Petrol in a Diesel Car in Wigan: How Worried Should You Be?
Probably less than you already are — provided no one has started the car. Everyone around Wigan begins with "have I wrecked it?", and the fair answer is usually no: petrol left inside your tank of any diesel remains harmless till priming, cranking or driving draws it into your fuel system. Keep it like that: leave your motor off and phone Petrol in Diesel. What petrol really does to a diesel, how to judge how far it has travelled, and how to keep it from happening again: that's the remainder of this page.
Your engine and petrol in a diesel: what happens
Diesel has two jobs on its way through a motor. Oiling comes before burning; it does both. What stops the surfaces inside the high-pressure fuel pump and your injectors from wearing against each other is the diesel flowing through them — they're built to extremely fine gaps.
Petrol handles the first job poorly and the second not at all. Being less viscous than diesel, petrol strips away the protection a fuel system needs, so a pump on that mixture to wear itself. It is equally made to resist igniting under compression — the reverse of what a diesel needs — which is where you hear the clattering.
Put these together and the shape of the problem is plain. Contact doesn't do the harm — movement does. Where the petrol is only in your tank, it's a problem of fuel, nothing more. A pump that has been working on that petrol is the beginning of a mechanical one, and whatever a worn pump sheds moves on with your fuel to the fuel injectors downstream.
Wigan, petrol in a diesel: four situations, from mild to significant
Filled up, not once started. The best case there is. Only that tank has petrol in it, and so the job is draining your tank and flushing the fuel system where your car stands. This situation can only truly happen at a forecourt: anywhere else, the vehicle got there by being driven.
The ignition switched on, or a short start. The fuel system has been primed, so petrol has left your tank and reached the filter and your lines. Usually nothing more than clearing, rinsing and seeing to the filter, so still easy.
Those few miles on the road were your pump working on fuel diluted by petrol the whole way. The work is the tank, the fuel lines, your filter and clean fuel through the entire circuit, and how hard the car was driven matters as much as how far. Short trips, like the school run to St Mary and St John Catholic Primary School, are one thing. Getting as far as Salford, under 15 miles away, makes a very different task — as does any miles on the Bryn Spur, under 3 miles from Wigan, with the motor running hard the whole time.
It complained, and only then stopped: smoke, knocking, a throttle gone soft, an idle gone uneven. The fuel isn't acting like diesel any more, and the motor is telling you. Pull up where you are — on the verge on Hewlett Street, at the kerb, down a side road — and do not move it. The drain and flush still go first, and they take care of it: when a vehicle is pulled over soon, lasting damage is very unusual.
Petrol in a diesel stories Wigan motorists hear
Myth: "Fill it the rest of the way with diesel and it'll be fine." It will not. Topping up removes nothing; it gives you a bigger tank of the same mixture. Percentage is not how a diesel fuel system copes with petrol, however much that advice presumes.
"Modern diesels can handle a little petrol" — a myth, and closer to the reverse. Protection matters more on current diesels, not less, since their fuel passes through smaller parts at higher pressure.
"It starts, it drives, and so there is no harm" — the myth that catches more drivers than any other. Feed diesel to a petrol engine and it normally will not run, so the driver stops — and the harm stops with them. Feed petrol to a diesel and it generally starts, ticks over and drives away as if nothing happened — all while its pump is wearing. A running engine doesn't mean fine.
"A drop of two-stroke oil and drive it home" — a myth, borrowed from a fix from years ago, for a separate problem. None of what petrol diluted gets put back by it — and afterwards, your tank still holds the petrol.
"Drain it yourself and you are sorted" — a myth, since after it's been running some petrol sits in the fuel filter and lines, waiting to go right back through the pump at the next start. It is also really hazardous to drain petrol into a can at the kerbside.
Petrol in a diesel: how does it take place?
It's seldom carelessness, and nobody does it on purpose. One way only, because of the nozzles: the smaller petrol one slips inside a diesel filler with almost no resistance, whereas the diesel one generally won't fit a petrol car. That is how the forecourt makes it easy.
When routine and the car stop matching, it takes place. Courtesy car, hire car, or a car that is 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 hurried fill on the way to Wigan Wallgate with a train to catch. Years of petrol motors behind you, a diesel Volkswagen Golf in front of you at the forecourt for its first tank — that is when. With rain, a call arriving, or a car full of children to deal with, your hand simply does what it has always done.
Next time you fill up in Wigan: avoiding petrol in a diesel
- The label is what counts, and so read the petrol pump rather than the colour: in the UK unleaded handles are normally green and diesel black, yet not on every forecourt.
- The first fill in an unfamiliar motor is the time to check the filler flap — on it, or on the cap, many cars state the fuel they take.
- Good intentions do less than a sticker or a fob in a vivid colour on your diesel's key if a home has one of each. So label it.
- It sounds daft and it works: on your first fill in a new or hired car, say "diesel" out loud before you take the nozzle off the pump.
- Mistakes like this are simple to make whilst your mind is on something else, and so your phone goes away.
- Add-on devices are available for motors without one, and some diesels come with a filler that won't accept a petrol nozzle. Useful — but a backstop only, never a reason to stop checking the label.
- As soon as you notice, stop: less petrol in that tank makes a weaker mixture. What to do next does not change, though — still don't crank it.
Already put petrol in a diesel around Wigan?
Then the order of things is short. Do not switch the ignition on, and don't crank it. The staff on the forecourt — whether at Tesco itself or wherever you filled up — will usually help roll it away from the pump if you ask. Then call 0333 366 0103 and tell us what went in, roughly how much, and whether it has run.
If it was AdBlue instead of petrol, say so. That is a different fault — corrosion and deposits rather than lost protection — and it has its own page for Wigan.
One petrol in a diesel task around Wigan costs more than another. Why?
There's no honest single quote for this, because the four situations above are four separate jobs. Which of them you're in is mostly what shifts the cost. After that it's the ratio — how much petrol was put in against how much your tank holds — and after that where the car is and whether a technician can get to it safely.
That is why our engineers ask three queries before pricing rather than after: what was put in, how much, and if it has run. Their replies are what change a range into one firm number.
About Wigan
Wigan is a town in Greater Manchester, situated on the River Douglas and Leeds-Liverpool Canal, with a mix of industrial and residential areas. Wigan has a population of around 24900 people and is characterised by its predominantly terraced housing stock. Wigan is located near several smaller communities, including Wallgate, Water Heyes, and Bull Hey, and is close to the city of Salford. Wigan sits at an elevation of 52 metres above sea level, in the North West region of England.
Fuel drain cover around Wigan and across Greater Manchester
Our vans answering petrol in diesel calls around Wigan, in the WN postcode area, also work the places near it, Wallgate, Water Heyes and Bull Hey among them. The car does not need to come to us: our technicians drain on a forecourt, in a supermarket car park, in a lay-by or on your own driveway.
Wigan: still at the petrol pump?
The best place there is, then — that is where you are. Turned off it stays; then call.