Petrol in a Diesel Car in Spango: How Worried Should You Be?
Far less than you probably are, if it has not been started. Until the ignition primes your pump, your starter turns, or your vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just waits there and does no harm. Which makes the truthful reply to that first Spango query — "have I wrecked it?" — normally no. Leave the motor off and ring Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it like that. Further down, you will find what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it may have got, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel really does
Diesel has two jobs on its way through an engine. It ignites, and before it combusts it protects. Extremely fine gaps are built into your injectors and the high-pressure pump, and only the diesel running through stops those surfaces grinding together.
Of these two jobs, petrol handles the first badly and the second not at all. A pump working on a petrol blend is wearing itself out, since petrol is runnier than diesel and takes away the protection the fuel system depends on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that's where the rattling starts.
Seen together, they make clear the shape the issue has. Contact does not do the harm — circulation does. Petrol in the tank is a fuel problem. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to the injectors downstream.
Four scenarios our engineers see in Spango: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled but never started — as good as it gets. On a forecourt, and truly only there, the petrol is still confined to your tank — because anywhere else your car was driven to get to it. The job is emptying and rinsing on the spot.
Started for a moment, or only your ignition on. Petrol has left the tank and got to the filter and the fuel lines, because the system has been bled. Still generally easy: drain, flush, and the filter seen to.
A few miles driven, and the pump has spent every one of them working on thinned fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel put through the whole circuit: that's this work, and the way the car was driven counts as much as the miles. On the school run to the local primary school, the miles is small. Any distance on the M8, under 10 miles from Spango, means the motor has worked hard throughout, and a run to Glasgow, under 25 miles away, is a very different job as well.
Driven until it protested. Clattering, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. That is your engine telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Pull up on the spot — on the verge on Aileymill Gardens, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it again. A vehicle pulled over early very seldom has permanent damage, because the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still go first, take care of it.
What Spango motorists get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It will not. A bigger tank of the same mixture is all you get, since topping up removes nothing. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol, however much that guidance presumes.
If anything, the reverse is true. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." At higher pressure, through smaller parts: that is how a modern diesel handles its fuel, and so the protection counts more, not less.
The myth that catches motorists off guard: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor normally means a motor that will not run: the motorist stops, and so does the damage. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually does; meanwhile your pump wears. Being able to run isn't proof of being fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." It is an old workaround for a separate issue. What petrol has weakened stays weakened, and the petrol stays inside that tank anyway.
Myth: "Drain the tank yourself and you are sorted." Once the motor has run, some of the petrol is no longer inside your tank: it's in the fuel filter and your lines, and it goes straight back through the pump at the next start. And, a can of petrol filled at the kerbside is truly risky.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
No one does it on purpose, and it's rarely carelessness. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol car at all. So the error runs one way.
It takes place when habit and the car stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. Two vehicles on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. A forecourt you know, but with its pumps laid out differently. Filling up in a rush en route to Branchton, with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. Your hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
Spango drivers: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- Read the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Inspect the filler flap. Plenty of motors state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on your first fill in a car you do not know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a house with one of each.
- It sounds silly and it does the trick: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you're thinking about something else.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for vehicles without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop there and then. A thinner mixture follows from less petrol inside your tank, but the next step remains the same: don't start the vehicle.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Spango?
The order of things is short, then. Starting it is out, and so is turning on your ignition. The staff at the forecourt — whether at BP itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help roll it away from the petrol pump if you ask. What was put in, about how much, and whether it's run: tell us those when you call 0333 366 0103.
If it was AdBlue rather than petrol, say so. That's a different fault — corrosion and deposits instead of lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Spango.
One petrol in a diesel job in Spango costs more than another. Why?
A fair single quote doesn't exist here: four situations, four separate tasks. The situation itself does most of the work of moving the cost. The proportion counts next, meaning how much of your tank is petrol, and then the location of the vehicle and whether reaching it is safe for our van.
What got in, how much, and whether it's run — three questions our engineers ask before quoting, not after, for precisely that reason. With the replies, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Spango, briefly
Spango is a coastal suburban area in Inverclyde, situated near the towns of Ravenscraig and Braeside. Spango sits at an elevation of 53 metres, with views out to the Firth of Clyde, and is located approximately 23 miles from Glasgow. Spango has a mix of housing types, but is predominantly characterised by terraced homes.
Fuel drain cover in Spango and across Inverclyde
Ravenscraig, Braeside and Branchton are among the locations around Spango that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel calls across Spango's PA postcode area. No need to move your vehicle to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all places where we work.
Still at the petrol pump around Spango?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Keep it off. Phone.