Bentgate: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
If you have not started your engine as yet, do not. A fuel drain and nothing else is nearly always what a motor needs while the petrol is still in the tank and the motor has not yet turned over, which is why it's the next few minutes that count, not how much got in. Petrol in Diesel goes to your car wherever it has stopped in Bentgate or the remainder of Greater Manchester, on the forecourt, by the roadside or on a drive, and drains and flushes it there. Phone before all else starts, so you will know what happens after that.
Petrol in a diesel: what to try now
- Never start the vehicle — and never believe it if it runs. Here is the part people get wrong about petrol in a diesel in particular. A petrol engine filled with diesel normally just will not run, and so the driver stops and the damage halts with them. A diesel given petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away without complaint for a few miles. It's not all right. It is grinding the fuel system while you drive.
- Leave the ignition off also. Diesel does two roles: it ignites, and before it burns it greases that injection pump and those injectors. Petrol manages the first and not the second. Flicking the car's ignition on is usually all it takes to prime that system, which pulls that petrol out of the tank then into exactly those parts.
- Topping up clears nothing. It leaves you a bigger tank of the same mix, since a diesel fuel system will not cope with petrol by percentage the way that guidance implies — so don't put diesel on top to thin it. Grade is immaterial too: super unleaded is petrol.
- A vehicle that hasn't shifted is the simplest one to handle, so remain where you are if you safely can. Stopped on the verge on Ash Grove? Hazards on, and keep the car there. A tricky place suits us better than a started engine.
- Have your whereabouts ready before you dial. A postcode that starts OL16 4 and whatever is nearest to you with a sign on it is the difference between the van showing up and the van circling.
- Dial 0333 366 0103. Tell us what went in, approximately how many litres, and if the engine has fired. These three answers settle the whole job.
Quarter past eight. A hurried fill-up on the road in. Somewhere around eleven it dawns on you, and by then your diesel Volkswagen Golf has waited at Rochdale for three hours. Call us then keep the car where it stands. What matters is the drive in, since diesel both ignites and — before that — lubricates the pump and your injectors, while petrol only ever burns. Those few miles ran the pump on a fluid stripped of a lot of its protection, and no quantity of sitting in a car park adds any of it back. Hence the thing we ask about distance rather than hours standing, and hence the request to leave your keys alone until our technicians turn up.
A diesel BMW 3 Series parked in the car park by John Milne holding a tank full of petrol in it is an easy job, right up until someone drives it home. Leave the car there overnight then call us in the morning. Nothing deteriorates whilst it stands. What we will ask is whether that trip there was short and chilly, because that's where petrol is slowest to burn properly — and anything that doesn't burn can get past the piston rings then into the sump.
A diesel injection system works hydraulically as well as chemically: your fuel has to hold pressure, not just burn. Dilute that fuel and pressure which should build and stay built bleeds past tolerances instead, leaving the motor a poorer, later, less even delivery than it was engineered round. Petrol weakens diesel, and diesel has to be heavy enough to seal the precision parts it flows through — that's the whole mechanism. It explains the ordinary Memorial Park call too: a diesel Peugeot 308 that drove out without a murmur and came back down on power, lumpy at idle, perhaps smoking a little. None of which is your engine failing, and that's the part worth hearing. The fuel has stopped behaving like diesel. Put your fuel right and it stops.
Hire car? Company car? Ring them before us. Some agreements want the firm to sign off the work, and that's much quicker dealt with up front than later on. Then call us about the Audi A4, the diesel one, near St Thomas. Do not worry that you can't say how full your tank was — almost no one can two days into a motor, and it is something our engineers work out on site. The reason for asking: damage from petrol in a diesel is a matter of ratio. A couple of litres in a nearly empty tank make a far stronger mix than in a full one, and petrol is built to resist the very thing a diesel needs of that, which is igniting when compressed. Stronger blend, more knocking, more smoke, flatter throttle.
The fuel filter, the fuel lines, your pump and its rail: that's where that blend is once a diesel has run, and it doesn't come back out with that tank contents. So the tank is not where most of the trouble waits by this point, and a diesel Ford Focus that made it by Milnrow Library needs your system cleared rather than drained.
Draining petrol from the diesel at the forecourt
Much of the work begins at a forecourt, so a large share of it ends up finished there. The drain usually takes place there and then. Still on the forecourt at Esso? Given the site's consent, that's a place our technicians work, and regularly.
The forecourt is the one location it gets stopped before the motor has fired. We can still sort it out where it sits, even away from the forecourt. In a car park, on a private drive or in a lay-by, the car has been started and moved there, and that pulled fuel through your filter and into the high-pressure pump, all the way from the tank. None of that is a catastrophe, but the flush then has to reach past your tank to the fuel lines and the fuel filter, and the few seconds between checking the receipt and going for the key are what determine that.
The attendants will usually offer to move the vehicle out from the petrol pump so the next motorist can get past. That's worth doing. Firing it just for four vehicle lengths? No.
Bentgate and the places next to it
Being a residential suburb, Bentgate has a routine visit, whilst its neighbours nearby come with it on that same journey: Newhey and Haugh, Lady House and Jubilee, Wood End.
