How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Goodshaw Fold
Probably less than you are now — provided nobody has started it. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first thing anyone in Goodshaw Fold asks, and the honest answer is generally no, since petrol left in a diesel tank hurts nothing until it is drawn through the system — by ignition priming, by your starter, or by driving. Leave the motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it like that. Further down, you will find what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it might have gone, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Inside your engine: what petrol in a diesel really does
Diesel does two tasks on its way through a motor. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. What keeps the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors from grinding against one another is the diesel passing through them — they're built to very fine tolerances.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump on the blend wearing itself. It is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the rattling.
Put these together and the shape of the problem is plain. Contact doesn't do the damage — movement does. Petrol in the tank is a fuel issue. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, borne by your fuel, into your injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has been working on the petrol is where a mechanical issue begins.
Goodshaw Fold, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to significant
Fuelled, and never started: no case is better. Only that tank has petrol in it, so the job is draining your tank and cleaning your system where your car sits. This scenario can only really happen on a forecourt: anywhere else, the car got there by being driven.
Your ignition switched on, or a short start. Your system has been bled, and so petrol has left the tank and got to the filter and the fuel lines. Normally little more than emptying, flushing and sorting your filter, and so still simple.
The pump has spent a couple of miles on diluted fuel — that is what driving the vehicle meant. Tank, lines, filter, then fresh fuel run through the whole system: that is this work, and the way the vehicle was driven counts as much as the miles. The school run to Crawshawbooth Primary School is one thing. A run as far as Preston, under 25 miles away, is a very different task. So is any distance on the M65, under 5 miles from Goodshaw Fold, where the motor has been running hard throughout.
Driven till it protested. Rattling, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. The fuel is not behaving like diesel any more, and the engine is saying so. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Springbank Gardens. What comes first is still the fuel drain and flush-through, and that takes care of it, with lasting damage very rare if a car is stopped quickly.
What Goodshaw Fold people 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 won't. Nothing comes out when you top up — your tank just carries more of the same mixture. The assumption behind the advice — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Myth: "A newer diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." If anything, the opposite. At higher pressure, through finer components: that's how a current diesel handles its fuel, so the lubrication counts more, not less.
This is the one that fools drivers. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." The motorist of a petrol motor fed diesel normally has no choice but to stop, since it will not run, and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it normally starts, ticks over and pulls away as if nothing happened — all the while its pump wears. Running is not the same as fine.
An old workaround for a separate fault is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." What petrol has weakened remains thinned, and the petrol remains in that tank regardless.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump out of your lines and the fuel filter, where some of it sits after your engine has run. That's why draining the tank yourself doesn't leave you sorted — a myth. Clearing petrol into a can by the roadside is also really hazardous.
Why petrol in a diesel takes place so easily
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Seldom, if ever. The petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two and slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance; a diesel nozzle generally will not go into a petrol car at all. The forecourt makes it easy, and the mistake runs one way.
Habit and the car falling out of step is how it takes place. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that is new. Two cars on one driveway, one petrol, one diesel. Your normal forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Rushing for a train outside Hapton and filling up en route. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Passat in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that's when. The hand does what it has always done once you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel on your next fill-up around Goodshaw Fold
- Check the petrol pump, not the colour. In the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, but not on each forecourt. The label is what counts.
- Many motors state the fuel type inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in a motor you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a house with one of each.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new car, say "diesel" aloud. Daft, yes, but it does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, so put the phone away then keep your mind on the petrol pump.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for motors without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the pump.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop at once. A thinner mix results from less petrol inside that tank, yet your next stage remains the same: don't fire it up.
Goodshaw Fold: already put petrol in a diesel?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Starting it is out, and so is turning on the ignition. Ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the petrol pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that is Shell or somewhere else. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it's been run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then tell us. Corrosion and deposits, not lost lubrication, make it a different problem — Goodshaw Fold has a page just for it.
Why one petrol in a diesel job around Goodshaw Fold costs more than another
The four situations above are four separate tasks, so no single quote for this would be fair. What moves the cost is mostly which of them you are in. Next it is the share — how much petrol was put in against how much the tank takes — and after that where the car is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
Before any quote, not after, come three queries: your fuel that was put in, its quantity, and whether it's run. That's why. The replies change a range into a straight figure.
About Goodshaw Fold itself
Goodshaw Fold is a suburban area in Lancashire, situated near the River Irwell and characterised by its terraced housing. Goodshaw Fold sits at an elevation of 289 metres, overlooking the surrounding countryside. Goodshaw Fold is located near several smaller communities, including Loveclough and Goodshaw Chapel, and is approximately 16.6 miles from Preston.
Fuel drain cover across Lancashire, Goodshaw Fold included
Goodshaw Fold rests in the BB postcode area, and our teams that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the locations around it as well — Loveclough, Goodshaw Chapel and Goodshaw among them. No need to move your vehicle to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own drive are all locations we drain.
Still at the petrol pump around Goodshaw Fold?
The best position there is, then — that is where you are. Phone, and keep it turned off.