misfuel

[DG651]

Please allow me to add my (actually my son's - but my car!!) mis-fuel experience, and conclusions. Incident: SAAB 9-3 TDI complete refuel with petrol and run at speed until engine stopped:

1. For a mis-fuel, Green Flag will recover ONLY to the nearest garage even if you have national full recovery.
2. The garage charged me £1 per liter to dispose of the contaminated fuel (£50), fair price I think.
3. Fuel filter changed and fuel lines bled/purged.
4. Total cost £150.
5. First few days car took a couple more turns to start than normal. Now running perfect.
6. Son skint!

[asahartz]

So guess what, today my wife has done this! Fortunately she realised before filling it, though I'm not sure how much she put in, and she did at least get someone to push her from the pump and not start the engine before phoning me. "Call Recovery", I said.

Well, Green Flag said that the nearest garage that they were authorised to recover it to was in Sheffield, 40 miles away! Plus the labour charges. Bugger that I said, recover it home (9 miles!). I'll do the job myself.

So armed with the info in this thread and others on the forum, I now have an unplanned job for Saturday...


As for my wife... she's stressed as her mother is ill. This did not stop me pointing out that, of the cars we currently have on the road, the Volvo which she drives all the time is black like the diesel nozzle and the two petrol-engined cars which she rarely drives are green like the unleaded nozzle!

[GJB]

Originally Posted by asahartz

So guess what, today my wife has done this! Fortunately she realised before filling it, though I'm not sure how much she put in, and she did at least get someone to push her from the pump and not start the engine before phoning me. "Call Recovery", I said.

Well, Green Flag said that the nearest garage that they were authorised to recover it to was in Sheffield, 40 miles away! Plus the labour charges. Bugger that I said, recover it home (9 miles!). I'll do the job myself.

So armed with the info in this thread and others on the forum, I now have an unplanned job for Saturday...


As for my wife... she's stressed as her mother is ill. This did not stop me pointing out that, of the cars we currently have on the road, the Volvo which she drives all the time is black like the diesel nozzle and the two petrol-engined cars which she rarely drives are green like the unleaded nozzle!

Surely you could tell by the bill how much she put in?

[asahartz]

Originally Posted by GJB

Surely you could tell by the bill how much she put in?

Yes, but at the time I posted I'd seen her for all of 30 seconds - TBH I've only seen her for a few hours all weekend as her mother is in hospital and she's been there most of the time.

She put 13 litres in and we estimate there was probably about the same already in the tank. I'll find out in the next few minutes...

[asahartz]

Well it took about 2.5 hours to do it "on the key", about 22 litres of fuel all told. Now put half a tank of clean diesel in and all seems well.

[60041]

Mis fuelling is more common than most people think.
I used to work for an agricultural engineer that was next to a main road, and we would get a couple of people every month; sometimes they would limp in, others would be towed in.
Usually draining the tank and changing the fuel filter would be enough to send them on their way; I don’t ever recall anybody having subsequent problems with their vehicles.
Disposal of the contaminated fuel was easy, we had a 3000 litre tank of gas oil (red diesel) and a 1500 litre tank of derv and the drained fuel was simply tipped into one of those or, if the ratio of petrol was not too high, it would go straight into the tank of the Land Rover recovery vehicle. The Land Rover seemed quite happy with anything up to about 10% petrol!

[Tannaton]

.

In my experience ANY Diesel engine, be it mechanical pump or electric common rail, it quite happy running on a 10-15% mix. Contrary to popular myth, common rail systems are less susceptible to misfuelling damage than older mechanical pump.

[4x4]

It was common back in the 70s & 80s to add a couple of gallons of petrol into the diesel fuel tanks of trucks in the winter to stop the diesel from waxing due to the extreme low temperatures although nowadays anti-waxing should be added at the refinery

[owenfackrell]

When we bought our XC90 the dealer admitted that he had accidentally put petroleum in it but only about 10 litres and he had then filled the rest of the tank with diesel plus put some redex in it. That was 70k miles ago and the car is running fine.
We got a full tank of fuel out of it rather than just out of the red which was his original intention