How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Southover
Unstarted? Then less worried than you likely are. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to the motor until something pulls it through the system — your ignition priming your pump, your starter, or the drive on its own. So the fair answer to the first query anyone around Southover asks, "have I wrecked it?", is normally no. Keep it that way: leave the engine off then call Petrol in Diesel. Below, you will find what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it might have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Diesel does two jobs on its way through an engine. Lubricating comes before burning; it does both. Very fine gaps are built into the fuel injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and just the diesel flowing through stops their surfaces grinding together.
Petrol handles the first task poorly and the second not at all. It's runnier than diesel and takes away the protection the system depends on, and so a pump running on a petrol mixture 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.
The shape of the issue is clear once you put those together. It's movement that does the damage, not contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel issue. After your pump has been labouring on that petrol, a mechanical issue has started: whatever is shed by a pump that is wearing down travels onward to your injectors with the fuel.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four situations our engineers see in Southover
Filled but never started — the best it gets. That petrol is inside the tank and just the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car stands. This is the one scenario that can only really take place on a forecourt, since anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Your ignition switched on, or a short start. The system has been primed, so petrol has left that tank and got to the fuel filter and the fuel lines. Normally little more than emptying, cleaning and seeing to the fuel filter, and so still easy.
Those few miles driven were your pump running on fuel diluted by petrol the whole way. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the whole circuit: that's the work, and the way the car was driven counts as much as the distance. Short trips, such as the school run to Western Road Community Primary School, are one matter. Getting as far as Brighton and Hove, under 10 miles away, makes a very different job — as does any distance on the M23, under 25 miles from Southover, with the engine working hard all the way.
Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The fuel is not behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is saying so. Leave it wherever it stops: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Cockshut Road. A vehicle stopped soon very rarely has lasting damage, because the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still go first, deal with it.
Southover people and the petrol in a diesel stories they hear
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be." A fuller tank of the same mix is all it gives, because topping up takes out nothing. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, whatever that advice supposes.
If anything, the opposite holds. Myth: "A modern diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Protection counts more on current diesels, not less, because their fuel passes through smaller components at higher pressure.
"It starts, it drives, so there is no harm" — the myth that trips up most motorists than any other. A petrol engine fed diesel normally won't run, so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally fires up, ticks over and pulls away as if nothing has happened — all the while its pump is wearing. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, borrowed from a fix from years ago, for a distinct issue. The petrol is still in that tank afterwards, and what it has weakened isn't put back.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, since after it has been running some petrol lies in the fuel filter and lines, ready to go right back through the pump on your next start. It's also genuinely dangerous to drain petrol into a can by the kerbside.
Why petrol in a diesel takes place so easily
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. A diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol car, yet the smaller petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake easy, and just in that direction.
When routine and the vehicle stop matching, it happens. A new motor, a hire car or a courtesy car. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. A hurried fill en route to Lewes with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Renault Clio, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: precisely when it occurs. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids, and the hand repeats what it has always done.
Next time you fill up around Southover: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Read 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 counts.
- In a car you don't know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before the first fill: plenty of cars print the fuel type there.
- Mark your key. In a home with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump. It seems silly and it works.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you are thinking about something else.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices are available for the remainder. Count it as a safety net, and keep reading the petrol pump.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop there and then. A weaker mixture results from less petrol in the tank, yet the next step remains the same: do not start it.
Put petrol in a diesel around Southover already?
The order of things is brief, then. Starting it is out, and so is switching on your ignition. If you are still at the forecourt — Tesco or anywhere else — ask the attendants to help you roll the car clear of the petrol pump. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — your fuel, the rough amount, and if it's run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a separate issue, with its own page for Southover, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection.
Why one petrol in a diesel task around Southover costs more than another
The four scenarios above are four different tasks, so no single price for this would be honest. Chiefly, your cost moves with which one you are in. Two things come after that: the petrol that got in as a share of what your tank holds, then the spot the car is in and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Ahead of any quote, not after, come three queries: your fuel that got in, the quantity, and if it's run. That's why. With the replies, you get a straight figure rather than a range.
About Southover, for a moment
Southover is a suburban area in East Sussex, situated on the banks of the River Ouse at an elevation of around 11 metres. Southover lies approximately 7 miles from the city of Brighton and Hove and about 45 miles from London. Southover is characterized by its predominantly terraced housing and is close to nearby places such as St Annes and Lewes. Southover has a population of around 4717 residents.
Fuel drain cover across East Sussex, Southover included
Petrol in diesel call-outs in Southover — part of the BN postcode area — go to teams that likewise cover the locations around it, St Annes, Lewes and Wallands Park among them. Our technicians drain where the vehicle is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
Southover: still at the pump?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better spot. Turned off it stays; then call.