--- title: Explained: Petrol in a Diesel Car Storrington canonical: https://www.petrolinadieselcar.co.uk/petrol-in-diesel/storrington-west-sussex/ location: Storrington county: West Sussex latitude: 50.917800 longitude: -0.454090 service: Petrol in a Diesel Car updated: 2026-10-03 --- # Petrol in a Diesel Car in Storrington: How Worried Should You Be? If it has not been started, worry less than you likely are. Until your ignition primes the pump, the starter turns, or your vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank just sits there and does no harm. Which makes the truthful reply to the first Storrington query — "have I wrecked it?" — normally no. Leave the engine off then phone Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it that way. The rest of this page sets out what petrol really does to a diesel, how to tell how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you again. ## Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what happens On its way through a motor, diesel does two tasks. It ignites, and before it combusts it lubricates. Extremely fine gaps are built into the injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and only your diesel running through keeps those surfaces from grinding together. Petrol does the first task poorly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, leaving a pump on the mixture to wear itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the clattering. Combined, those leave the shape of the trouble plain. It is circulation that does the harm, not contact. Where that petrol is only inside that tank, it is a problem of fuel, nothing more. The start of a mechanical one is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to the injectors downstream. ## Storrington, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to major Fuelled but never started — the best it gets. That petrol is in that tank and only the tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where your car stands. This is the one scenario that can only really happen on a forecourt, because anywhere else your car has been driven to get there. The ignition turned on, or a brief start. Your system has been bled, and so petrol has left your tank and got to the filter and the fuel lines. Drain, flush, deal with the filter: still usually simple. A couple of miles driven, and the pump has spent each of them labouring on diluted fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the entire circuit: that is the work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the miles. On the school run to Storrington Primary School, the distance is small. Any distance on the M23, under 25 miles from Storrington, means your engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Brighton and Hove, under 25 miles away, is a very different job as well. Driven until it complained. Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The motor is telling you your fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Whether it's the verge on North Street, a lay-by or a side road, stop there and leave it. A car pulled over soon very rarely has lasting damage, since the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still go first, take care of it. ## Petrol in a diesel myths Storrington drivers hear It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be." Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mixture. That advice assumes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It doesn't. If anything, the opposite holds. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Lubrication counts more on newer diesels, not less, since their fuel passes through finer components at higher pressure. The myth that catches motorists out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. A petrol engine fed diesel generally won't run, so the motorist stops and the damage stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it generally fires up, ticks over and drives away like nothing happened — all the while its pump wears. Running is not the same as fine. "A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a separate problem. The petrol is still in that tank afterwards, and what it has diluted isn't put back. Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." Once your engine has been run, some of the petrol is no longer in your tank: it's in your filter and the lines, and it goes straight back through your pump at the next start. And, a can of petrol filled at the kerbside is genuinely dangerous. ## Why petrol in a diesel happens so easily On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol motor at all. So the error runs one way. The moment habit stops matching the vehicle is the moment it occurs. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and vehicles that are new to you. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. Rushing for a train at Pulborough and filling up en route. Years of petrol vehicles behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that's when. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids, and your hand repeats what it has always done. ## Next time you fill up in Storrington: preventing petrol in a diesel - The label is what matters, so check the pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on each forecourt. - In a motor you don't know, look inside the flap over your filler or at the cap before your first fill: plenty of vehicles print the fuel there. - A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for a household with one of each. - It sounds silly and it does the trick: on the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the pump. - Mistakes like this are straightforward to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away. - Some diesels have a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump. - Noticing it mid-fill? Stop at once. A weaker blend follows from less petrol in the tank, yet the next stage remains the same: don't start the car. ## Put petrol in a diesel in Storrington already? Then the order of things is short. Don't turn your ignition on, and do not crank it. Yet at the forecourt, at Power or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has been run. Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a separate problem, with its own page for Storrington, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost lubrication. ## Why one petrol in a diesel job in Storrington costs more than another There's no honest single quote for this, because the four situations above are four separate jobs. Mostly, your cost shifts with which situation you are in. Where the car is matters too, and whether a van can safely get to it, after the proportion of petrol to what the tank holds. That is why our technicians ask three queries before pricing instead of after: what went in, how much, and if it has run. Those replies turn a range into a straight figure. ## About Storrington, for a moment Storrington is a village situated in the riverside setting of the River Adur in West Sussex, with an elevation of around 40 metres. Storrington lies approximately 43 miles south of London and 15 miles north of Brighton and Hove, near neighbouring areas such as Sullington Warren and Sullington. Storrington has a population of around 1943 residents, with a predominance of flat-type housing. Storrington is surrounded by a mix of rural and suburban landscapes, including the nearby settlement of Cootham. ## Across West Sussex and around Storrington: fuel drain cover Storrington waits in the RH postcode area, and our teams that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the locations around it as well — Sullington Warren, Cootham and Sullington among them. No need to move your car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all locations where we work. ## Still at the petrol pump in Storrington? Then you're in the best spot there is. Keep it off. Ring.