Petrol in a Diesel Car in Kirkdale: How Worried Should You Be?
Unstarted? Then less worried than you probably are. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first thing everyone in Kirkdale asks, and the honest answer is normally no, since petrol left in a diesel tank hurts nothing until it's drawn through the system — by ignition priming, by your starter, or by driving. To leave it that way, phone Petrol in Diesel and leave your engine switched off. The remainder of this page sets out what petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to your engine?
Diesel has two jobs on its way through a motor. It lubricates to begin with, and only then does it burn. Extremely fine gaps go into the injectors and the high-pressure pump, and just your diesel running through keeps those surfaces from grinding together.
Poorly at the first, not at all at the second: that is petrol. The knocking comes from petrol being designed not to ignite when compressed, which is precisely the opposite of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is thinner than diesel, it strips away the lubrication the system depends on, and any pump working on that mix is wearing itself.
Taken together, they make clear the shape the problem takes. It's circulation that causes the damage, not contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel fault. After the pump has been labouring on that petrol, a mechanical fault has started: anything shed by a pump that's grinding is carried downstream to your injectors with the fuel.
Four scenarios our technicians see around Kirkdale: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
The best case there can be: filled up, not once started. The petrol is inside that tank and just that tank, and the job is a drain and a flush where the car sits. This is the one situation that can only really occur on a forecourt, because anywhere else the vehicle has been driven to get there.
Your ignition turned on, or a brief start. Once primed, the system has drawn petrol out of that tank as far as your filter and your lines. Normally little more than draining, cleaning and seeing to the fuel filter, and so still easy.
Driven a few miles. Now your pump has spent those miles running on diluted fuel. Mileage is only half of that; how hard it was driven counts just as much. Either way this work includes that tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the whole system. On the school run to St John's Catholic Primary School, the mileage is short. Any miles on the Kingsway, under 5 miles from Kirkdale, means your engine working hard throughout, and a run to Liverpool, under 3 miles away, is a very different task too.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, rattling, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone uneven. That's your engine telling you its fuel no longer is behaving like diesel. Whether it's the verge on Chancel Street, a lay-by or a side road, stop there and leave it. A vehicle pulled over soon very seldom has long-term damage, because the fuel drain and the flush, which still come first, deal with it.
Kirkdale people and the petrol in a diesel myths they hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed when you top up — that tank just carries more of the same mixture. The idea behind that advice — that diesel fuel systems tolerate petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Not so: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. Rather, the reverse. More precise components and higher pressure are the way a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection matter more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches more motorists than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it generally will not run, so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually will; meanwhile your pump wears. Running is not the same as fine.
Myth: a two-stroke additive makes it safe to drive home. It was an old fix, meant for another problem. What petrol has thinned remains diluted, and that petrol stays in the tank anyway.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you are sorted." Once the motor has run, some of that petrol is no longer in your tank: it is in the filter and the lines, and it goes right back through your pump on the next start. Draining petrol into a can by the roadside is also genuinely dangerous.
How does petrol in a diesel take place?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. A diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol car, but the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake simple, and only in that direction.
Habit and your car getting out of step is when it occurs. A new car, a hire car or a courtesy car. Two cars on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. Your normal forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. A hurried fill on the way to Bank Hall with a train to catch. Years of petrol vehicles behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. With rain, a call arriving, or children to deal with, your hand simply does what it always has.
How to avoid petrol in a diesel on your next fill-up around Kirkdale
- A green handle for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — yet not on every forecourt. Trust the label on the pump, not the colour.
- Many cars state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in any vehicle you do not know.
- One of each in the home? Label the key to your diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since intending to remember is not enough.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fill a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" aloud. Silly, yes, yet it does the trick.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, and so put the phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- Some diesels have 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 safety net, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Stop as soon as you realise. Less petrol in the tank makes a weaker mix. It doesn't change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Put petrol in a diesel around Kirkdale already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with your ignition off too. Ask the staff to help you push it away from the pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that's Texaco or somewhere else. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the rough quantity, and if it has run.
Say so if it was AdBlue rather than petrol: it's a separate issue, with its own page for Kirkdale, since AdBlue brings corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection.
One petrol in a diesel task around Kirkdale costs more than another. Why?
The four scenarios above are four different jobs, so no single price for this would be honest. Chiefly, your cost moves with which one you're in. After that it's the proportion — how much petrol was put in against how much the tank takes — and then where the car is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
What was put in, how much, and whether it has run — three queries our engineers ask before costing, not after, for precisely that reason. Those answers change a range into a straight figure.
About Kirkdale and where it is
Kirkdale is a suburban area in Merseyside, situated on the coast near Liverpool, with a mix of terraced housing and local amenities. Kirkdale sits at an elevation of 33 metres, close to the shores of the Mersey Estuary, and is bordered by nearby places such as Sandhills and Walton. Kirkdale is a densely populated residential community, with a population of around 8917 people, and is located approximately 1.7 miles from Liverpool city centre. Kirkdale is also near Everton, another suburban area in the region.
Fuel drain cover across Merseyside, Kirkdale included
Kirkdale sits in the L postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel call-outs there work the places around it as well — Sandhills, Walton and Everton among them. A forecourt, a supermarket car park, a lay-by or your own drive are all spots our engineers drain, and the vehicle does not need to come to us.
Kirkdale: still at the petrol pump?
Then you're in the best place there is. Switched off it remains; then ring.