Broughton: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Not started? Then less anxious than you likely feel. Everyone around Broughton begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is generally no: petrol resting in your tank of any diesel stays harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into the fuel system. Leave your engine off and call Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it that way. What petrol actually does to a diesel, how to gauge how far it's travelled, and how to stop it from happening again: that's the rest of this page.
The engine and petrol in a diesel: what goes on
Two jobs fall to diesel on its journey through a motor. It burns, and before it combusts it protects. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and your injectors from wearing down against one another is your diesel flowing through them — they are made to extremely fine tolerances.
Of those two tasks, petrol handles the first badly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump running on the mixture wearing itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the rattling.
Put these together and the shape of the issue is plain. It's circulation that does the harm, not contact. Where the petrol is only inside that tank, it's a fault of fuel, nothing more. After the pump has been working on that petrol, a mechanical fault has begun: anything shed by a pump that is wearing down travels onward to the fuel injectors with the fuel.
Four situations we see in Broughton: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
Filled up, never started. The best case there can be. That petrol is in the tank and just that tank, and the task is a drain and a flush where the vehicle stands. This is the one scenario that can only truly take place on a forecourt, because anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
A moment's running, or merely your ignition on. With the fuel system primed, your lines and filter now hold petrol that came from the tank. Still usually simple: drain, flush, and your filter seen to.
Driven a couple of miles. Now your pump has spent those miles working on thinned fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the entire system: that's the work, and the way the vehicle was driven counts as much as the mileage. A school run to Broughton-in-Amounderness Church of England Primary School is one thing. Very different a second time: a run to Preston, under 5 miles away, or any distance on the M55, under a mile from Broughton, where the engine kept labouring hard.
Driven till it protested. Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The motor is telling you your fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Whether it's the verge on Garstang Road, a lay-by or a side street, stop there then leave it. The drain and flush still go first, and they deal with it: when a car is pulled over quickly, permanent damage is very uncommon.
What Broughton drivers get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
"Top it up the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine" — a myth. It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mixture. That guidance assumes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It does not.
If anything, the opposite is true. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Finer components and higher pressure are the way a modern diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication count more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that trips up most people than any other. The driver of a petrol engine fed diesel usually has no choice but to stop, since it will not run, and the harm stops there. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually will; meanwhile the pump wears. Running doesn't mean fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." It is an outdated workaround for a different problem. It doesn't put back what petrol has diluted, and that petrol is still in the tank later on.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, because after it has been running some petrol lies in the filter and lines, waiting to go straight back through your pump on the next start. Emptying petrol into a can by the roadside is also truly risky.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
It's rarely carelessness, and no one does it on purpose. One way only, because of the nozzles: the slimmer petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while the diesel one generally will not fit a petrol car. That is how the forecourt makes it straightforward.
When routine and the car stop matching, it occurs. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that's new. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. Fuelling up in a hurry en route to Preston, with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it takes place: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Passat for the first time. Add a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and habit takes over.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel at your next fill-up in Broughton
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most generally do. Check the petrol pump's label; the colour is just a hint.
- Inspect the filler flap. Plenty of cars state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on your first fill in any vehicle you do not know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember, for a home with one of each.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new motor, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, yes, but it works.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make while your mind is on something else, so your phone goes away.
- Some diesels have a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for motors without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a safety net, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- Spotting it mid-fill? Stop at once. A weaker mix follows from less petrol inside the tank, but the next step remains the same: don't crank it.
Put petrol in a diesel in Broughton already?
The order of things is brief, then. Don't switch your ignition on, and don't start it. Ask the attendants to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump if you are still on the forecourt, whether that's Texaco or anywhere else. Then call 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, about how much, and if it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it is a different problem, with its own page for Broughton, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits instead of lost lubrication.
What makes one Broughton petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
Four different tasks sit behind the four situations above — which is why there is no fair single price. Which of them you are in is chiefly what shifts the cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that went in as a proportion of what the tank takes, then the spot the car is in and whether a van can get to it safely.
Before any quote, not after, we ask three queries: the fuel that got in, the volume, and if it's run. That's why. A range turns into a straight figure once those answers are in.
About Broughton and where it is
Broughton is a village in Lancashire, situated inland near the city of Preston, with Broughton being close to nearby places such as Pudding Pie Nook and Fulwood. Broughton has a population of around 1185 people and Broughton is characterised by its predominantly detached housing. Broughton sits at an elevation of 43 metres, relatively low compared to other areas in the region.
Fuel drain cover around Broughton and across Lancashire
Our teams answering petrol in diesel call-outs around Broughton, in the PR postcode area, equally work the spots near it, Pudding Pie Nook, Lightfoot Green and Fulwood included. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all places we work, and the car doesn't need to move to us.
At the pump around Broughton, right now?
Then you are in the best position there can be. Keep it off. Phone.