Whissendine: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Likely less than you are now — as long as nobody has started the car. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine until something draws it through your fuel system — your ignition priming your pump, the starter, or driving itself. So the fair answer to the first question everyone in Whissendine asks, "have I wrecked it?", is usually no. To leave the car that way, phone Petrol in Diesel then leave the engine switched off. Below, you will find what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it might have got, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
Two jobs fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. It protects first, and only then does it burn. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure pump and the injectors from wearing against each other is the diesel passing through them — they're designed to extremely fine clearances.
Petrol does the first job poorly and the second not at all. It is thinner than diesel and strips away the protection your fuel system hinges 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 is where the rattling comes from.
Taken together, they make clear what shape the issue takes. Contact doesn't do the harm — movement does. Petrol in the tank is a fuel fault. 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 the fuel to the fuel injectors downstream.
Whissendine, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to major
Fuelled but never started — as good as it gets. Being on a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the car has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol kept inside that tank alone, it's drained and rinsed on the spot, and nothing more is needed.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Your system has been primed, and so petrol has left the tank and got to the filter and the fuel lines. Usually little more than clearing, cleaning and seeing to the fuel filter, and so still straightforward.
Your pump has worked a few miles on weakened fuel — that's what driving it does. The work is the tank, your lines, your filter and clean fuel through the whole system, and how hard the car was driven counts as much as how far. On the school run to Whissendine Church of England Primary School, the mileage is small. Very different again: a run to Leicester, under 25 miles away, or some distance on the M1, under 25 miles from Whissendine, where the engine never stopped working hard.
Driven until it protested. Knocking, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and your motor is telling you. Whether it's the verge on Cow Lane, a lay-by or a side road, stop where you are then leave it. The drain and flush still go first, and they sort it out: when a car is pulled over soon, long-term damage is very rare.
Myths Whissendine drivers hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. A bigger tank of the same mixture is all you get, since topping up takes out nothing. That advice supposes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. More precise components and higher pressure are how a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so no harm done" — the myth that trips up most people than any other. Any petrol motor fed diesel generally will not run, so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. Whilst your pump wears, a diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened. Being able to run is not proof of being fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a distinct problem. The petrol is still in the tank after that, and whatever it has diluted isn't put back.
The next start sends petrol back round your pump from your lines and the filter, where some of it ends up after your engine has run. That's why draining the tank yourself doesn't leave you sorted — a myth. It is also genuinely hazardous to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
It's rarely carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. A diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol vehicle, yet the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one error easy, and only in one direction.
It takes place when routine and the car stop matching. A new vehicle, a hire car or a courtesy car. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to Oakham. A new-to-you diesel Renault Clio, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: exactly when it happens. The hand does what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Next time you fill up around Whissendine: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- The label is what counts, and so check the pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt.
- In a motor you do not know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before your first fill: plenty of motors state the fuel there.
- Label your key. In a house with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, perhaps, but it does the trick.
- Whilst you are thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so put your phone away.
- Add-on devices exist for cars without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a safety net only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop at once. A thinner mixture follows from less petrol in the tank, but the next stage remains the same: don't crank it.
Whissendine: already put petrol in a diesel?
In that case, there's only a short order of things. Starting it is out, and so is turning on your ignition. Still at the forecourt, at BP or anywhere else? Ask the staff to help you roll the car clear of the petrol pump. What went in, roughly how much, and if it's run: tell us that when you call 0333 366 0103.
Say so if it was AdBlue instead of petrol: it is a separate issue, with its own page for Whissendine, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication.
Why one petrol in a diesel job around Whissendine costs more than another
Four different tasks lie behind the four situations above — which is why there is no fair single price. Which of them you're in is chiefly what shifts the cost. Where your car is counts too, and whether a van can safely reach it, after the ratio of petrol to what the tank holds.
What was put in, how much, and whether it's run — three queries our engineers ask before costing, not after, for exactly that reason. Their replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Whissendine itself
Whissendine is a village situated in the county of Rutland, on the banks of a river, with an elevation of around 112 metres. Whissendine lies near the villages of Langham and Ashwell, and is approximately 16 miles from Leicester. Whissendine has a population of around 848 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Whissendine is about 88 miles north of London, in the East Midlands region.
Fuel drain cover in Whissendine and across Rutland
Petrol in diesel calls around Whissendine — part of the LE postcode area — go to vans that also cover the spots about it, Langham, Leesthorpe and Ashwell among them. No need to move the vehicle to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own drive are all locations where we work.
In Whissendine and still at the petrol pump?
Then you're in the best spot there is. Keep it off. Ring.