Godley: Put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
Petrol in Diesel drains and flushes misfuelled cars where they are, on the forecourt, by the roadside or on a drive, across Godley and the rest of Greater Manchester. The first thing to do is not to turn on the motor. While your engine has not been started and the petrol is still in the tank, a fuel drain is nearly always all it takes, and the next few minutes decide that, not how much got in. Ring us before anything else happens, and you'll see what follows from there.
Petrol in a diesel: what to do first
- Give a petrol engine diesel and it will typically refuse to run at all, so the driver stops there and so does the wear. Give a diesel petrol and the engine starts, it idles, it pulls away — fine for several miles. People have that reversed, which is the bit they get wrong about petrol in a diesel in particular. So don't start the car. And once started, do not believe it: the fuel system is wearing as you drive.
- Flicking your ignition on often primes that system, and priming is what moves petrol out of your tank and into your pump and injectors. Those are the components diesel keeps protected on its way through, before it ignites. Petrol does the burning and none of the oiling. Leave your ignition off.
- That guidance assumes a diesel fuel system handles petrol by percentage. It doesn't. Tip diesel on top and nothing at all is removed; what you have is a fuller tank of the same mix. And no, the type makes no difference — super unleaded is still petrol.
- Stay where you are if you sensibly can. A motor that has never moved is the quickest one to sort, and we would sooner get to an odd place than have it started. If you are parked on the verge on High Street, put the hazards on then keep it there.
- Before you ring, work out your whereabouts. Anything next to you with a sign on it, plus a postcode starting SK14 2 — that is what decides whether the van arrives or circles.
- Three facts determine the whole visit: the stuff you put in, the approximate quantity of it, and if anything has been running since. The line is 0333 366 0103.
Clearing petrol from the diesel on the forecourt
Pumps are where this work often starts, and where a fair portion of that finishes. Still at Morrisons? Then that is usually where it gets done. Petrol station forecourts are routine for us, with the consent of the site.
Before the engine has run — a forecourt is the one location it is caught. Fuel drawn out of your tank and through the filter, right to your high-pressure pump, is what occurs when your engine is fired up and the car is driven to where it is now: the car park, the private drive or the lay-by, anywhere other than the forecourt. So the flush includes the filter and the fuel lines together with the tank. That is still not a disaster, and our engineers put it right where your car is. What settles it is whether the ignition was turned in the seconds after the till receipt was read.
Attendants will usually help out pushing it clear of the petrol pump, which lets the next customer get by. Take the offer. Four vehicle lengths is not worth the risk.
Do we reach your corner of Godley?
Being a residential suburb, Godley gets a regular call, and the areas close by go along on the same trip: The Railway Sidings and Newton, Hyde and Godley Hill, Flowery Field.
Our technicians still come. The places above are merely the immediate neighbours, and a page is there for the majority of places in Greater Manchester, and so an absence from the list isn't an absence from the coverage. Ring us and enquire rather than presuming — borders particularly, and wherever your phone may struggle with.
Check the map for the ground shown on this page. Our technicians work roadside, at forecourts, on driveways and in car parks across all of that, and the car never needs to travel to us.
Put diesel in a petrol motor and usually it won't run, and so the motorist stops there and the harm stops with them. Swap it — petrol into a diesel — and the thing starts, idles and pulls away as though nothing had happened, while your high-pressure pump works without the lubrication the fuel is supposed to be giving. That's the catch, and it is why your diesel BMW X1 will have felt perfectly ordinary coming back from Godley Community Primary Academy. They do. From behind the wheel there is nothing to caution you about, and so nothing tells you. Call us with roughly how far you drove, and how hard; the second one counts more than the first.
It will fire up. It will pull away perfectly well. That is the trouble, since a diesel on a diluted tank behaves typically while wearing the parts its fuel should be lubricating. So no, do not chance the drive home from The Railway — leave the Peugeot 208 then phone.
Leave the Volkswagen Polo close to St John the Baptist then ring us. We are blunt about not driving on since a worn-out pump gives off, and what it gives off passes on with your fuel to your injectors downstream.
Switch off where you have stopped, and don't restart it to find somewhere better — near Newton Cricket Club or anywhere at all. Knocking, a lumpy idle, white smoke and a soft throttle are a misfilled diesel Ford Fiesta telling you what is wrong.
It got a couple of streets and stopped. The throttle went limp, the idle turned lumpy, and the diesel Mercedes B-Class is now resting by Ewen Fields. That softness is the fuel failing to build pressure fully not the motor giving up — and because there's no dashboard light for it, motors in that position generally get driven once more before somebody calls. Don't. Switch it off then ring us.
