How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Wicklewood
Provided it has not been started, worry less than you likely are. Everyone in Wicklewood starts with "have I ruined it?", and the honest answer is generally no: petrol left inside the tank of any diesel stays harmless until priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with the engine kept off, and so it remains that way. The remainder of this page explains what petrol actually does to a diesel, how to tell how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you a second time.
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 ignites it protects. Very fine tolerances go into the fuel injectors and the high-pressure pump, and just your diesel running through stops those surfaces grinding together.
Of these two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second not at all. The knocking comes from petrol being designed not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is runnier than diesel, it strips away the protection the system hinges on, and any pump running on such a mixture is wearing itself.
Put those together and the shape of the trouble is clear. Not contact but circulation is what causes the damage. A tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to your injectors downstream.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four scenarios our engineers see around Wicklewood
The best case there can be: filled up, not once started. Being at a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the car has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol held inside the tank alone, it's drained and cleaned right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
The ignition switched on, or a short start. The fuel system has been bled, and so petrol has left the tank and got to the fuel filter and the fuel lines. Drain, flush, see to the fuel filter: still usually simple.
Driven a few miles. Now the pump has spent those miles labouring on weakened fuel. Miles is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way this work includes the tank, the lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. Driving the kids to Wicklewood Primary School and Nursery is one sort of trip. Very different once more: a trip to Norwich, under 15 miles away, or some distance on the M11, under 50 miles from Wicklewood, where your engine never stopped working hard.
Driven on until it complained — knocking, smoke, a ragged idle, a dead throttle. That's your motor telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Hillside Crescent, a lay-by, a side street — and leave the car there. What comes first is still the fuel drain and flush, and that takes care of it, with long-term damage very unusual when a vehicle is stopped quickly.
What Wicklewood people get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be." Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mix. The idea behind that guidance — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
"Modern diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the reverse. At higher pressure, through smaller parts: that is how a modern diesel handles its fuel, and so the protection counts for more, not less.
This is the one that fools drivers. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no harm done." A petrol engine fed diesel generally will not run, so the driver stops and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing happened — all while its pump is wearing. Fine and running aren't the same thing.
An outdated fix for a distinct problem lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." That petrol is still in that tank after that, and whatever it has diluted is not put back.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." Once the motor has been run, some of the petrol is no longer inside your tank: it is in your filter and your lines, and it goes right back through the pump at the next start. Draining petrol into a can at the kerbside is also really hazardous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
Nobody does it on purpose, and it's seldom carelessness. The petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol vehicle at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the error runs one way.
Routine and the vehicle falling out of step is how it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that's new. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. Rushing for a train at Wymondham and fuelling up en route. Years of petrol vehicles behind you, a diesel Renault Megane in front of you on the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Add 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 around Wicklewood
- A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — but not on every forecourt. Trust the label on the pump, not the colour.
- Check the filler flap. Many motors state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on your first fill in a vehicle you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember, for a house with one of each.
- It sounds daft and it does the trick: on the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels have a filler built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for the remainder. Treat it as a safety net, then keep reading the pump.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop at once. A weaker mixture follows from less petrol in that tank, but the next step remains the same: do not start the vehicle.
Petrol already in a diesel around Wicklewood? Start here
Then, there is just a short order of things. Starting it is out, and so is turning on the ignition. Yet on the forecourt, at Esso or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll the car away from the pump. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, about how much, and whether it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a different issue, with its own page for Wicklewood, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication.
One petrol in a diesel task in Wicklewood costs more than another. Why?
Four separate tasks sit behind the four situations above — which is why there is no honest single quote. Chiefly, your cost moves with which one you're in. The share counts next, meaning how much of that tank is petrol, followed by the location of the vehicle and whether getting to it is safe for our van.
That's why our technicians ask three queries before pricing rather than after: what was put in, how much, and whether it has run. The answers change a range into a straight figure.
About Wicklewood
Wicklewood is a small village in the heart of Norfolk, situated approximately 10 miles southwest of Norwich. Wicklewood sits in a relatively low-lying area, with an elevation of around 46 metres, and is surrounded by rolling countryside. Wicklewood is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its rural nature and relatively recent development. Wicklewood is close to nearby places such as Crownthorpe and Kimberley, and is about 90 miles northeast of London.
Across Norfolk and in Wicklewood: fuel drain cover
The vans answering petrol in diesel jobs in Wicklewood, in the NR postcode area, also work the places around it, Crownthorpe, The Green and Kimberley among them. The car does not need to come to us: our technicians drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Still at the petrol pump in Wicklewood?
Then you are in the best place there can be. Leave it switched off, and ring.