Moses Gate: Petrol in a Diesel Car? How Worried to Be
If it has not been started, worry less than you probably are. "Have I wrecked it?" is the first question everyone around Moses Gate asks, and the truthful answer is generally no, since petrol left in a diesel tank hurts nothing until it is drawn through the system — by ignition priming, by the starter, or by being driven. Leave the engine off then ring Petrol in Diesel — that is how you keep it like that. The remainder of this page covers 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 a second time.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the motor?
Two tasks fall to diesel on its journey round a motor. It protects to begin with, and only then does it burn. Very fine tolerances go into your injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and only the diesel running through keeps their surfaces from grinding together.
Badly at the first, not at all at the second: that's petrol. The rattling 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 out the protection the system rests on, and any pump running on that mix is wearing itself.
Seen together, they make clear the shape the trouble has. Contact doesn't do the harm — movement does. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel issue. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the start of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to the fuel injectors further on.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four situations our engineers see around Moses Gate
The best case there is: filled up, never started. Only that tank has petrol in it, and so the job is clearing the tank and flushing the fuel system where the vehicle stands. This situation can only really take place at a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
Ignition on, or started for a moment. Petrol has come out of the tank and got to your filter and the lines, since your system has been primed. Normally little more than clearing, flushing and sorting the filter, so still easy.
Driven a few miles. Now the pump has spent those miles labouring on thinned fuel. Mileage is only half of that; how hard it was driven matters just as much. Either way this work runs to your tank, the lines, the filter and fresh fuel through the entire circuit. Short trips, such as the school run to All Saints CofE Primary School, are one thing. Any mileage on the St. Peter's Way, under a mile from Moses Gate, means the engine has worked hard throughout, and a run to Salford, under 10 miles away, is a very different task too.
Clattering, a ragged idle, smoke, a throttle gone soft: driven until it complained. The motor is telling you the fuel is no longer acting like diesel. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a side street, the verge on Brentwood Drive. A vehicle pulled over early very seldom has lasting damage, as the drain and the flush-through, which still come first, sort it out.
Myths Moses Gate drivers 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're left with a bigger tank, still the same mixture. The idea behind the guidance — that diesel fuel systems accept petrol by percentage — is wrong.
Not so: a modern diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the opposite. Lubrication counts more on modern diesels, not less, because their fuel runs through finer components at higher pressure.
This is the one that fools people. Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it generally won't run, and so the driver stops — and the damage stops with them. A diesel fed petrol generally starts, idles and drives away as though nothing has happened, whilst the pump wears. 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 different fault. None of what petrol thinned gets put back by it — and later, your tank still holds the petrol.
Myth: "Drain your tank yourself and you're sorted." Once your engine has been run, some of the petrol is no longer in the tank: it's in your filter and the lines, and it goes right back through your pump on the next start. It is also truly dangerous to drain petrol into a can at the kerbside.
How does petrol in a diesel occur?
Nobody does it on purpose, and it is seldom carelessness. The forecourt makes it simple: the petrol nozzle is the smaller of the two, and it slips into a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whilst a diesel nozzle mostly won't go into a petrol motor at all. So the error runs one way.
The moment routine stops matching the vehicle is the moment it takes place. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that's new. One petrol and one diesel on the drive of the same household. The pumps in a different order on a well-known forecourt. A train to catch, and a hurried fill en route to the nearest station. Years of petrol vehicles behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. Add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children, and the hand does what it has always done.
Preventing petrol in a diesel next time you fill up around Moses Gate
- The label is what counts, and so read the pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, yet not on each forecourt.
- Plenty of vehicles state the fuel type inside your filler flap or on the cap, and so check it on your first fill in any motor you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on your diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember, for a house with one of each.
- It seems daft and it does the trick: on the first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" aloud before you lift the nozzle off the petrol pump.
- Mistakes like this are easy to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so the phone goes away.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels have a filler built to reject a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices are available for cars without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop checking the petrol pump.
- Stop the moment you realise. Less petrol inside your tank means a weaker mix. It does not change what to do next, which is still not to fire it up.
Moses Gate: already put petrol in a diesel?
Then the order of things is short. Starting it is out, and so is turning on your ignition. The attendants on the forecourt — whether at Shell itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help push it away from the petrol pump if you ask. Call 0333 366 0103 next, with three facts — the fuel, the approximate volume, and if it has run.
If it was AdBlue rather than petrol, say so. That's a different fault — corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection — and it has its own page for Moses Gate.
What makes one Moses Gate petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
The four scenarios above are four separate tasks, so no single price for this would be honest. Chiefly, the cost moves with which situation you are in. Beyond that it's the share — how much petrol was put in against how much that tank holds — and after that where your car is and whether our van can get to it safely.
Three questions come first, before quoting, rather than after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. With the replies, there is a straight figure instead of a range.
About Moses Gate itself
Moses Gate is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated near the lakeside and approximately 94 metres above sea level. Moses Gate is located near several nearby places, including Farnworth, Harper Green, and Dixon Green, and is about 6.8 miles from Salford. Moses Gate has a population of around 5683 people and predominantly features terraced housing. Moses Gate is also relatively far from London, at a distance of 170.7 miles.
Moses Gate and Greater Manchester: where our fuel drain cover runs
Moses Gate waits in the BL postcode area, and the vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the locations near it as well — Farnworth, Harper Green and Dixon Green among them. The vehicle doesn't need to come to us: our engineers drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Moses Gate: still at the pump?
Then you're in the best spot there can be. Leave the vehicle switched off, and ring.