Lowerford: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
Far less than you probably are, provided it has not been started. "Have I ruined it?" is the first question anyone around Lowerford asks, and the honest answer is usually no, because petrol resting in a diesel tank hurts nothing until it is dragged through the system — by ignition priming, by your starter, or by being driven. Keep it that way: leave your engine off then phone Petrol in Diesel. The remainder of this page sets out what petrol really does to a diesel, how to tell how far it has got, and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you again.
The engine and petrol in a diesel: what happens
Passing through an engine, diesel does two jobs at once. It combusts, and before it burns it lubricates. Very fine gaps go into your injectors and the high-pressure pump, and just your diesel flowing through stops their surfaces grinding together.
Petrol handles the first job poorly and the second not at all. The clattering comes from petrol being designed not to ignite when compressed, which is exactly the reverse of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is runnier than diesel, it strips away the protection the fuel system rests on, and any pump running on that mixture is wearing itself.
Combined, those leave the shape of the issue clear. Contact does not do the damage — circulation does. Where the petrol is only in the tank, it's a fault of fuel, nothing more. After your pump has been running on that petrol, a mechanical issue has started: whatever is shed by a pump that is grinding is carried downstream to the injectors with your fuel.
Four scenarios our technicians see around Lowerford: how serious is petrol in a diesel?
The best case there can be: filled up, never started. At a forecourt, and genuinely only there, that petrol is still limited to the tank — because everywhere else the vehicle was driven to reach it. The job is emptying and purging on the spot.
Ignition on, or started for a second. Once primed, your system has pulled petrol out of the tank up to the filter and the fuel lines. Still usually simple: drain, flush, and the fuel filter sorted.
Those few miles on the road meant the pump running on fuel diluted by petrol throughout. The work is that tank, your lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the whole circuit, and how hard the car was driven matters as much as how far. Driving the children to Barrowford School is one kind of trip. Driving as far as Bradford, under 25 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any miles on the M65, under a mile from Lowerford, with your engine running hard the whole time.
Driven until it complained. Clattering, a lumpy idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. That is the engine telling you its fuel no longer is acting like diesel. Leave it wherever it stops: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Church Street. Permanent damage is very uncommon if a vehicle is stopped early, and the drain and flush that still go first sort it out.
Stories Lowerford people hear about petrol in a diesel
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. Nothing is removed by topping up — you are left with a bigger tank, still the same mix. That guidance presumes a diesel fuel system tolerates petrol by percentage. It does not.
If anything, the reverse is true. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Finer parts and higher pressure are how a modern diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the protection count more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there is no damage done." This is the one that catches motorists. The driver of a petrol engine fed diesel usually stops, since it will not run, and the harm stops with them. A diesel fed petrol normally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing has happened, whilst your pump grinds. Fine and running aren't the same at all.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, taken from a fix from years ago, for a distinct fault. None of what petrol thinned gets put back by it — and afterwards, your tank still holds that petrol.
The next start draws petrol back round the pump from your lines and the fuel filter, where some of it sits after the motor has been run. That's why draining your tank yourself does not leave you sorted — a myth. It is also truly hazardous to drain petrol into a can at the roadside.
How does petrol in a diesel occur?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. The forecourt makes it easy: the petrol nozzle is the narrower of the two, and it slides into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, while a diesel nozzle mostly will not go into a petrol vehicle at all. So the slip runs one way.
When routine and your car stop matching, it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a vehicle that is brand new. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the driveway. The pumps in a different order on a familiar forecourt. Rushing for a train outside Nelson and fuelling up en route. Exactly the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, a driver fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. Your hand repeats what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of kids.
Avoiding petrol in a diesel next time you fill up in Lowerford
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, even if most usually do. Check the petrol pump's label; the colour is just a clue.
- In a vehicle you don't know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before your first fill: many motors print the fuel there.
- Label the key. In a household with one of each, a coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of intending to remember.
- Before the nozzle leaves the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" out loud. Silly, perhaps, but it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are straightforward to make whilst your mind is on something else, so the phone goes away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler designed to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for cars without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the pump.
- Less petrol makes a weaker mixture, and so stop the moment you notice — though remembering that your next step is unchanged. It's still not to start the car.
Put petrol in a diesel around Lowerford already?
The order of things is short, then. Do not switch the ignition on, and don't fire it up. Ask the attendants to help you push it clear of the petrol pump if you're still at the forecourt, whether that's Texaco or anywhere else. Phone 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the approximate amount, and if it has run.
Corrosion and deposits form the problem with AdBlue, where petrol means lost protection. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and see its own Lowerford page.
One petrol in a diesel task in Lowerford costs more than another. Why?
Four different tasks sit behind the four situations above — which is why there is no fair single quote. Chiefly, the cost moves with which one you're in. Where the car is counts too, and whether a van can safely get to it, after the share of petrol to what the tank holds.
What went in, how much, and whether it's run — three questions our technicians ask before pricing, not after, for precisely that reason. Given those replies, you get a straight figure instead of a range.
About Lowerford
Lowerford is a suburban area in Lancashire, situated on the riverside with a mix of terraced housing and other residential properties. Lowerford sits at an elevation of 135 metres, near the towns of Barrowford and Nelson, and is part of a larger urban area. Lowerford is located near several other communities, including Newbridge and Higherford, and is within commuting distance of larger cities like Bradford. Lowerford has a population of around 3702 people, according to recent estimates.
Across Lancashire and around Lowerford: fuel drain cover
Petrol in diesel call-outs in Lowerford — part of the BB postcode area — go to teams that likewise cover the places around it, Barrowford, Newbridge and Higherford included. Our technicians drain wherever the vehicle is — your own driveway, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
Still at the pump around Lowerford?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Ring, and leave it switched off.