Petrol in a Diesel Car in Smallwood Hey: How Worried Should You Be?
Likely less than you are now — as long as nobody has started the car. Until the ignition primes your pump, the starter turns, or the car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just waits there and does no harm. Which makes the honest reply to that first Smallwood Hey question — "have I wrecked it?" — normally no. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with your engine kept off, so it remains that way. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has travelled, and how to keep it from happening again: that is the remainder of this page.
The motor and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Two jobs fall to diesel on its journey round a motor. Before it combusts, it protects — then it ignites. What keeps the surfaces inside the high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors from wearing against one another is the diesel flowing through them — they are built to extremely fine tolerances.
Of those two tasks, petrol manages the first badly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump on the mixture wearing itself. It's equally made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the knocking.
Put these together and the shape of the problem is plain. Not contact but movement is what does the harm. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel fault. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with the fuel to the injectors beyond it.
Petrol in a diesel around Smallwood Hey: how serious is it? Four situations
The best case there is: filled up, never started. On a forecourt, and truly only there, the petrol is still limited to your tank — since everywhere else the vehicle was driven to reach it. The task is emptying and rinsing on the spot.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. The system has been bled, and so petrol has left your tank and got to your filter and your lines. Still usually easy: drain, flush, and the fuel filter dealt with.
Those few miles driven were your pump labouring on fuel thinned by petrol throughout. The work is the tank, your lines, your filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit, and how hard your car was driven counts as much as how far. On the school run to Pilling St John's Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School, the mileage is short. A run as far as Lancaster, under 10 miles away, is a very different job. So is any distance on the M6, under 10 miles from Smallwood Hey, where the motor has been labouring hard throughout.
It protested, and only then stopped: smoke, clattering, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone lumpy. The engine is telling you the fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Hooles Lane. What comes first is still the fuel drain and flush-through, and that deals with it, with lasting damage very uncommon when a vehicle is stopped soon.
Smallwood Hey drivers and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a fuller tank, still the same mixture. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that guidance assumes.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. Lubrication counts more on current diesels, not less, because their fuel passes through finer parts at higher pressure.
One myth that catches people off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Any petrol engine fed diesel generally will not run, and so the motorist stops and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally fires up, idles and pulls away like nothing has happened — all the while its pump is wearing. Fine and running aren't the same at all.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It is an old workaround for a different issue. None of what petrol thinned is put back by it — and afterwards, your tank still holds that petrol.
The next start draws petrol back round your pump out of the lines and the filter, where some of it ends up once the motor has been run. That is why a DIY tank drain doesn't sort it — a myth. It is also truly hazardous to drain petrol into a can at the roadside.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
Nobody does it on purpose, and it is rarely carelessness. A diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol vehicle, but the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one error simple, and just in one direction.
Routine and your car getting out of step is when it occurs. Any car that's new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the drive. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Rushing for a train outside Poulton-Le-Fylde and filling up en route. Years of petrol cars behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. With rain, a call coming in, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand just does what it always has.
Smallwood Hey people: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- The label is what counts, so check the petrol pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt.
- Plenty of motors state the fuel inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check it on your first fill in any vehicle you do not know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for a house with one of each.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" aloud. Daft, yes, but it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, so put your phone away and keep your mind on the pump.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol inside that tank means a weaker mixture. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Smallwood Hey: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is short, then. Do not turn your ignition on, and do not fire it up. Ask the attendants to help you push it away from the pump if you are still at the forecourt, whether that's Asda or anywhere else. Ring 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the rough volume, and whether it has run.
If it was AdBlue and not petrol, say so. That is a separate issue — corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection — and it has its own page for Smallwood Hey.
One petrol in a diesel job around Smallwood Hey costs more than another. Why?
There is no fair single price for this, since the four scenarios above are four different tasks. The situation itself does most of the work of moving your cost. Beyond that it is the ratio — how much petrol was put in against how much that tank takes — and after that where the vehicle is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Three queries come first, before any quote, rather than after — what went in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. Given the answers, you get a straight figure rather than a range.
About Smallwood Hey and where it is
Smallwood Hey is a coastal village in Lancashire, situated near the cities of Lancaster and Preston. Smallwood Hey has a low elevation of around 6 metres, indicating its proximity to the sea. Smallwood Hey is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its status as a residential community. Smallwood Hey is located near other small villages such as Pilling and Dam Side.
Across Lancashire and around Smallwood Hey: fuel drain cover
Pilling, Dam Side and Fishers Row are among the spots around Smallwood Hey that the same vans work, answering petrol in diesel jobs across Smallwood Hey's PR postcode area. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all spots we drain, and your car does not need to come to us.
In Smallwood Hey and still at the pump?
The best spot there is, then — that is where you are. Keep the car switched off, then ring.