Bickershaw: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Likely less than you are now — provided no one has started it. Until the ignition primes your pump, your starter turns, or your car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply sits there and does nothing. Which means the honest reply to that first Bickershaw query — "have I ruined it?" — usually no. Leave the engine off and call Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it like that. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it has travelled, and how to keep it from happening again: that is the remainder of this page.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
Diesel has two jobs on its way through an engine. It protects first, and after that does it burn. What keeps the surfaces inside your high-pressure pump and the injectors from wearing against each other is the diesel passing through them — they are built to extremely fine clearances.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. A pump running on a petrol mixture is wearing itself out, because petrol is runnier than diesel and takes away the protection your fuel system relies on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that's where the knocking comes.
Put those together and the shape of the issue is clear. It is circulation that does the damage, not contact. Petrol in the tank is a fuel problem. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with the fuel to the fuel injectors further on.
Bickershaw, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to major
Fuelled, and never started: nothing beats it. Being on a forecourt is what makes this possible: elsewhere, the vehicle has been driven there to begin with. With that petrol kept in the tank alone, it is drained and rinsed right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Your ignition switched on, or a brief start. The system has been bled, and so petrol has left that tank and reached your filter and your lines. Still usually straightforward: drain, flush, and your filter sorted.
The pump has spent a few miles on thinned fuel — that is what driving the vehicle meant. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the whole system: that's the work, and the way the car was driven counts as much as the mileage. On the school run to Bickershaw CofE Primary School, the miles is small. Very different again: a trip to Salford, under 15 miles away, or any mileage on the Bryn Spur, under 5 miles from Bickershaw, where your engine never stopped running hard.
Rattling, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven till it complained. The engine is telling you the fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Brown Street. What goes first is still the fuel drain and flush, and that sorts it out, with long-term damage very rare when a car is pulled over early.
Myths Bickershaw motorists hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mix. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that guidance presumes.
If anything, the reverse is true. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Protection matters more on current diesels, not less, because their fuel passes through smaller parts at higher pressure.
"It starts, it drives, so there is no harm" — the myth that catches more motorists than any other. Diesel in a petrol motor generally leaves a motor that will not run: the driver stops, and so does the damage. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened, whilst your pump wears. Fine and running aren't the same at all.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, borrowed from a fix from years ago, for a distinct issue. None of what petrol diluted gets put back by it — and afterwards, that tank still contains that petrol.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." After the engine has been run, some of the petrol is no longer in your tank: it's in the filter and your lines, and it goes right back through your pump at your next start. Also, a can of petrol filled by the roadside is truly dangerous.
How does petrol in a diesel happen?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. One way only, since of the nozzles: the smaller petrol one slips inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while the diesel one generally will not fit a petrol motor. That's how the forecourt makes it simple.
It occurs when routine and the vehicle stop matching. A motor that is new to you — hired, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A forecourt you know, but with its pumps arranged differently. A rushed fill on the way to Hindley with a train to catch. Precisely the moment it takes place: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. With rain, a call coming in, or children to deal with, the hand just does what it has always done.
Next time you fill up around Bickershaw: preventing petrol in a diesel
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — yet not on each forecourt. Go by the label on the pump, not the colour.
- Many motors state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check there on your first fill in any motor you don't know.
- Label the key. In a home with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember.
- "Diesel", aloud, before you pick up the nozzle — every time a new or hired car needs its first tank. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, so tuck the phone away then keep your mind on the petrol pump.
- Add-on devices are available for cars without one, and some diesels are built with a filler that won't take a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop at best, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Stop as soon as you notice. Less petrol in your tank makes a thinner mix. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Bickershaw: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is brief, then. Don't turn your ignition on, and do not crank it. Still on the forecourt, at Gulf or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll the vehicle away from the pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what went in, about how much, and if it's been run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a different problem, with its own page for Bickershaw, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication.
Why one petrol in a diesel task around Bickershaw costs more than another
There is no honest single quote for this, because the four scenarios above are four separate jobs. The scenario itself does most of the work of moving your cost. Beyond that it is the ratio — how much petrol was put in against how much that tank holds — and then where the car is and whether our van can get to it safely.
That is why our engineers ask three questions before costing instead of after: what got in, how much, and whether it's run. Their replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Bickershaw itself
Bickershaw is a village in Greater Manchester, situated on the lakeside at an elevation of around 40 metres. Bickershaw has a population of approximately 1152 people and is characterised by semi-detached housing. Bickershaw is located near several other small places, including Abram Brow, Abram, and Platt Bridge, and is about 11.5 miles from the city of Salford. Bickershaw is also relatively distant from London, at around 172.5 miles away.
Fuel drain cover across Greater Manchester, Bickershaw included
Bickershaw rests in the WN postcode area, and our teams that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the locations around it as well — Abram Brow, Abram and Platt Bridge among them. The vehicle does not need to move to us: our technicians drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Still at the pump around Bickershaw?
Then you're in the best position there can be. Keep it off. Ring.