Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Lytham
Likely less than you are now — provided nobody has started it. Petrol sitting in a diesel tank does nothing to the motor until something pulls it through the fuel system — your ignition priming the pump, the starter, or the drive on its own. So the fair answer to the first question anyone around Lytham asks, "have I wrecked it?", is normally no. Petrol in Diesel is who to call, with your engine kept off, so it remains that way. The rest of this page explains what petrol really does to a diesel, how to tell how far it has got, and how to make sure it does not happen to you again.
Inside the motor: what petrol in a diesel really does
Diesel has two tasks on its way through a motor. It lubricates to begin with, and after that does it burn. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors from wearing against one another is your diesel flowing through them — they are designed to very fine gaps.
Of these two tasks, petrol handles the first badly and the second not at all. A pump working on a petrol mix is wearing itself out, since petrol is thinner than diesel and strips out the protection the fuel system depends on. Petrol is also designed to resist igniting under compression — the opposite of what a diesel wants from its fuel — and that's where the clattering comes.
The shape of the issue is plain when you put those together. The harm is done by movement, not by contact. Any tank with petrol in it is a fuel problem. Whatever a worn pump sheds goes on, borne by your fuel, into your injectors further along, which is why a pump that has worked on the petrol is where a mechanical issue begins.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four situations we see around Lytham
Filled up, and not started: no case is better. Being on a forecourt is what makes this the case: elsewhere, the vehicle has been driven there to begin with. With the petrol kept in that tank alone, it's drained and rinsed right where it stands, and nothing more is needed.
Started for a second, or only the ignition on. Petrol has come out of that tank and reached the fuel filter and the fuel lines, since your system has been primed. Drain, flush, see to your filter: still usually simple.
The pump now spent a couple of miles on weakened fuel — that is what driving the car does. How hard your car was driven matters as much as how far, and the work covers that tank, the lines, the fuel filter and clean fuel through the whole circuit. The school run to Lytham Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School is one matter. A run as far as Preston, under 15 miles away, is a very different task. So is any distance on the M55, under 5 miles from Lytham, where the motor has been running hard the whole time.
Driven on till it protested — rattling, smoke, an uneven idle, a soft throttle. What you are hearing is the engine reporting fuel that no longer acts like diesel. Pull up on the spot — on the verge on Mythop Road, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it again. The fuel drain and flush-through still come first, and they deal with it: when a car is pulled over quickly, long-term damage is very unusual.
Petrol in a diesel myths Lytham motorists hear
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. A diesel fuel system does not accept petrol by percentage in the way that advice supposes.
If anything, the opposite is true. Myth: "A current diesel can cope with a bit of petrol." Lubrication counts more on current diesels, not less, because their fuel passes through finer parts at higher pressure.
"It starts, it drives, and so no harm done" — the myth that catches most motorists than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it usually won't 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, as it usually does; meanwhile your pump grinds. Fine and running are not the same thing.
An old fix for a distinct problem lies behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." What petrol has thinned remains weakened, and the petrol stays in that tank anyway.
The next start sends petrol back round the pump out of your lines and your filter, where some of that ends up after the engine has run. That is why draining the tank yourself does not sort it — a myth. It is also really dangerous to drain petrol into a can by the roadside.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it happen?
On purpose? Never. Through carelessness? Rarely, if ever. A diesel nozzle generally will not fit a petrol motor, yet the smaller petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one error straightforward, and just in one direction.
It takes place when routine and the car stop matching. Hire cars, courtesy cars, and vehicles that are new to you. A household with one petrol and one diesel on the drive. A familiar forecourt with the pumps in a different order. A hurried fill en route to the nearest station with a train to catch. Exactly the moment it occurs: after years of driving petrol, someone fills a diesel Volkswagen Golf for the first time. Throw in a back seat full of kids, a phone call or rain, and habit wins.
How to prevent petrol in a diesel at your next fill-up in Lytham
- Not every forecourt in the UK follows green for unleaded and black for diesel, though most generally do. Read the pump's label; the colour is only a clue.
- In a car you don't know, look inside the flap over the filler or at the cap before your first fill: plenty of motors state the fuel type there.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key achieves more than any amount of intending to remember, for 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" out loud. Daft, perhaps, but it does the trick.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make while 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 built to refuse a petrol nozzle, and aftermarket devices are available for the remainder. Treat it as a backstop, then keep reading the petrol pump.
- Noticing it halfway? Stop there and then. A thinner blend follows from less petrol in the tank, but your next step stays the same: don't fire it up.
Lytham: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then the order of things is short. Don't turn the ignition on, and don't fire it up. If you are still at the forecourt — EG On The Move Lytham or anywhere else — ask the attendants to help you roll the car away from the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what was put in, about how much, and if it has been run.
Corrosion and deposits form the issue with AdBlue, whereas petrol means lost lubrication. So if it was AdBlue, say so — and read its own Lytham page.
What makes one Lytham petrol in a diesel job cost more than the next
There is no honest single price for this, because the four situations above are four separate tasks. What moves your cost is chiefly which of them you're in. The proportion matters next, meaning how much of the tank is petrol, followed by the position of the vehicle and whether getting to it is safe for a van.
What was put in, how much, and whether it's run — three queries our technicians ask before quoting, not after, for exactly that reason. Those answers are what change a range into one firm number.
About Lytham and its setting
Lytham is a suburban area on the Fylde coast in Lancashire, situated near the towns of Saltcotes, Ansdell, and Fairhaven. Lytham lies at a low elevation of around 6 metres above sea level, close to the Irish Sea coastline. Lytham has a mix of housing types, but terraced houses are particularly prevalent in the area. Lytham is located approximately 10 miles from Preston and 195 miles from London.
Fuel drain cover in Lytham and across Lancashire
Lytham waits in the FY postcode area, and our vans that answer petrol in diesel jobs there work the spots near it as well — Saltcotes, Ansdell and Fairhaven among them. Our technicians drain where the vehicle is — your own drive, a lay-by, a supermarket car park, a forecourt — so it does not have to come to us.
Lytham: still at the pump?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Keep it off. Call.