Should You Worry? Petrol in a Diesel Car in Plank Lane
If it has not been started, worry less than you likely are. Until your ignition primes your pump, the starter cranks, or your car is driven, petrol in a diesel tank simply rests there and does nothing. Which makes the honest reply to the first Plank Lane query — "have I wrecked it?" — usually no. Petrol in Diesel is who to ring, with your motor left off, so it stays that way. Further down, you will find what petrol actually does inside a diesel, how far it may have got, and how to stop it happening to you again.
Petrol in a diesel: what does it do to the engine?
On its way through an engine, diesel has two jobs. Before it ignites, it protects — and then it burns. Very fine clearances are built into your injectors and the high-pressure fuel pump, and just your diesel running through keeps their surfaces from grinding together.
The second job petrol does not do at all, and the first it does poorly. A pump working on a petrol mix is wearing itself out, because petrol is thinner than diesel and strips out the protection the fuel system relies on. Petrol is also made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs from its fuel — and that's where the rattling starts.
Seen together, they show what shape the issue has. It is movement that does the harm, not contact. All a tank with petrol in it amounts to is a fuel problem. The beginning of a mechanical problem is a pump that has been working on that petrol — and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to your injectors downstream.
How serious is petrol in a diesel? Four situations our technicians see around Plank Lane
Fuelled but never started — the best it gets. Only your tank has petrol in it, and so the job is emptying the tank and purging your system where your car stands. This situation can only truly occur at a forecourt: anywhere else, your car got there by being driven.
Your ignition switched on, or a short start. Once primed, the system has drawn petrol out of your tank as far as the filter and the lines. Still normally easy: drain, flush, and your filter seen to.
Those few miles on the road meant the pump labouring on fuel thinned by petrol the whole way. How hard your car was driven matters as much as how far, and this work takes in that tank, the fuel lines, the filter and clean fuel through the entire system. Short trips, such as the school run to Leigh St Peter's CofE Primary School, are one matter. Getting as far as Salford, under 15 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any mileage on the M6, under 5 miles from Plank Lane, with the motor running hard all the way.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, rattling, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone lumpy. What you are hearing is your engine reporting fuel that no longer runs like diesel. Leave it where it has stopped: a lay-by, a quiet street, the verge on Common Lane. A car stopped quickly very rarely has permanent damage, as the fuel drain and the flush, which still come first, deal with it.
Petrol in a diesel myths Plank Lane people hear
It will not be fine. The myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it will be." Nothing comes out when you top up — the tank just carries more of the same blend. Percentage isn't how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that advice presumes.
"Newer diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the opposite. Smaller components and higher pressure are how a newer diesel runs its fuel, and that makes the lubrication matter more, not less.
Myth: "If it starts and drives, there's no harm done." This is the one that catches motorists. Any petrol engine fed diesel generally will not run, so the driver stops and the damage stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it usually fires up, idles and drives away like nothing happened — all the while its pump wears. Running does not mean fine.
An outdated fix for a separate fault is behind this one. Myth: "Add some two-stroke oil and drive the vehicle home." It doesn't put back what petrol has weakened, and the petrol is still in the tank afterwards.
"Drain it yourself and you're sorted" — a myth, because after it's been running some petrol lies in your filter and lines, ready to go straight back through the pump at your next start. On top of that, petrol drained into a can by the road is genuinely dangerous.
How petrol ends up: petrol in a diesel
A careless moment is seldom the cause, and no one means to do it. A diesel nozzle mostly won't fit a petrol motor, but the narrower petrol nozzle goes into the filler of a diesel nearly without resistance — so forecourts make this one mistake easy, and just in that direction.
The moment routine stops matching the vehicle is the moment it happens. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that is new. Two motors on one drive, one petrol, one diesel. Your usual forecourt, its pumps now in a different order. Fuelling up in a hurry en route to Daisy Hill, with a train to catch. A new-to-you diesel Volkswagen Golf, its first fuelling, and a driver accustomed to petrol: exactly when it happens. Your hand does what it has always done when you add rain, a phone call or a back seat full of children.
How to prevent petrol in a diesel at your next fill-up in Plank Lane
- The label is what matters, and so read the petrol pump instead of the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are usually green and diesel black, but not on every forecourt.
- Many vehicles state the fuel inside the filler flap or on the cap, so check there on the first fill in any vehicle you don't know.
- A coloured fob or a sticker on the diesel's key does more than any amount of meaning to remember, in a house with one of each.
- Before the nozzle comes off the petrol pump the first time you fuel a hired or new motor, say "diesel" aloud. Silly, yes, but it does the trick.
- Whilst you are thinking about something else, this is an easy mistake to make — so tuck your phone away.
- Some diesels have a filler designed to block a petrol nozzle, and devices you can add exist for cars without one. Such an inhibitor helps up to a point — as a backstop, not a reason to stop reading the petrol pump.
- Less petrol means a weaker blend, and so stop the moment you notice — though remembering that your next step is unchanged. It is still not to crank it.
Petrol already in a diesel around Plank Lane? Start here
Short and simple, then, is the order of things. Leave it unstarted, with the ignition off too. Ask the attendants to help you push it away from the pump if you're still on the forecourt, whether that's Pace or somewhere else. Next, 0333 366 0103. We will ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has been run.
AdBlue, not petrol? Then say so. Corrosion and deposits, not lost lubrication, make it a different problem — Plank Lane has a page all for it.
What makes one Plank Lane petrol in a diesel task cost more than the next
An honest single quote does not exist here: four situations, four separate jobs. Which of them you're in is chiefly what moves your cost. Two things follow that: the petrol that went in as a proportion of what your tank takes, then the spot the vehicle is in and whether our van can reach it safely.
Three queries come first, before quoting, rather than after — what got in, how much, has it run — and this is the reason. The answers change a range into a straight figure.
About Plank Lane and its setting
Plank Lane is a suburban area situated near several lakes in the North West of England, with an elevation of around 23 metres. Plank Lane lies approximately 10.5 miles from Salford and is surrounded by nearby places such as Firs Lane, Crankwood, and Aspull Common. Plank Lane has a population of around 3394 residents, who mostly live in semi-detached housing. Plank Lane is located about 170.9 miles from London, making it a relatively distant suburb from the capital city.
Fuel drain cover across Greater Manchester, Plank Lane included
Petrol in diesel jobs in Plank Lane — part of the WN postcode area — go to vans that also cover the places about it, Firs Lane, Crankwood and Aspull Common included. We drain where your car 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 Plank Lane?
The best spot there is, then — that's where you are. Keep it off. Ring.