Petrol in a Diesel Car in Tiverton: How Worried Should You Be?
Probably less than you are now — as long as no one has started it. Until the ignition primes your pump, your starter turns, or your vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply rests there and does nothing. Which makes the honest reply to the first Tiverton query — "have I ruined it?" — normally no. Keep it that way: leave the motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel. 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.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to your engine?
Diesel does two tasks on its way through a motor. It protects first, and after that does it burn. Very fine clearances go into the fuel injectors and your high-pressure pump, and only the diesel flowing through keeps their surfaces from grinding together.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. It's thinner than diesel and strips away the lubrication the fuel system hinges on, so a pump running on a petrol mix 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 is where the knocking comes from.
Taken together, they make clear the shape the problem has. It's circulation that causes the harm, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel fault. Once your pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical problem has started: anything shed by a pump that's wearing down is carried downstream to your injectors with your fuel.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four situations our technicians see in Tiverton
Filled but never started — as good as it gets. The petrol is inside your tank and just the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle sits. This is the one scenario that can only really occur at a forecourt, since anywhere else your car has been driven to get there.
Started for a moment, or just the ignition on. Once primed, the system has pulled petrol from that tank as far as the fuel filter and your lines. Normally little more than draining, flushing and sorting the filter, so still simple.
Those few miles on the road were your pump labouring on fuel diluted by petrol throughout. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the entire system: that's this work, and the way the car was driven counts as much as the mileage. Short trips, such as the school run to Heathcoat Primary School, are one matter. Any distance on the M5, under 5 miles from Tiverton, means your engine working hard throughout, and a run to Exeter, under 15 miles away, makes a very different job too.
Driven until it complained. Rattling, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and your motor is saying so. Whether it is the verge on St Andrew Street, a lay-by or a side road, stop where you are then leave it. The fuel drain and flush-through still come first, and they deal with it: when a vehicle is pulled over soon, long-term damage is very rare.
What Tiverton motorists get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. A fuller tank of the same mixture is all you get, since topping up removes nothing. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that advice assumes.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. More precise components and higher pressure are the way a modern diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches most drivers than any other. Diesel in a petrol motor usually leaves a motor that won't run: the driver stops, and so does the damage. Feed petrol to a diesel and it generally starts, idles and pulls away as if nothing has happened — all while its pump is wearing. Running doesn't mean fine.
An outdated fix for a distinct issue is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." The petrol is still inside that tank after that, and whatever it has thinned isn't put back.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump from the fuel lines and the filter, where some of it ends up once the motor has run. That is why draining the tank yourself doesn't sort it — a myth. It is also really dangerous to drain petrol into a can by the kerbside.
How does petrol in a diesel happen?
Nobody does it on purpose, and it's rarely carelessness. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle generally won't go into a petrol vehicle at all. So the mistake runs one way.
The moment habit stops matching the vehicle is the moment it takes place. A motor that's new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A train to catch, and a hurried fill on the way to Tiverton Parkway. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Passat, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: exactly when it occurs. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and your hand does what it has always done.
Next time you fill up around Tiverton: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Check 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 your filler or at the cap before your first fill: plenty of cars print the fuel type there.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on the diesel's key if a house has one of each. So mark it.
- 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 petrol pump. It sounds daft and it works.
- Whilst you're thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so tuck the phone away.
- Add-on devices exist for motors without one, and some diesels come with a filler that will not take a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Less petrol makes a thinner mixture, so stop the moment you realise — though remembering that the next stage is unchanged. It's still not to crank it.
Tiverton: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Do not fire it up, and do not turn the ignition on. If you're still on the forecourt — Shell or anywhere else — ask the attendants to help you roll it away from the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it's been run.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it's a separate fault, with its own page for Tiverton, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost lubrication.
What makes one Tiverton petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
There's no honest single quote for this, because the four situations above are four separate jobs. Which of them you are in is chiefly what moves your cost. The ratio matters next, meaning how much of your tank is petrol, followed by the position of the car and whether reaching it is safe for our van.
Three questions come first, before any quote, instead of after — what got in, how much, has it run — and that is the reason. A range becomes a straight figure once those answers are in.
About Tiverton itself
Tiverton is a town in Devon, situated on the River Exe in the South West of England, with a population of around 15238 people. Tiverton sits at an elevation of 74 metres, approximately 12.6 miles north of Exeter, and is characterized by its predominantly terraced housing. Tiverton is close to several nearby places, including Cotteylands, Collipriest, and Cowleymoor, and is located about 151.4 miles west of London. Tiverton's riverside setting has influenced its development over time.
Fuel drain cover across Devon, Tiverton included
Petrol in diesel calls in Tiverton — part of the EX postcode area — go to vans that likewise cover the locations about it, Cotteylands, Collipriest and Cowleymoor among them. Our engineers drain where the vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
At the pump around Tiverton, right now?
Then you're in the best spot there is. Call, and keep it switched off.