Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Wolvey
Less than you probably are, if it hasn't been started. Everyone in Wolvey begins with "have I ruined it?", and the fair answer is normally no: petrol resting in your tank of a diesel remains harmless until priming, cranking or driving pulls it into your fuel system. Keep it that way: leave your motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it's travelled, and how to stop it from happening again: that's the rest of this page.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
On its way through an engine, diesel has two tasks. It lubricates to begin with, and after that does it burn. Your high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors are made to extremely fine gaps, and your diesel passing through them is what stops those surfaces from wearing down against each other.
Petrol handles the first job poorly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the protection a fuel system needs, leaving a pump running on the mixture wearing itself. It's also made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the rattling.
Combined, those leave the shape of the issue clear. Contact does not do the damage — movement does. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. After the pump has been working on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: anything shed by a pump that is wearing down is carried onward to the injectors with the fuel.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four situations we see in Wolvey
Filled but never started — the best it gets. Just your tank has petrol in it, so the task is clearing your tank and flushing the system where the car sits. This situation can only really take place on a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
A brief spell of running, or just the ignition on. Petrol has come out of your tank and got to the filter and the fuel lines, since your system has been primed. Normally little more than clearing, rinsing and seeing to the fuel filter, so still easy.
Your pump has worked a few miles on diluted fuel — that's what driving the vehicle does. The work is that tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the whole circuit, and how hard your car was driven counts as much as how far. Driving the children to Wolvey CofE Primary School is one kind of trip. Getting as far as Coventry, under 10 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any distance on the M69, under a mile from Wolvey, with the engine working hard the whole time.
Driven till it protested. Rattling, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The motor is telling you your fuel is no longer behaving like diesel. Stop wherever you are — the verge on Hall Road, a lay-by, a side street — then leave it there. A vehicle pulled over early very seldom has permanent damage, since the drain and the flush-through, which still go first, deal with it.
Petrol in a diesel stories Wolvey people hear
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be." Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a fuller tank, still the same mix. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol, whatever that advice presumes.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the reverse. Lubrication counts more on modern diesels, not less, because their fuel passes through more precise parts at higher pressure.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches more people than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it usually won't run, so the motorist stops — and the damage stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually fires up, ticks over and pulls away as if nothing happened — all while its pump wears. Fine and running aren't the same thing.
"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 inside the tank afterwards, and whatever it has weakened is not put back.
The next start draws petrol back round the pump out of the lines and the fuel filter, where some of that sits once the engine has been run. That's why a DIY tank drain does not leave you sorted — a myth. It's also genuinely dangerous to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it take place?
It is seldom carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. The petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the slip runs one way.
It happens when habit and the vehicle stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. A train to catch, and a hurried fill on the way to Hinckley. Exactly the moment it happens: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. Throw in rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand repeats what it has always done.
Wolvey motorists: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most generally do. Check the pump's label; the colour is only a hint.
- The first fill in a strange vehicle is the time to check your filler flap — inside it, or on the cap, many cars state the fuel they take.
- One of each in the home? Mark your key to your diesel — a bright fob, a sticker — because meaning to remember isn't enough.
- Say it before you lift it. On your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump. It seems silly and it does the trick.
- Tuck the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make while you are thinking about something else.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for motors without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Less petrol means a weaker mix, so stop as soon as you realise — though remembering that your next step is unchanged. It is still not to fire it up.
Petrol already in a diesel around Wolvey? Begin here
Then the order of things is brief. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition switched off too. The attendants at the forecourt — whether at Esso itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help roll it away from the pump if you ask. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it's run.
Corrosion and deposits are the trouble with AdBlue, whereas petrol brings lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Wolvey page.
What makes one Wolvey petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
There's no honest single price for this, since the four situations above are four different jobs. What moves your cost is chiefly which of them you're in. Where your car is counts too, and whether a van can safely reach it, after the ratio of petrol to what the tank holds.
Ahead of any quote, not after, come three questions: the fuel that went in, the quantity, and whether it has run. That's why. A range becomes a straight figure once the replies are in.
About Wolvey, for a moment
Wolvey is a small village in Warwickshire, situated on the banks of a river at an elevation of around 117 metres. Wolvey lies approximately 8 miles from Coventry and 85 miles from London, with nearby places including Wolvey Heath, Shelford, and Copston Magna. Wolvey has a population of around 591 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing.
Wolvey and Warwickshire: where our fuel drain cover runs
Wolvey rests in the LE postcode area, and our teams that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the places near it as well — Wolvey Heath, Shelford and Copston Magna among them. We drain wherever the vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
At the pump around Wolvey, right now?
Nothing beats it: that's where you are. Switched off it remains; then phone.