West Charleton: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Not started? Then less anxious than you likely are. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your motor until something pulls it through your fuel system — the ignition priming the pump, your starter, or driving on its own. So the honest answer to the first query anyone in West Charleton asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. Petrol in Diesel is who to call, with your motor kept off, and so it remains that way. The remainder of this page explains what petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it does not happen to you a second time.
Inside the engine: what petrol in a diesel does
Two tasks fall to diesel on its route round a motor. It combusts, and before it combusts it lubricates. Extremely fine gaps are built into the injectors and your high-pressure pump, and only the diesel flowing through stops those surfaces grinding together.
Petrol does the first task poorly and the second not at all. The knocking comes from petrol being made not to ignite when compressed, which is exactly the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is thinner than diesel, it strips away the protection the system hinges on, and any pump working on that blend is wearing itself.
Put those together and the shape of the trouble is plain. The harm is done by movement, not by contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, borne by the fuel, into the fuel injectors further along, which is why a pump that has been working on the petrol is where a mechanical problem begins.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios our technicians see around West Charleton
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. Just your tank has petrol in it, so the task is clearing your tank and rinsing the system where the vehicle stands. This situation can only truly occur on a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
The ignition switched on, or a short start. With the system primed, the fuel lines and filter now hold petrol that has come from your tank. Drain, flush, deal with the fuel filter: still usually simple.
Those few miles on the road meant your pump running on fuel weakened by petrol throughout. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the whole system: that's the work, and the way your car was driven matters as much as the mileage. On the school run to Charleton Church of England Academy, the distance is short. A run as far as Plymouth, under 25 miles away, is a very different task. So is any miles on the M5, under 50 miles from West Charleton, where your engine has been working hard throughout.
Driven until it protested. Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. That's your motor telling you its fuel has stopped behaving like diesel. Stop where you are — on the verge on A379, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it. A vehicle stopped soon very seldom has long-term damage, as the drain and the flush, which still go first, deal with it.
West Charleton drivers and that petrol in a diesel myths they hear
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you're left with a bigger tank, still the same mix. That advice supposes 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." More precise parts and higher pressure are the way a modern diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
The myth that catches people out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Diesel in a petrol motor generally means a motor that won't run: the motorist stops, and so does the damage. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing happened — all the while its pump is wearing. Being able to run is not the same as being fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It is an outdated fix for a different problem. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and that petrol is still inside your tank after that.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." Once the motor has been run, some of the petrol is no longer in the tank: it's in the filter and your lines, and it goes right back through your pump at your next start. Also, a can of petrol drained at the kerbside is genuinely dangerous.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
It's rarely carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. A diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol car, but the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake straightforward, and only in one direction.
The moment habit stops matching the car is the moment it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a motor that's brand new. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the drive. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A rushed fill on the way to Ivybridge with a train to catch. Precisely the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Renault Megane for the first time. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand does what it has always done.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in West Charleton
- The label is what matters, so check the pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt.
- Inspect your filler flap. Plenty of vehicles state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in a motor you don't know.
- One of each in the house? Label your key to the diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since meaning to remember isn't enough.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the pump. It seems daft and it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make while your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away.
- Add-on devices exist for vehicles without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Noticing it mid-fill? Stop there and then. A thinner mix follows from less petrol inside the tank, but your next stage stays the same: do not fire it up.
West Charleton: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition off as well. Still at the forecourt, at Texaco or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll the car away from the petrol pump. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has run.
Corrosion and deposits are the trouble with AdBlue, whereas petrol means lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own West Charleton page.
Why one petrol in a diesel task around West Charleton costs more than another
Four separate tasks lie behind the four scenarios above — which is why there's no honest single quote. The situation itself does most of the work of moving your cost. Where the vehicle is counts too, and whether a van can safely reach it, after the share of petrol to what your tank takes.
Three questions come first, before quoting, instead of after — what went in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. Those answers change a range into a straight figure.
About West Charleton
West Charleton is a small village in Devon, situated inland at an elevation of 37 metres, and is located near the villages of Southville and East Charleton. West Charleton has a population of around 533 people, and its housing stock is predominantly made up of detached homes. West Charleton is close to Ticket Wood and is approximately 18.4 miles from Plymouth, the nearest city. West Charleton is also about 179.7 miles from London, making it a rural community in the South West of England.
West Charleton and Devon: where our fuel drain cover reaches
Petrol in diesel call-outs around West Charleton — part of the TQ postcode area — go to teams that likewise cover the spots about it, Southville, East Charleton and Ticket Wood among them. You need not move the car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own drive are all spots we drain.
West Charleton: still at the pump?
Then, you couldn't be in a better place. Keep it off. Call.