Petrol in a Diesel Car in Vicarland: How Worried Should You Be?
Probably less than you are now — as long as no one has started the vehicle. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the engine until something pulls it through the fuel system — your ignition priming your pump, the starter, or driving itself. So the truthful answer to the first question everyone around Vicarland asks, "have I wrecked it?", is normally no. Petrol in Diesel is who to call, with your motor kept off, and so it remains that way. Read on for three things: the effect petrol has inside a diesel engine, the signs of how far it has got, and ways to make sure you don't do it again.
What petrol in a diesel does to your engine
Two tasks fall to diesel on its journey round a motor. It ignites, and before it combusts it lubricates. What keeps the surfaces inside the high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors from wearing down against one another is the diesel flowing through them — they're designed to very fine clearances.
Of these two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second not at all. It is runnier than diesel and takes away the lubrication the fuel system rests on, 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 rattling comes from.
Put those together and the shape of the problem is clear. The damage is done by circulation, not by contact. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. The start of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been working on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to the fuel injectors downstream.
Petrol in a diesel in Vicarland: how serious is it? Four cases
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. Just your tank has petrol in it, and so the job is emptying that tank and flushing the fuel system where the car stands. This situation can only really occur on a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
A brief spell of running, or just the ignition on. The system has been bled, and so petrol has left your tank and got to the fuel filter and the fuel lines. Usually nothing more than clearing, rinsing and sorting the fuel filter, and so still easy.
Those few miles driven were your pump running on fuel diluted by petrol throughout. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the entire system: that is the work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the miles. Driving the children to the local primary school is one sort of trip. Very different once more: a trip to Glasgow, under 5 miles away, or some mileage on the M74, under 3 miles from Vicarland, where the motor never stopped working hard.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, rattling, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone ragged. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is telling you. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on Brownside Road, a lay-by, a side street — and leave it there. A vehicle stopped quickly very seldom has long-term damage, because the drain and the flush-through, which still go first, deal with it.
Petrol in a diesel myths Vicarland 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 bigger tank of the same mixture. That guidance supposes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
If anything, the reverse holds. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." At higher pressure, through finer components: that is how a current diesel handles its fuel, so the protection matters for more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." This is the one that catches drivers. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it usually won't run, so the motorist stops — and the harm stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually will; meanwhile the pump wears. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It is an old workaround for a distinct issue. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and that petrol is still inside your tank later.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." After the engine has been run, some of the petrol is no longer inside that tank: it is in the filter and the lines, and it goes right back through your pump on the next start. On top of that, petrol emptied into a can by the road is truly risky.
How does petrol in a diesel take place?
Carelessness is rarely the cause, and nobody means to do it. One way only, since of the nozzles: the smaller petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whereas the diesel one generally won't fit a petrol motor. That is how the forecourt makes it easy.
The moment routine stops matching the vehicle is the moment it occurs. A vehicle that is 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 forecourt you know, only with its pumps laid out differently. Fuelling up in a hurry en route to Kirkhill, with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it takes place. 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 in Vicarland: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — but not on each forecourt. Trust the label on the pump, not the colour.
- Inspect your filler flap. Many motors state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in any car you do not know.
- Label the key. In a household with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- "Diesel", aloud, before you pick up the nozzle — each time a new or hired car needs its first tank. It sounds daft. It works.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- Some diesels have a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- As soon as you notice, stop: less petrol inside your tank makes a weaker mixture. What to do next doesn't change, though — still don't start the car.
Petrol already in a diesel around Vicarland? Begin here
In that case, there's only a short order of things. Starting it is out, and so is switching on the ignition. Ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that's Morrisons or somewhere else. Ring 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — your fuel, the approximate amount, and if it's run.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it is a different issue, with its own page for Vicarland, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost protection.
Vicarland petrol in a diesel jobs: why one costs more than another
Four different jobs sit behind the four scenarios above — which is why there is no fair single price. Mostly, the cost shifts with which situation you're in. Next it is the share — how much petrol was put in against how much that tank takes — and then where the vehicle is and whether a van can reach it safely.
What was put in, how much, and whether it has run — three queries our technicians ask before quoting, not after, for precisely that reason. Their answers are what turn a range into one firm number.
About Vicarland itself
Vicarland is a suburban area situated on the outskirts of Glasgow, near the lakeside and close to the nearby places of Cambuslang, Greenlees, and Whitlawburn. Vicarland has a relatively low elevation of 49 metres and is located approximately 4.3 miles from Glasgow. Vicarland is predominantly composed of flat-type housing, which is common in many suburban areas of Scotland. Vicarland is also relatively distant from London, at around 340.4 miles away.
Vicarland and South Lanarkshire: where our fuel drain cover runs
Petrol in diesel call-outs around Vicarland — part of the G postcode area — go to teams that also cover the places around it, Cambuslang, Greenlees and Whitlawburn among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own driveway are all spots our engineers work, and the vehicle doesn't need to come to us.
In Vicarland and still at the pump?
Then you're in the best spot there is. Turned off it stays; then phone.