Stuck by the roadside around Godley
Some drivers get no sensible place to pull over whatsoever. A common call for us and not an odd one: noticed after setting off, landed on the verge on Fountain Street or at a lay-by with the hazard lights flashing.
Wait by the vehicle while it is safe to be there, but clear of the vehicle if it is not. Every mile a diesel obliges you for on petrol drags that mixture further into the system — and oblige it frequently will, which is why your motor does not get restarted to limp somewhere handier. We'll bring the van to a difficult location without any fuss, and for your car that's far better than driving on.
Some miles on petrol in a diesel: what now?
under a mile out of Godley, your M67 is what counts now. Some way along, and onto it in the first place: a wrongly fuelled diesel will often manage both before anything feels wrong. What you get then is rarely a clean stop. Power drains away, your idle gets rough, and there may be smoke.
Never restart it to move it. Pull off at the first safe junction then turn off. It alters what our engineers bring, so say so when you call: on a longer drive — anything approaching the under 10 miles to the nearest city — take it the petrol has been through your filter, the pump and your injectors.
Godley itself
Godley is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated near the lakeside and approximately 125 metres above sea level. Godley lies close to several nearby places, including The Railway Sidings, Newton, and Hyde, and is around 7.6 miles from Manchester. Godley has a population of around 6077 people, predominantly living in terraced housing. Godley is also relatively distant from London, at around 157.3 miles away.
What we do when we arrive with you in Godley
- Three things get established before any quote — your fuel that got in, the quantity, and if anything has been run since. Each answer alters the work.
- Your tank is drained of everything.
- Our technicians purge your fuel lines and clean your filter, so what's remaining in the fuel system is not what started the trouble.
- The fuel system gets primed, on new diesel.
- It's started with clean diesel in it, and our engineers make sure that it's running smoothly.
After that it is ready to set off. All of it is done where your car is, so it never needs to go to a workshop, and when it has been spotted soon, permanent damage is very unusual.
Godley AdBlue removal is a separate matter
AdBlue instead of petrol? Then the opening instruction is unchanged — your engine stays off — whereas this fault beneath it is a different one altogether. The protection a fuel system depends on gets stripped away by petrol, which weakens your diesel. AdBlue? Urea dissolved in water. Tip that in with the diesel and you get rust instead, plus build-up.
We cover both, and AdBlue removal in Godley has its own page with the details — including why it is usually the more significant of the two.
Budgeting for a petrol-in-diesel drain in Godley
What shifts the price is listed below, as the job isn't one job and our engineers cannot truthfully put a single price on this page.
- This is the main one: whether the motor has been started, or driven.
- How much of the wrong fuel got in, judged against how much the tank holds.
- Whether it was unleaded or AdBlue.
- Access: the car's position, and whether working on it there's sensible for a technician.
Tell us the vehicle, the amount and if it has run, and you'll get a firm answer instead of a range. Not time-critical, with the car at home and going nowhere? Then works.
Questions our engineers hear about petrol in diesel in Godley
Fuel drains on a Godley petrol station forecourt
Much of what our engineers do happens nowhere else. So yes. Tell us which one you are at when you call and we will tell you if our engineers can work there. With the station's permission our technicians visit Shell and the other forecourts locally routinely.
A couple of litres of petrol in a diesel — too much?
Whether the engine has run matters much more, though the ratio counts too, instead of the litres. Five litres into an almost dry tank is not five into a full one, no. But both land on the same query in the end: has that mix been sucked right through, or has it not?
I drove the car after putting petrol in my diesel. What next?
Somewhere sensible, then stop, then turn off and keep it off. It's fixable a lot more frequently than motorists assume, even though driving is what moves the trouble from your tank into your pump and injectors — and the single most valuable thing you can do now is not restart it.
Is a fuel drain going to void my warranty?
No. Carried out properly, clearing and cleaning is no change at all, and the warranty from your manufacturer is unaffected by it. A disagreement over a warranty is likelier to come from running a diesel on petrol — so leave it turned off.
Two-stroke oil in that tank, and then home?
What petrol has weakened isn't restored by two-stroke oil, which is an old workaround for a separate issue. So no. Petrol remains in that tank later, whatever else goes in, and your pump gets no break from it.
Main dealers and petrol in a diesel
There's no need to take it to a franchised dealer, because we drain and flush the vehicle wherever it is.
Is your car still with you?
The motor stays off.
Turn it off somewhere safe then leave it off, if you have already driven it. Cold and still, a vehicle is in the best place available — and motorists fear this a lot more than the recovery rate warrants.
On-site fuel draining around Godley and across Greater Manchester — at the kerbside, on the forecourt or at home.