Petrol in a Diesel Car in Lower Arthurs: How Worried Should You Be?
Not started? Then less worried than you probably feel. Everyone around Lower Arthurs starts with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is usually no: petrol resting inside your tank of a diesel stays harmless till priming, cranking or driving pulls it into your fuel system. Leave the motor off then call Petrol in Diesel — that keeps it that way. The remainder of this page covers 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 a second time.
The motor and petrol in a diesel: what happens
On its way through an engine, diesel has two jobs. It protects to begin with, and only then does it burn. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors from wearing down against one another is your diesel passing through them — they are built to very fine gaps.
Petrol does the first job badly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips out the lubrication a fuel system needs, so a pump running on the mixture wearing itself. It's also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you get the clattering.
Together, those leave the shape of the trouble plain. It is circulation that causes the damage, not contact. Petrol in the tank is a fuel problem. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, carried by your fuel, into the fuel injectors downstream, which is why a pump that has been working on that petrol is where a mechanical fault starts.
Lower Arthurs, petrol in a diesel: four cases, from mild to significant
The best case there can be: filled up, not once started. Being on a forecourt is what makes this the case: elsewhere, the car has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol kept inside that tank alone, it's cleared and cleaned right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Your ignition switched on, or a short start. Petrol has come out of the tank and got to the fuel filter and the lines, since the system has been bled. Normally nothing more than clearing, rinsing and sorting the fuel filter, so still simple.
Driven a couple of miles. Now your pump has spent these miles working on weakened fuel. The work is the tank, your lines, the fuel filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit, and how hard the car was driven matters as much as how far. A school run to Greenfield Primary School is one matter. Driving as far as Manchester, under 15 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any mileage on the A627(M), under 10 miles from Lower Arthurs, with the engine running hard all the way.
Driven on till it complained — clattering, smoke, an uneven idle, a soft throttle. The fuel is not behaving like diesel any more, and the motor is telling you. Pull up wherever you are — the verge on Wood Square, a lay-by, a side street — and leave it where it is. What comes first is still the drain and flush, and that deals with it, with lasting damage very uncommon if a car is pulled over soon.
Lower Arthurs drivers 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." A bigger tank of the same mix is all you get, since topping up takes out nothing. A diesel fuel system doesn't tolerate petrol by percentage in the way that advice assumes.
Not so: a current diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the reverse. At higher pressure, through finer components: that is how a newer diesel handles its fuel, so the protection matters more, not less.
"It starts, it drives, and so no harm done" — the myth that catches most drivers than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol motor and it usually won't run, and so the motorist stops — and the harm stops with them. Nothing seems to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, as it usually will; meanwhile the pump grinds. Running is not the same as fine.
Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It's an old workaround for a different problem. It doesn't put back what petrol has weakened, and the petrol is still in that tank later.
If your engine has been run, part of that petrol is in the filter and your lines, not that tank — and your next start pulls it right back through your pump. So the myth "drain the tank yourself and you're sorted" does not hold. On top of that, petrol cleared into a can by the road is genuinely risky.
Why petrol in a diesel happens at all
No one does it on purpose, and it's rarely carelessness. A diesel nozzle mostly will not fit a petrol motor, but the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one error simple, and just in one direction.
It occurs when habit and your car stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and cars that are new to you. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A rushed fill on the way to Greenfield with a train to catch. Years of petrol vehicles behind you, a diesel Renault Megane in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Throw in a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and the hand wins.
Next time you fill up around Lower Arthurs: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- The label is what counts, and so read the pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt.
- Plenty of vehicles state the fuel inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on your first fill in any motor you do not know.
- Mark the key. In a house with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- It sounds silly and it does the trick: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- Up to a point, a misfuel inhibitor helps: some diesels come with a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for the rest. Count it as a backstop, and keep checking the pump.
- As soon as you notice, stop: less petrol inside your tank means a weaker mixture. What to do next doesn't change, though — still don't fire it up.
Petrol already in a diesel in Lower Arthurs? Start here
The order of things is brief, then. Don't turn your ignition on, and don't crank it. The staff on the forecourt — whether at Gulf itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help roll it away from the petrol pump if you ask. What went in, roughly how much, and if it has run: tell us that when you call 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost protection, make it a different fault — Lower Arthurs has a page all for it.
One petrol in a diesel job around Lower Arthurs costs more than another. Why?
The four scenarios above are four separate jobs, so no single quote for this would be fair. Which of them you're in is mostly what moves your cost. The proportion counts next, meaning how much of your tank is petrol, and then the position of the vehicle and whether getting to it is safe for a technician.
What got in, how much, and whether it has run — three queries our engineers ask before quoting, not after, for precisely that reason. Those replies are what turn a range into one firm number.
About Lower Arthurs
Lower Arthurs is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated near the river and characterised by its terraced housing stock. Lower Arthurs sits at an elevation of 169 metres, approximately 10.7 miles from Manchester city centre. Lower Arthurs is part of a larger urban landscape that includes nearby places like Fur Lane and Shaws. Lower Arthurs has a population of around 3193 residents.
Fuel drain cover around Lower Arthurs and across Greater Manchester
Fur Lane, Shaws and Boarshurst are among the locations around Lower Arthurs that the same teams work, answering petrol in diesel jobs across Lower Arthurs's OL postcode area. No need to bring the car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own driveway are all locations where we work.
Lower Arthurs: still at the pump?
In that case, you couldn't be in a better spot. Keep it off. Phone.