How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Six Bells
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you likely feel. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine till something draws it through your fuel system — your ignition priming the pump, your starter, or driving itself. So the fair answer to the first query anyone in Six Bells asks, "have I wrecked it?", is usually no. To leave the vehicle that way, ring Petrol in Diesel then 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 the way to make sure you never repeat it.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Diesel has two tasks on its way through a motor. It burns, and before it burns it protects. The high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors are designed to very fine clearances, and the diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing against one another.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. It's runnier than diesel and removes the lubrication the fuel system hinges on, so a pump running on a petrol mixture is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is designed to resist igniting under compression, which is the opposite of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That's where the clattering comes from.
Put those together and the shape of the problem is clear. The harm is done by movement, not by contact. Petrol in a tank is a fuel fault. The start of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been working on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to the injectors downstream.
Petrol in a diesel around Six Bells: how bad is it? Four cases
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. That petrol is inside that tank and just the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle sits. This is the one situation that can only really occur at a forecourt, as anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Started for a moment, or only the ignition on. Petrol has left that tank and got to your filter and your lines, since the fuel system has been primed. Still normally simple: drain, flush, and the fuel filter seen to.
The pump has spent a couple of miles on weakened fuel — that's what driving the vehicle meant. Miles is only half of that; how hard it was driven counts equally. Either way this work runs to the tank, your lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit. Driving the children to the local primary school is one sort of trip. Very different once more: a run to Newport, under 15 miles away, or any distance on the M4, under 10 miles from Six Bells, where the engine never stopped labouring hard.
It protested, and only then stopped: smoke, clattering, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone lumpy. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is telling you. Whether it is the verge on Eastville Road, a lay-by or a side street, stop where you are and leave it. What comes first is still the drain and flush, and that deals with it, with long-term damage very unusual when a vehicle is stopped quickly.
Six Bells people and that petrol in a diesel stories they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mixture. That guidance supposes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It does not.
"Newer diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the reverse. A modern diesel runs its fuel through finer components at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches most motorists than any other. The motorist of a petrol engine fed diesel usually has no choice but to stop, since it will not run, and the damage stops there. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually fires up, idles and pulls away like nothing happened — all the while its pump is wearing. Fine and running aren't the same at all.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, borrowed from a fix from years ago, for a different problem. None of what petrol weakened is put back by it — and afterwards, the tank still contains the petrol.
Myth: "Drain that tank yourself and you're sorted." After the engine has been run, some of the petrol is no longer inside the tank: it is in the filter and your lines, and it goes straight back through the pump at the next start. It is also genuinely hazardous to drain petrol into a can by the kerbside.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
A careless moment is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol motor at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the error runs one way.
Habit and the vehicle getting out of step is when it occurs. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and vehicles that are new to you. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A forecourt you know, only with its pumps laid out differently. A hurried fill on the way to Llanhilleth with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Skoda Octavia after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it takes place. Throw in a back seat full of children, a phone call or rain, and the hand takes over.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Six Bells
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most generally do. Check the petrol pump's label; the colour is just a clue.
- The first fill in a new motor is the time to check your filler flap — on it, or on the cap, plenty of motors state which fuel they take.
- One of each in the household? Mark your key to your diesel — a bright fob, a sticker — since meaning to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle comes off the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, yes, yet it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make while your mind is on something else, so the phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices are available for the remainder. Count it as a safety net, then keep checking the pump.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop at once. A thinner mix follows from less petrol in the tank, yet your next stage stays the same: don't start the vehicle.
Petrol already in a diesel in Six Bells? Start here
Then, there's just a short order of things. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition switched off too. The staff at the forecourt — whether at Tesco itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help roll it away from the petrol pump if you ask. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, about how much, and whether it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a different fault, with its own page for Six Bells, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication.
Six Bells petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
Four different jobs sit behind the four situations above — which is why there's no fair single price. What shifts the cost is chiefly which of them you're in. Beyond that it is the proportion — how much petrol went in against how much the tank takes — and then where the vehicle is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Three queries come first, before any quote, rather than after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. With those replies, you get a straight figure rather than a range.
About Six Bells
Six Bells is a suburban area in Blaenau Gwent, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 196 metres. Six Bells is located near the communities of Penrhiwgarreg, Pant y Pwdyn, and Abertillery, and is approximately 10.8 miles from Newport. Six Bells has a population of around 2263 people and is characterised by predominantly terraced housing.
Across Blaenau Gwent and in Six Bells: fuel drain cover
Six Bells waits in the NP postcode area, and the teams that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the locations around it as well — Penrhiwgarreg, Pant y Pwdyn and Abertillery among them. No need to move the vehicle to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own drive are all spots we drain.
In Six Bells and still at the pump?
The best spot there is, then — that's where you are. Call, and leave it switched off.