Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Moss Bank
Probably less than you are now — as long as nobody has started the car. Everyone around Moss Bank starts with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is normally no: petrol left in the tank of any diesel remains harmless till priming, cranking or driving draws it into the fuel system. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with the motor left off, and so it remains that way. Further down, you will find what petrol really does inside a diesel, how far it may have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
What petrol in a diesel does to the engine
Two jobs fall to diesel on its route through a motor. It burns, and before it combusts it protects. Built to very fine gaps, the injectors and the pump rely on the diesel moving through them to stop their surfaces wearing against one another.
Petrol does the first job badly and the second not at all. The rattling comes from petrol being made not to ignite when compressed, which is exactly the opposite of what a diesel needs. On top of that it is thinner than diesel, it strips away the lubrication the fuel system hinges on, and any pump running on that mix is wearing itself.
Taken together, they show the shape the trouble has. Contact does not do the damage — circulation does. Where that petrol is only in your tank, it is an issue of fuel, nothing more. 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 injectors downstream.
Four scenarios our technicians see in Moss Bank: how bad is petrol in a diesel?
Fuelled but never started — as good as it gets. At a forecourt, and really only there, the petrol is still limited to your tank — since anywhere else your car was driven to get to it. The job is emptying and flushing on the spot.
Started for a second, or just your ignition on. The fuel system has been bled, and so petrol has left that tank and got to the filter and the fuel lines. Drain, flush, deal with the filter: still normally straightforward.
Driven a few miles. Now your pump has spent these miles labouring on weakened fuel. Tank, lines, filter, then clean fuel run through the entire system: that is the work, and the way the car was driven matters as much as the mileage. Short trips, such as the school run to Carr Mill Primary School, are one thing. Getting as far as Liverpool, under 15 miles away, makes a very different job — as does any mileage on the M6, under 5 miles from Moss Bank, with the engine working hard all the way.
Driven until it complained. Knocking, an uneven idle, smoke, a throttle that has gone soft. What you are hearing is your engine signalling fuel that no longer runs like diesel. Leave it where it stops: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Moss Bank Road. What goes first is still the fuel drain and flush-through, and that sorts it out, with permanent damage very unusual if a vehicle is pulled over quickly.
Petrol in a diesel myths Moss Bank people hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be fine." It will not. A bigger tank of the same mix is all it gives, since topping up removes nothing. A diesel fuel system doesn't accept petrol by percentage in the way that advice presumes.
Not so: a newer diesel copes with a bit of petrol. If anything, the opposite. At higher pressure, through finer components: that's how a newer diesel moves its fuel, so the protection counts more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no damage done." This is the one that catches people. Diesel in a petrol motor generally leaves a motor that won't run: the motorist stops, and so does the damage. Nothing looks to have happened when a diesel fed petrol fires up, ticks over and drives away, which it usually does; meanwhile the pump grinds. Being able to run isn't the same as being fine.
An outdated workaround for a separate problem is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the car home." The petrol is still inside the tank after that, and whatever it has weakened is not put back.
Myth: "Drain the tank yourself and you are sorted." After the motor has run, some of that petrol is no longer inside that tank: it is in your filter and the lines, and it goes right back through the pump on the next start. On top of that, petrol emptied into a can by the road is genuinely hazardous.
How it happens: petrol in a diesel
A careless moment is seldom the cause, and nobody means to do it. One way only, because of the nozzles: the slimmer petrol one slides inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whereas the diesel one mostly will not fit a petrol motor. That is how the forecourt makes it straightforward.
It takes place when routine and your car stop matching. A car that is new to you — a hire car, on loan as a courtesy car, or brand new. Households running one of each, petrol and diesel. Your ordinary forecourt, its pumps suddenly in a different order. Fuelling up in a hurry en route to St Helens Central, with a train to catch. The first fill-up in a diesel Volkswagen Golf after years of driving petrol is exactly the moment it takes place. With rain, a call arriving, or a car full of children to deal with, the hand just does what it has always done.
Moss Bank drivers: how to avoid petrol in a diesel next time
- Green for unleaded and black for diesel is usual in the UK — but not on each forecourt. Go by the label on the petrol pump, not the colour.
- Many vehicles state the fuel type inside the filler flap or on the cap, and so check there on the first fill in any vehicle you do not know.
- One of each in the household? Mark the key to your diesel — a coloured fob, a sticker — since intending to remember isn't enough.
- Before the nozzle comes off the pump the first time you fill a hired or new vehicle, say "diesel" out loud. Daft, yes, yet it works.
- Thinking about something else is when this becomes an easy mistake to make, so tuck the phone away then keep your mind on the pump.
- A misfuel inhibitor helps, up to a point. Some diesels come with a filler designed to refuse a petrol nozzle, and add-on devices exist for motors without one. They are a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- Less petrol makes a thinner mix, and so stop the moment you notice — though remembering that the next step is unchanged. It's still not to start it.
Put petrol in a diesel around Moss Bank already?
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Don't crank it, and do not turn your ignition on. Yet at the forecourt, at the nearest petrol station or anywhere else? Ask the attendants to help you roll it clear of the petrol pump. Next, 0333 366 0103. We'll ask what got in, about how much, and if it's been run.
If it was AdBlue and not petrol, say so. That is a different fault — corrosion and deposits and not lost lubrication — and it has its own page for Moss Bank.
Why one petrol in a diesel job in Moss Bank costs more than another
The four scenarios above are four different tasks, so no single price for this would be honest. Which of them you're in is mostly what shifts the cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that was put in as a proportion of what the tank takes, then the spot your car is in and whether a technician can reach it safely.
Three queries come first, before any quote, instead of after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. A range becomes a straight figure once those answers are in.
About Moss Bank itself
Moss Bank is a suburban area in Merseyside, situated inland at an elevation of 74 metres, approximately 11 miles east of Liverpool. Moss Bank is characterized by its semi-detached housing stock, which dominates the local landscape. Moss Bank sits near several local landmarks, including Clinkham Wood and Carr Mill, and is home to a population of around 3615 people. Moss Bank is located in the North West region of England, about 175 miles northwest of London.
Across Merseyside and around Moss Bank: fuel drain cover
Moss Bank waits in the WA postcode area, and the vans that answer petrol in diesel calls there work the places near it as well — Clinkham Wood, Green Leach and Carr Mill among them. You need not move your car to us. Forecourts, supermarket car parks, lay-bys and your own drive are all places where we work.
In Moss Bank and still at the pump?
The best position there is, then — that's where you are. Turned off it stays; then ring.