How Worried Should You Be? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Irelands Cross
Far less than you likely are, if it hasn't been started. Petrol resting in a diesel tank does nothing to your motor until something draws it through the fuel system — the ignition priming the pump, your starter, or driving on its own. So the honest answer to the first query everyone around Irelands Cross asks, "have I ruined it?", is generally no. Petrol in Diesel is who to call, with the engine left off, so it remains that way. Further down, this page sets out what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it may have gone, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Inside the motor: what petrol in a diesel really does
On its way through a motor, diesel does two jobs. It lubricates first, and after that does it burn. What keeps the surfaces inside your high-pressure pump and the injectors from wearing down against each other is your diesel flowing through them — they're designed to very fine tolerances.
Of those two tasks, petrol handles the first poorly and the second never. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump on that mixture wearing itself. It's equally made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is why you get the clattering.
Together, those leave the shape of the trouble clear. The harm is done by movement, not by contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, carried by the fuel, into the fuel injectors further along, which is why a pump that has worked on that petrol is where a mechanical problem begins.
Irelands Cross, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to serious
Filled but not once started — as good as it gets. That petrol is in that tank and just your tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the vehicle stands. This is the one situation that can only truly occur at a forecourt, as anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Started for a second, or only the ignition on. Petrol has come out of the tank and reached the filter and the lines, since the system has been primed. That's normally still an easy task — a drain, a flush, and the filter dealt with.
A few miles driven, and your pump has spent every one of them working on thinned fuel. Miles is only half of it; how hard it was driven counts just as much. Either way the work includes your tank, the fuel lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. Short trips, like the school run to Woore Primary and Nursery School, are one matter. A run as far as Stoke-on-Trent, under 15 miles away, is a very different job. So is any miles on the M6, under 5 miles from Irelands Cross, where your engine has been labouring hard throughout.
Clattering, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The engine is telling you the fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Leave it wherever it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on London Road. Permanent damage is very uncommon if a vehicle is pulled over soon, and the drain and flush that still go first sort it out.
What Irelands Cross drivers get told about petrol in a diesel — and the myths in it
False: topping up to full with diesel makes it fine. It doesn't. A bigger tank of the same mix is all you get, because topping up takes out nothing. That guidance supposes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It doesn't.
Not so: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the reverse. A modern diesel runs its fuel through smaller components at higher pressure, which makes the lubrication count more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." This is the one that fools people. Any petrol motor fed diesel normally won't run, so the motorist stops and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened, whilst your pump wears. Running doesn't mean fine.
An old workaround for a distinct issue lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive it home." None of what petrol weakened is put back by it — and afterwards, your tank still contains the petrol.
If the motor has run, part of the petrol is in your filter and your lines, not that tank — and your next start pulls it straight back through the pump. So the myth "drain your tank yourself and you are sorted" doesn't hold. It is also genuinely dangerous to drain petrol into a can at the roadside.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
Carelessness is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. A diesel nozzle mostly will not fit a petrol motor, but the slimmer petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake simple, and just in one direction.
The moment habit stops matching the vehicle is the moment it takes place. Courtesy car, hire car, or a motor that's brand new. One petrol and one diesel on the driveway of the same household. Your normal forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. A rushed fill en route to Nantwich with a train to catch. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Renault Megane in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. With rain, a call arriving, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand simply does what it has always done.
How to prevent petrol in a diesel at your next fill-up around Irelands Cross
- Not every forecourt in the UK keeps to green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most usually do. Check the pump's label; the colour is only a hint.
- Check your filler flap. Many cars state the fuel type inside the flap or on the cap. Look at it on the first fill in a car you don't know.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a bright colour on the diesel's key when a home has one of each. So mark it.
- It sounds silly and it does the trick: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Whilst you're thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so tuck your phone away.
- Add-on devices exist for cars without one, and some diesels come with a filler that will not accept a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- Less petrol makes a thinner blend, so stop as soon as you realise — though remembering that your next step is unchanged. It is still not to start it.
Irelands Cross: already put petrol in a diesel?
The order of things is short, then. Do not switch the ignition on, and don't crank it. The attendants at the forecourt — whether at Baldwins Gate Filling Station itself or wherever you filled up — will normally help push it clear of the pump if you ask. Then ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, about how much, and whether it has run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That is a different fault — corrosion and deposits rather than lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Irelands Cross.
One petrol in a diesel job around Irelands Cross costs more than another. Why?
An honest single price doesn't exist here: four situations, four separate jobs. Chiefly, the cost moves with which one you are in. After that it is the share — how much petrol got in against how much the tank takes — and then where your car is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
That's why we ask three questions before pricing instead of after: what went in, how much, and whether it has run. A range becomes a straight figure when the replies are in.
About Irelands Cross, for a moment
Irelands Cross is a small hamlet in Shropshire, situated inland at an elevation of around 130 metres. Irelands Cross lies near the villages of Dorrington and Woore, and is approximately 10 miles from Stoke-on-Trent. Irelands Cross is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its rural setting. Irelands Cross is a relatively small community, with a population of around 522 people.
Fuel drain cover across Shropshire, Irelands Cross included
Petrol in diesel calls in Irelands Cross — part of the CW postcode area — go to teams that likewise cover the places around it, Dorrington, Pipe Gate and Woore included. Our technicians drain wherever your vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it never needs to come to us.
Irelands Cross: still at the pump?
Nothing beats it: that is where you are. Keep it off. Call.