Not on this list? That means nothing. The places above are just the nearest few, and most places in Greater Manchester have a page of their own elsewhere on this site. Near a border, or somewhere the satnav struggles with? Ring us and check instead of assuming.
Check this map for the patch covered on this page. Your vehicle doesn't need to travel to us. We operate across every bit of it — kerbside, forecourts, driveways, car parks.
Stopped on the kerb anywhere around Bentgate?
Not everybody gets a suitable spot to pull in. Set off, then noticed? Ended up on the verge of Cedar Lane, or parked in some lay-by with your hazards flashing? That's a common call here. Not a rare one.
Safe right there? Sit beside it. Not safe? Climb out and clear of it. Every mile a diesel obliges you for on petrol draws that blend further into your fuel system — and oblige it usually will, which is why the motor does not get restarted to limp somewhere safer. However difficult the spot, it is no trouble for us to come to it, and that's a lot better for the car than carrying on.
Driven it already? Stop, and read below
under a mile out of Bentgate, your M62 is what counts now. Some way along, and onto it in the first place: a misfuelled diesel will usually manage both before anything seems wrong. What you get then is rarely a clean stop. Power ebbs away, your idle turns rough, and there may be smoke.
Take the first exit that's safe, pull up there, and never start the car to move it. It alters what we bring, and so tell us when you ring: on a longer trip — anything approaching the under 15 miles to the nearest city — assume the contamination has been through your filter, the pump and the injectors.
A little about Bentgate
Bentgate is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated near the River Roch and close to the towns of Newhey and Rochdale. Bentgate sits at an elevation of 157 metres, with terraced housing being the predominant type of accommodation in the area. Bentgate is located approximately 10 miles from Manchester city centre, making it a commuter-friendly location. Bentgate is also near other local places such as Haugh and Lady House.
The call-out around Bentgate, step by step
- We ask first, quote after. What was put in? How much? Has the engine run? Those replies change what the work actually is.
- Our engineers empty the tank of the contaminated mixture.
- Lines flushed, filter cleared. Whatever remains later is not the thing that started the issue.
- Your system gets primed, on new diesel.
- Our engineers turn it on and check it runs correctly on clean diesel.
Your car is then ready for you to pull away. Lasting damage is very unusual when it has been caught early, and because all of it is done where the vehicle is, it never needs to be taken to a workshop.
AdBlue in the diesel tank instead, in Bentgate?
If what was put in was AdBlue instead of petrol, the first step is the same — don't fire it up — but this problem is not. Petrol weakens your diesel and takes away the lubrication your fuel system depends on. Urea in water, AdBlue, and in a diesel tank that leads to rust and build-up.
AdBlue removal around Bentgate has a page of its own with the full story on it, including why it is frequently the more serious of the two. We deal with both.
What a petrol-in-diesel fuel drain costs in Bentgate
What shifts the figure is laid out below, since this job isn't one job and our technicians can't honestly put a single price on this page.
- Has it been started or driven? Nothing else matters for as much.
- The tank's capacity, set against how much of the wrong fuel went into it.
- AdBlue or unleaded, whichever went in.
- Where is it? And can a van get to it and work there sensibly?
Tell us your vehicle, the quantity and whether it has run, and you'll get a straight answer rather than a range. If it is not time-critical — the vehicle is at home and going nowhere — works too.
Bentgate drivers ask us these about petrol in diesel
Can you do a fuel drain at a petrol station around Bentgate?
Yes — forecourts are where a large share of this takes place. Regularly, provided the site consents: Shell, plus every other forecourt nearby. Say on the phone where exactly you have stopped. Whether our technicians can work in that location is something we answer there and then.
How much petrol in a diesel is too much?
Ratio settles it rather than litres — and more than either, whether your motor has run. What decides how much work is needed is if that blend has been sucked through your fuel system — because although five litres in a nearly empty tank is a different situation from five in a full one, either way that is the question.
Petrol in my diesel, and I have driven the car
Switch off somewhere safe, and keep it that way after you stop. It is recoverable much more regularly than drivers assume, even though driving is what takes the problem from the tank into your pump and injectors — and the single most useful thing you can do now is not restart it.
Fuel drains and manufacturer warranties
A manufacturer's warranty outlasts a drain then flush done to a proper standard, which is no change at all. Running a diesel on petrol is the thing likelier to cause an argument with one, which is another good reason to leave the car turned off.
Could I put some two-stroke in and just drive?
Two-stroke oil solves a distinct issue, and an old one at that. Nothing it does puts back what petrol weakened. No. The tank still has petrol in it after that, and your pump still has to cope with it.
Main dealers and petrol in a diesel
There is no need to take it to a dealership, since our engineers drain and flush your car wherever it is.
Is the car still with you?
Switched off is how it stays.
Already driven it? Then pull in somewhere safe, turn off, then let the car remain that way. A stationary, cold motor is the best place to be in, and this is recoverable from a lot more often than motorists fear.
Call-out fuel draining around Bentgate and across Greater Manchester — at the roadside, on the forecourt or at home.