Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Wylde Green
Likely less than you are now — as long as no one has started it. Until your ignition primes the pump, the starter cranks, or your vehicle is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply sits there and does no harm. Which makes the honest reply to that first Wylde Green query — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. Leave your motor off then phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it that way. Below, this page sets out what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it might have gone, and how to stop it happening to you a second time.
The engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Diesel has two tasks on its way through a motor. Before it ignites, it lubricates — then it ignites. What keeps the surfaces inside your high-pressure pump and the injectors from grinding against one another is your diesel passing through them — they're designed to very fine gaps.
Petrol does the first task poorly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, leaving a pump on the mixture to wear itself. It's also made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the clattering.
Taken together, they make clear what shape the problem takes. It is circulation that does the harm, not contact. Petrol in a tank is a fuel fault. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been working on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with the fuel to the injectors downstream.
Wylde Green, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to major
Filled up, and never started: nothing beats it. Being on a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the car has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol kept inside your tank alone, it is drained and purged on the spot, and nothing more is needed.
Started for a moment, or only your ignition on. The system has been bled, so petrol has left that tank and reached the fuel filter and the fuel lines. Usually nothing more than draining, cleaning and sorting your filter, so still simple.
Driven a couple of miles. Now the pump has spent those miles running on thinned fuel. How hard your car was driven counts as much as how far, and the work takes in the tank, the fuel lines, your filter and clean fuel through the entire system. Driving the kids to Maney Hill Primary School is one kind of trip. Any miles on the M6 Toll, under 3 miles from Wylde Green, means the engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Birmingham, under 10 miles away, makes a very different task too.
It protested, and only then stopped: smoke, clattering, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone ragged. What you are hearing is your engine signalling fuel that no longer runs like diesel. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on Finstall Close, a lay-by, a side street — and leave it there. The drain and flush-through still come first, and they take care of it: if a car is pulled over soon, permanent damage is very rare.
Wylde Green people and the petrol in a diesel myths they hear
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be." Topping up takes out nothing; it gives you a fuller tank of the same mix. The assumption behind that guidance — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
"Newer diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the reverse. At higher pressure, through smaller components: that's how a newer diesel handles its fuel, so the protection counts more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that trips up more drivers than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it generally will not run, so the motorist stops — and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol usually starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened, while your pump wears. Fine and running aren't the same thing.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It's an outdated workaround for a distinct problem. None of what petrol thinned is put back by it — and later, your tank still holds that petrol.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you are sorted." After the engine has run, some of that petrol is no longer inside your tank: it's in the filter and the fuel lines, and it goes straight back through your pump on your next start. Also, a can of petrol filled by the kerbside is truly dangerous.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
It is seldom carelessness, and nobody does it on purpose. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the slimmer of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol vehicle at all. So the error runs one way.
It occurs when routine and your car stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. Two cars on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. A hurried fill en route to the nearest station with a train to catch. Years of petrol vehicles behind you, a diesel Renault Megane in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that's when. Add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and your hand repeats what it has always done.
Wylde Green drivers: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is normal in the UK — but not on each forecourt. Go by the label on the pump, not the colour.
- Plenty of motors state the fuel type inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in a car you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for a household with one of each.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, yes, but it does the trick.
- While you are thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so tuck your phone away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for the remainder. Treat it as a backstop, then keep reading the petrol pump.
- Noticing it mid-fill? Stop at once. A thinner blend follows from less petrol inside your tank, yet the next step remains the same: don't fire it up.
Put petrol in a diesel in Wylde Green already?
Then the order of things is short. Never fire it up, and don't turn the ignition on. Ask the staff to help you push it clear of the pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that's BP or somewhere else. Ring 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — the fuel, the approximate amount, and if it has run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a different issue — Wylde Green has a page just for it.
One petrol in a diesel job around Wylde Green costs more than another. Why?
There is no fair single quote for this, since the four situations above are four different jobs. What shifts the cost is chiefly which of them you are in. Two things follow that: the petrol that got in as a proportion of what that tank takes, then the place the vehicle is in and whether our van can get to it safely.
That's why our engineers ask three questions before pricing rather than after: what was put in, how much, and if it's run. Their answers are what change a range into one firm number.
About Wylde Green
Wylde Green is a suburban area in the West Midlands, situated approximately 5.8 miles north of Birmingham city centre. Wylde Green sits at an elevation of around 145 metres, surrounded by other local neighbourhoods such as Boldmere and Maney. Wylde Green is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its development as a residential area. Wylde Green is also located near Thimble End, another nearby suburban area.
Across West Midlands and in Wylde Green: fuel drain cover
Petrol in diesel jobs in Wylde Green — part of the B postcode area — go to vans that likewise cover the spots about it, Boldmere, Maney and Thimble End included. The vehicle doesn't need to move to us: our technicians drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own drive.
Wylde Green: still at the petrol pump?
Then, you could not be in a better spot. Turned off it remains; then phone.