How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Wilden
Unstarted? Then less anxious than you probably feel. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your motor until something draws it through the system — your ignition priming your pump, your starter, or driving itself. So the honest answer to the first query everyone around Wilden asks, "have I ruined it?", is generally no. To leave the car like that, call Petrol in Diesel and leave the motor alone. The rest of this page sets out what petrol really 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
On its way through a motor, diesel has two tasks. It ignites, and before it ignites it lubricates. Made to very fine clearances, the fuel injectors and your pump rely on the diesel moving through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, leaving a pump running on the mixture wearing itself. It's also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is why you hear the clattering.
Put these together and the shape of the problem is clear. Contact doesn't do the damage — movement does. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been running on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to your injectors beyond it.
Petrol in a diesel around Wilden: how bad is it? Four cases
The best case there is: filled up, not once started. The petrol is inside that tank and only the tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one scenario that can only really happen on a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
A brief spell of running, or merely the ignition on. Petrol has come out of the tank and reached the filter and your lines, since the fuel system has been primed. Normally nothing more than emptying, flushing and seeing to your filter, so still straightforward.
Driven a couple of miles. Now your pump has spent those miles labouring on diluted fuel. How hard the vehicle was driven matters as much as how far, and this work takes in that tank, your lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the whole circuit. On the school run to Wilden All Saints CofE Primary School, the distance is small. Very different once more: a run to Worcester, under 15 miles away, or any miles on the M5, under 10 miles from Wilden, where the motor kept labouring hard.
Rattling, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The motor is telling you your fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Whether it is the verge on Wilden Lane, a lay-by or a side road, stop where you are then leave it. Long-term damage is very unusual when a vehicle is pulled over quickly, and the drain and flush that still come first deal with it.
Petrol in a diesel myths Wilden drivers hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mix. The idea behind that guidance — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the reverse. Lubrication counts more on newer diesels, not less, because their fuel passes through finer components at higher pressure.
One myth that catches people out: if it starts and drives, it must be unharmed. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it generally will not run, so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally fires up, ticks over and drives away like nothing has happened — all while its pump wears. Fine and running are not the same at all.
An outdated workaround for a different problem is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It does not put back what petrol has weakened, and that petrol is still inside the tank later.
The next start draws petrol back round the pump out of the fuel lines and your filter, where some of that sits once the motor has run. That's why a DIY tank drain doesn't leave you sorted — a myth. And, a can of petrol filled at the kerbside is genuinely hazardous.
How does petrol in a diesel occur?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol motor at all. So the error runs one way.
It occurs when routine and your car stop matching. A new motor, a hire car or a courtesy car. 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 Hartlebury with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a motorist used to petrol: exactly when it takes place. 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 Wilden: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are generally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt. The label is what matters.
- Plenty of vehicles state the fuel inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on the first fill in any car you don't know.
- One of each in the house? Mark the key to your diesel — a bright fob, a sticker — because intending to remember is not enough.
- Say it before you lift it. On the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you take the nozzle off the petrol pump. It seems silly and it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put your phone away then keep your mind on the petrol pump.
- Add-on devices are available for vehicles without one, and some diesels come with a filler that will not accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Less petrol makes a thinner mix, and so stop the moment you realise — while remembering that your next stage is unchanged. It is still not to start it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Wilden already?
In that case, there's only a short order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off as well. The attendants at the forecourt — whether at Esso itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help roll it clear of the petrol pump if you ask. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what went in, about how much, and if it's been run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That is a separate issue — corrosion and deposits and not lost protection — and it has its own page for Wilden.
Why one petrol in a diesel task around Wilden costs more than another
An honest single price does not exist here: four scenarios, four separate tasks. What shifts the cost is chiefly which of them you're in. Next it's the proportion — how much petrol went in against how much your tank holds — and after that where the vehicle is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Before any quote, not after, come three queries: your fuel that was put in, its volume, and whether it has run. That's why. Those replies turn a range into a straight figure.
About Wilden and its setting
Wilden is a small village in Worcestershire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 31 metres, with detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Wilden lies near the cities of Worcester and other nearby places such as Summerfield and Charlton, and is around 107.9 miles from London. Wilden has a population of approximately 549 residents and is surrounded by countryside. Wilden remains a quiet residential community with a rural character.
Across Worcestershire and around Wilden: fuel drain cover
Summerfield, Leapgate and Charlton are among the places around Wilden that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel call-outs across Wilden's DY postcode area. You need not move your vehicle to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own drive are all locations where we work.
In Wilden and still at the pump?
Then you're in the best place there is. Switched off it remains; then call.