How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in St Marys Bay
Less than you probably are, provided it has not been started. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine until something pulls it through the system — the ignition priming your pump, your starter, or the drive on its own. So the fair answer to the first question everyone in St Marys Bay asks, "have I wrecked it?", is usually no. Leave your engine off then phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. The rest of this page covers what petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you a second time.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route through a motor. Lubricating comes before burning; it does both. Your high-pressure pump and the injectors are made to extremely fine gaps, and your diesel passing through them is what keeps those surfaces from grinding against one another.
Petrol handles the first job poorly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump on that mixture wearing itself. It is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the rattling.
Put these together and the shape of the trouble is plain. Contact does not do the harm — circulation does. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. A pump that has been labouring on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to your injectors downstream.
St Marys Bay, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to serious
Filled up, not once started. The best case there is. The petrol is inside that tank and only the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where your car stands. This is the one scenario that can only truly take place on a forecourt, since anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
The ignition switched on, or a brief start. Once primed, your system has pulled petrol from that tank as far as the fuel filter and the lines. Usually little more than draining, rinsing and sorting your filter, and so still simple.
The pump now worked a couple of miles on diluted fuel — that is what driving the vehicle meant. How hard your car was driven counts as much as how far, and this work takes in your tank, your lines, your filter and clean fuel through the entire circuit. The school run to Dymchurch Primary School is one matter. A run as far as Canterbury, under 25 miles away, is a very different job. So is any mileage on the M20, under 10 miles from St Marys Bay, where the engine has been labouring hard throughout.
Driven till it protested. Rattling, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The motor is telling you the fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Leave it where it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Teelin Close. Lasting damage is very unusual when a car is pulled over quickly, and the drain and flush-through that still go first take care of it.
What St Marys Bay people get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine" — a myth. It will not. Nothing comes out when you top up — your tank simply carries more of the same blend. That advice presumes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It does not.
Not so: a newer diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the opposite. Finer parts and higher pressure are the way a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication count more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." This is the one that catches people. Any petrol engine fed diesel generally will not run, so the driver stops and the harm stops with them. Whilst the pump wears, a diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened. Being able to run isn't proof of being fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, borrowed from a fix from years ago, for a separate fault. What petrol has diluted remains weakened, and that petrol remains inside the tank regardless.
Myth: "Drain the tank yourself and you are sorted." Once your engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer inside the tank: it's in the filter and the lines, and it goes right back through the pump on your next start. Besides, petrol emptied into a can by the road is genuinely hazardous.
How does petrol in a diesel take place?
It is rarely carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it simple, and the error runs one way.
It takes place when routine and the vehicle stop matching. A new motor, a hire car or a courtesy car. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. Racing for a train outside Westenhanger and fuelling up en route. A new-to-you diesel Renault Megane, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: exactly when it happens. With rain, a call coming in, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand just does what it always has.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around St Marys Bay
- Read the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, yet not on each forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Plenty of cars state the fuel type inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check there on the first fill in a car you don't know.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a bright colour on your diesel's key when a home has one of each. So mark it.
- "Diesel", out loud, before you lift the nozzle — each time a new or hired car gets its first tank. It sounds silly. It works.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you are thinking about something else.
- Add-on devices exist for cars without one, and some diesels come with a filler that will not take a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol in your tank means a weaker mix. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Petrol already in a diesel around St Marys Bay? Start here
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Starting it is out, and so is turning on the ignition. If you are still at the forecourt — the nearest petrol station or anywhere else — ask the attendants to help you push the car clear of the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what went in, about how much, and if it has been run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a different fault — St Marys Bay has a page just for it.
St Marys Bay petrol in a diesel tasks: why one costs more than another
Four separate jobs lie behind the four scenarios above — which is why there's no fair single price. Which of them you're in is mostly what moves the cost. Where the car is matters too, and whether a technician can safely get to it, after the proportion of petrol to what your tank holds.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three questions: your fuel that got in, the volume, and if it has run. That is why. A range turns into a straight figure once the answers are in.
About St Marys Bay
St Marys Bay is a small coastal village in Kent, situated on the Romney Marshes near the towns of Dymchurch and St Mary in the Marsh. St Marys Bay has a low elevation of around 1 metre above sea level, making it a flat and low-lying area. St Marys Bay is characterized by its semi-detached housing and is located approximately 19 miles from Canterbury and 59 miles from London. St Marys Bay remains a quiet residential community with a population of around 1916 people.
Across Kent and around St Marys Bay: fuel drain cover
Petrol in diesel calls around St Marys Bay — part of the TN postcode area — go to vans that also cover the locations round it, High Knocke, Dymchurch and St Mary in the Marsh among them. You need not move your car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all spots where we work.
At the petrol pump around St Marys Bay, still?
Nothing beats it: that is where you now are. Keep the vehicle switched off, then ring.