How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Croston
Provided it hasn't been started, worry far less than you probably are. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the motor till something pulls it through the system — the ignition priming your pump, your starter, or the drive itself. So the honest answer to the first query everyone in Croston asks, "have I ruined it?", is normally no. Leave the motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it like that. Below, this page sets out what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it might have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
On its way through a motor, diesel has two tasks. Lubricating comes before burning; it does both. Extremely fine gaps are built into the fuel injectors and the high-pressure pump, and only your diesel flowing through keeps those surfaces from grinding together.
The second job petrol doesn't do at all, and the first it does poorly. It is thinner than diesel and takes away the protection your fuel system depends on, and so a pump running on a petrol mix is a pump wearing itself. And petrol is made to resist igniting under compression, which is the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel. That's where the rattling comes from.
The shape of the problem is plain once you put those together. It's movement that causes the damage, not contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. After the pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical problem has begun: anything shed by a pump that is wearing is carried onward to the injectors with your fuel.
Four scenarios our engineers see around Croston: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Filled up, not once started. The best case there can be. Being on a forecourt is what makes this the case: elsewhere, the car has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol held in that tank alone, it is cleared and flushed right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Started for a moment, or just the ignition on. The fuel system has been bled, so petrol has left the tank and reached the fuel filter and your lines. Still normally simple: drain, flush, and the filter sorted.
Those few miles on the road were the pump labouring on fuel weakened by petrol the whole way. Miles is only half of that; how hard it was driven counts equally. Either way the work includes that tank, the lines, the filter and clean fuel through the entire system. The school run to Trinity and St Michael's VA CofE/Methodist Primary School is one matter. A run as far as Preston, under 10 miles away, is a very different task. So is any miles on the M6, under 5 miles from Croston, where your engine has been running hard the whole time.
Driven on until it protested — rattling, smoke, a ragged idle, a dead throttle. The fuel isn't behaving like diesel any more, and your motor is saying so. Whether it is the verge on Town Road, a lay-by or a side street, stop there then leave it. A vehicle stopped soon very seldom has lasting damage, because the fuel drain and the flush-through, which still go first, sort it out.
Croston people and that petrol in a diesel stories they hear
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be." Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a fuller tank, still the same mixture. The idea behind the advice — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
"Current diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the reverse. At higher pressure, through more precise components: that's how a current diesel moves its fuel, and so the lubrication matters more, not less.
This is the one that fools motorists. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." Any petrol motor fed diesel normally will not run, so the driver stops and the harm stops with them. While the pump grinds, a diesel fed petrol usually starts, idles and drives away as if nothing has happened. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive makes it safe to drive home. It was an old workaround, supposed for another fault. It doesn't put back what petrol has thinned, and the petrol is still inside that tank later on.
Once the motor has run, part of the petrol is in your filter and the fuel lines, not your tank — and the next start sends it right back through the pump. So the myth "drain your tank yourself and you're sorted" doesn't hold. And, a can of petrol drained by the kerbside is genuinely dangerous.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
It is rarely carelessness, and nobody does it on purpose. A diesel nozzle mostly won't fit a petrol motor, but the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake easy, and just in one direction.
It takes place when habit and your car stop matching. A new motor, a hire car or a courtesy car. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. Your normal forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. A hurried fill en route to the nearest station with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Renault Clio after years of driving petrol is precisely the moment it happens. With rain, a call coming in, or children to deal with, the hand just does what it has always done.
Croston drivers: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Read the pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt. The label is what matters.
- Many cars state the fuel type inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check it on the first fill in any car you do not know.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a bright colour on your diesel's key if a household has one of each. So mark it.
- It seems daft and it works: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you lift the nozzle off the pump.
- Put the phone away. This is an easy mistake to make whilst you're thinking about something else.
- Some diesels come with a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add are available for vehicles without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol inside that tank means a weaker mix. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to crank it.
Croston: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then, there's just a short order of things. Do not turn your ignition on, and do not crank it. The staff at the forecourt — whether at Texaco itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help push it clear of the pump if you ask. Then phone 0333 366 0103 and tell us what was put in, about how much, and whether it's run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a different fault, with its own page for Croston, because AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication.
What makes one Croston petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
There is no honest single price for this, since the four scenarios above are four different jobs. What moves your cost is mostly which of them you're in. Where your car is counts too, and whether a van can safely reach it, after the share of petrol to what the tank holds.
What went in, how much, and whether it's run — three questions our engineers ask before pricing, not after, for precisely that reason. Those replies are what turn a range into one firm number.
About Croston
Croston is a village in Lancashire, situated on the banks of the River Yarrow at an elevation of around 11 metres. Croston lies approximately 7.5 miles south west of Preston and is surrounded by nearby places such as Barbers Moor, Newtown, and Bretherton. Croston has a population of around 2254 people and is characterised by predominantly semi-detached housing. Croston is located in the North West region of England, about 185.8 miles from London.
Fuel drain cover around Croston and across Lancashire
Croston waits in the PR postcode area, and the vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the places near it as well — Barbers Moor, Newtown and Bretherton among them. Our engineers drain wherever your vehicle is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
In Croston and still at the petrol pump?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better spot. Leave the car switched off, then ring.