Sainsburys fuel gaff

Ultrasonic

Time for a naive question: why is it that tankers and fuel station tanks don't simply have a different type of connector for petrol and diesel? Surely a system like that could easily make errors like reported in this thread impossible.

shaun_from_Africa

oldagetraveller wrote: »

"Diesel in petrol = drain, flush ,clean = £300"

Should be very difficult in a modern car as the Diesel nozzle is bigger and shouldn't fit into the filler restriction?!

It doesn't make any difference what size the nozzle is and what restrictor is fitted to the filler hole if the bulk storage tank in the garage has the wrong stuff in it.

Joe_Horner

Ultrasonic wrote: »

Time for a naive question: why is it that tankers and fuel station tanks don't simply have a different type of connector for petrol and diesel? Surely a system like that could easily make errors like reported in this thread impossible.

Good question, and a definitive answer would be interesting. At a guess, the tankers themselves are probably dual-purpose for either (obviously with suitable flushing) and they expect the driver to know what he's carrying?

Joe_Horner

peter_the_piper wrote: »

Is this the right way round?

I've put a couple of gallons of petrol into a diesel car in error with no problem (more might have been) but a tank of diesel in petrol car would be very expensive to sort out.

A bit of petrol in a diesel (couple of gallons on a tank, say) probably won't matter even in a newish car. You'll lose a little lubrication through the pump and injectors but they'll still have enough to survive In the good old days a little petrol was often used to help cold starting / prevent waxing of the fuel.

But 40 quids worth (probably at least 50% of the contents) is going to cause problems, especially if the tank was close to empty.

Diesel in a petrol engine will simply refuse to burn (if the mix is too high) or not burn very well and cause misfires. That might cause problems with the cat if it's up to temperature and the problems show at speed but it's more likely to just stop the engine. Once it's all flushed through the engine will be fine, even if the cat's suffered.

peter_the_piper

Luckily it was an old Corsa with a basic diesel Isuzu engine, actually seemed to run better. Never did it again though.

andrew-the-cat

Ultrasonic wrote: »

Time for a naive question: why is it that tankers and fuel station tanks don't simply have a different type of connector for petrol and diesel? Surely a system like that could easily make errors like reported in this thread impossible.

Because most tankers have multiple compartments which can hold different liquids in each (eg a single tanker can carry unleaded, super unleaded, and diesel).

This is part of the reason why the whole fuel strike thing was going to happen, because there was no security in the contracts that the fuel delivery companies had, for example Tesco could switch from their current supplier to another at the end of the contract. And the boys who know what they were doing were not impressed with the fact that they could so easily be undercut by a bunch of idiots who didn't know what the !!!! they were doing - just like this guy.