How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Witton-le-Wear
Probably less than you are now — provided nobody has started the vehicle. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your engine till something pulls it through the fuel system — the ignition priming your pump, your starter, or driving itself. So the honest answer to the first question everyone in Witton-le-Wear asks, "have I wrecked it?", is generally no. Petrol in Diesel is who to call, with your engine 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 doesn't happen to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
Diesel has two jobs on its way through a motor. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. What keeps the surfaces inside your high-pressure pump and your injectors from grinding against each other is your diesel flowing through them — they are designed to extremely fine clearances.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. The clattering 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 your system depends on, and any pump working on that mix is wearing itself.
Taken together, they make clear what shape the issue has. Not contact but movement is what does the damage. Petrol in the tank is a fuel problem. A pump that has been running on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to the fuel injectors further on.
Four situations our technicians see around Witton-le-Wear: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled but never started — the best it gets. Just that tank has petrol in it, and so the task is draining that tank and cleaning the system where the vehicle sits. This scenario can only really occur at a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Once primed, the fuel system has pulled petrol from the tank as far as your filter and your lines. Drain, flush, deal with the fuel filter: still normally simple.
Those few miles on the road meant the pump working on fuel thinned by petrol throughout. How hard your car was driven counts as much as how far, and this work covers that tank, the lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the entire system. On the school run to Witton-le-Wear Primary School, the miles is short. Any mileage on the A1(M), under 15 miles from Witton-le-Wear, means the engine working hard throughout, and a run to Durham, under 15 miles away, is a very different task as well.
Rattling, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and your engine is telling you. Whether it is the verge on Cemetery Road, a lay-by or a side road, stop there then leave it. A car stopped quickly very rarely has permanent damage, since the fuel drain and the flush, which still come first, take care of it.
Stories Witton-le-Wear people hear about petrol in a diesel
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It won't. Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mixture. That advice presumes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It does not.
If anything, the opposite is true. Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." A modern diesel runs its fuel through more precise components at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." This is the one that fools drivers. The motorist of a petrol engine fed diesel normally stops, since it will not run, and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened, while the pump wears. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It was an old workaround, meant for another issue. It does not put back what petrol has weakened, and the petrol is still inside the tank afterwards.
Myth: "Drain the tank yourself and you are sorted." Once the engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer inside that tank: it is in the fuel filter and your lines, and it goes straight back through your pump on the next start. Emptying petrol into a can by the kerbside is also genuinely hazardous.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
No one does it on purpose, and it is rarely 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 car at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the mistake runs one way.
It takes place when habit and the car stop matching. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. A well-known forecourt with the pumps in a different order. Fuelling up in a hurry en route to Bishop Auckland, with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Passat after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it takes place. Throw in a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and the hand wins.
Witton-le-Wear people: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — but not on every forecourt. Go by the label on the pump, not the colour.
- The first fill in a strange car is the time to check your filler flap — on it, or on the cap, plenty of cars state which fuel to use.
- One of each in the home? Mark the key to the diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — because intending to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle leaves the pump the first time you fuel a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" aloud. Silly, yes, but it works.
- Put your phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you're thinking about something else.
- Add-on devices exist for cars without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a safety net only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol inside that tank makes a weaker mixture. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Witton-le-Wear: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Don't switch the ignition on, and don't fire it up. The attendants on the forecourt — whether at the nearest petrol station itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help push it away from the pump if you ask. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the rough quantity, and whether it's run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a separate issue — Witton-le-Wear has a page all for it.
What makes one Witton-le-Wear petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
The four situations above are four different jobs, so no single price for this would be honest. What moves your cost is chiefly which of them you're in. Beyond that it is the share — how much petrol went in against how much the tank holds — and then where the vehicle is and whether a van can get to it safely.
That is why we ask three queries before quoting instead of after: what was put in, how much, and whether it has run. Given those answers, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Witton-le-Wear, for a moment
Witton-le-Wear is a village in County Durham, situated on the banks of the River Wear, with a mix of rural and riverside scenery. Witton-le-Wear has a population of around 571 people, living in predominantly detached housing, and is located about 10 miles from the city of Durham. Witton-le-Wear sits at an elevation of 140 metres, in a setting that combines rolling countryside with the nearby river. Witton-le-Wear is part of a network of small villages and hamlets, including nearby Howden-le-Wear and High Grange.
Across Durham and in Witton-le-Wear: fuel drain cover
Howden-le-Wear, High Grange and North Bitchburn are among the locations near Witton-le-Wear that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel jobs across Witton-le-Wear's DL postcode area. The car doesn't need to come to us: our engineers drain at a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Witton-le-Wear: still at the pump?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better position. Keep it turned off, and ring.