole petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
The four situations above are four separate tasks, so no single price for this would be fair. Which of them you're in is mostly what shifts the cost. Two things come after that: the petrol that went in as a proportion of what the tank takes, then the place the vehicle is in and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Three questions come first, before quoting, rather than after — what went in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. A range becomes a straight figure once those answers are in.
About Sillerhole itself
Sillerhole is a coastal suburban area in Fife, situated near the towns of Scoonie, Broom, and Leven. Sillerhole has a relatively low elevation of 21 metres and is located approximately 17.6 miles from Dundee. Sillerhole is characterized by its predominant housing type, which is flat, and its proximity to the sea. Sillerhole is also a significant distance from London, at around 344.9 miles away.
Fuel drain cover in Sillerhole and across Fife
Scoonie, Broom and Leven are among the spots around Sillerhole that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel calls across Sillerhole's KY postcode area. No need to move your vehicle to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all locations we drain.
Sillerhole: still at the pump?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Ring, and keep it turned off.