Bull Hey: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Probably less than you already are — provided nobody has started the vehicle. "Have I ruined it?" is the first question everyone in Bull Hey asks, and the honest answer is usually no, because petrol resting in a diesel tank hurts nothing till it's drawn through your fuel system — by ignition priming, by the starter, or by driving. Keep it that way: leave your motor off and call Petrol in Diesel. The remainder of this page sets out what petrol actually does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you a second time.
What petrol in a diesel does to your engine
Diesel does two tasks on its way through an engine. Before it ignites, it lubricates — and then it ignites. Made to extremely fine tolerances, your injectors and your pump depend on your diesel moving through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. The clattering comes from petrol being made not to ignite when compressed, which is exactly the opposite of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is runnier than diesel, it strips out the lubrication your system depends on, and any pump working on that blend is wearing itself.
Combined, those leave the shape of the issue plain. The harm is done by movement, not by contact. Petrol in the tank is a fuel problem. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds travels on with your fuel to your injectors downstream.
How bad is petrol in a diesel? Four situations our technicians see in Bull Hey
Fuelled up, not once started. The best case there can be. The petrol is in your tank and only your tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle sits. This is the one scenario that can only really happen at a forecourt, since anywhere else the car has been driven to get there.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Your system has been primed, and so petrol has left the tank and got to your filter and your lines. Drain, flush, deal with the filter: still usually easy.
Those few miles driven meant the pump working on fuel diluted by petrol throughout. How hard your car was driven matters as much as how far, and the work takes in the tank, your lines, your filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. Short trips, like the school run to St Mary and St John Catholic Primary School, are one thing. Any distance on the M6, under 3 miles from Bull Hey, means the motor working hard throughout, and a run to Preston, under 15 miles away, is a very different job as well.
Driven until it protested. Knocking, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and the motor is telling you. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Spring Gardens. The drain and flush still go first, and they deal with it: if a vehicle is stopped soon, lasting damage is very unusual.
What Bull Hey drivers get told about petrol in a diesel — and the stories in it
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. Nothing is removed when you top up — the tank just carries more of the same mixture. A diesel fuel system doesn't tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice presumes.
Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. At higher pressure, through more precise components: that's how a current diesel handles its fuel, and so the protection counts more, not less.
This is the one that fools people. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no harm done." Diesel in a petrol motor generally means a motor that will not run: the driver stops, and so does the harm. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally starts, ticks over and pulls away as if nothing happened — all while its pump is wearing. Being able to run is not the same as being fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive lets you to drive home. It is an old fix, supposed for another fault. None of what petrol diluted is put back by it — and later, that tank still contains the petrol.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump out of your lines and the fuel filter, where some of that sits once the engine has been run. That is why draining your tank yourself does not leave you sorted — a myth. Draining petrol into a can by the kerbside is also genuinely risky.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it occur?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. A diesel nozzle generally will not fit a petrol motor, but the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel almost without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake easy, and only in that direction.
Routine and your car getting out of step is how it happens. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and motors that are new to you. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. A forecourt you know, only with its pumps laid out differently. Filling up in a rush on the way to Wigan Wallgate, with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Skoda Octavia, its first fuelling, and a driver accustomed to petrol: exactly when it occurs. With rain, a call arriving, or children to deal with, your hand simply does what it has always done.
Bull Hey motorists: how to prevent petrol in a diesel next time
- The label is what matters, so check the pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt.
- Check your filler flap. Plenty of vehicles state the fuel inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in a motor 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 household with one of each.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, perhaps, but it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make whilst your mind is on something else, so the phone goes away.
- Add-on devices exist for vehicles without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Helpful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Less petrol makes a thinner mixture, so stop as soon as you realise — while remembering that the next step is unchanged. It is still not to fire it up.
Already put petrol in a diesel in Bull Hey?
Then, there is just a short order of things. Starting it is out, and so is turning on the ignition. Ask the attendants to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that's Tesco or anywhere else. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three answers — your fuel, the rough quantity, and if it's run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That's a different problem — corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection — and it has its own page for Bull Hey.
What makes one Bull Hey petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
An honest single price does not exist here: four situations, four separate jobs. The situation itself does most of the work of moving your cost. Two things come after that: the petrol that was put in as a share of what your tank holds, then the spot your car is in and whether our van can get to it safely.
Three questions come first, before any quote, instead of after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. Given the answers, there is a straight figure rather than a range.
About Bull Hey itself
Bull Hey is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 37 metres. Bull Hey is located near several nearby places, including Wallgate, Wigan, and Water Heyes, and is approximately 14.8 miles from Preston. Bull Hey has a population of around 5153 people and is characterised by predominantly terraced housing. Bull Hey is also relatively distant from London, at 176.1 miles away.
Fuel drain cover across Greater Manchester, Bull Hey included
Bull Hey rests in the WN postcode area, and our teams that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the spots around it as well — Wallgate, Wigan and Water Heyes among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own driveway are all places we drain, and your vehicle does not need to come to us.
In Bull Hey and still at the petrol pump?
Then you're in the best spot there can be. Ring, and keep it switched off.