Rejecting new car due to dealer misfuel

sevenhills

99iainb said:

I Bought a new car in England on the 29/12, collected it with 64 miles fuel range in it. Drove to the nearest petrol station and filled up with petrol. Drove home 110 miles, left it a few days before travelling on holiday did another 150 miles, with no performance issues and very good mpg numbers... when the engine failed, got towed back to my local dealer

You are not giving much information there. How did it fail?

99iainb

sevenhills said:

99iainb said:

I Bought a new car in England on the 29/12, collected it with 64 miles fuel range in it. Drove to the nearest petrol station and filled up with petrol. Drove home 110 miles, left it a few days before travelling on holiday did another 150 miles, with no performance issues and very good mpg numbers... when the engine failed, got towed back to my local dealer

You are not giving much information there. How did it fail?

It made a knocking noise almost flapping noise (it was hammering it down with rain at the time) and started to lose power, I pulled off the motorway, stopped the car, started it again and the knocking was really bad and it wouldn't rev past 5000, at that point I switched off and called the AA.

Injector in cylinder 2 needed replacing and misfuel diagnosed

Goudy

If one of the injectors aren't firing fuel into the cylinder, that cylinder will knock, you'll be down on power as it's only running on three it won't rev cleanly (or perhaps two with a 3 cylinder engine) and it'll shudder and shake.

The dealer is saying diesel in the fuel has taken that injector out.
It seems a bit of a stretch for them to make that up to save on a warranty claim that the dealer would get paid for anyway from Hyundai UK.
I'm not saying it's impossible they have or haven't, but they must have found something to state their position like this.

As no one can prove for certain what the contaminant actually is and more importantly where it came from, the bill is in your court unfortunately.

As I wrote earlier, the percentage of diesel to petrol can change the outcome and it's not just about what is going in, but what it's mixing with already in the tank, this works both ways.

I suspect you filled up with the tank virtually empty (64 mile range is probably 5 litres, probably less as the car hasn't done enough miles for the trip to work out a reliable range) as all new cars tend to only have a few litres in them and we'll come back to that, but someone else might have filled up with the same contaminated petrol but already had a 1/4 of a tank of clean unleaded and someone else just stuck a tenners worth in but had a gallon or two in the tank at the time.

It could well be when you filled up, the petrol station had a problem with diesel in the unleaded tank.
It took a few hundred miles before your car coughed to a stop, others may now be suffering the same or not at all as the percentage in everyone's tanks would be different.

Now as it probably had only a few litres in the tank when you picked it up and you suspect that was diesel, you wouldn't have got off the dealers forecourt if that was the case.

It would have had to been predominantly diesel in there if it was to contaminate the 35 or more litres you added on the way home.

Normally, modern petrols can tolerate around 5% diesel in the petrol, that's about 2 litres in your car's 40 litre tank.
That means if it had diesel in the tank when you picked it up, out of the 5 litres or so in there, it needed to have a lot more than 2 litres of diesel and a petrol engine just wouldn't start, let alone run with that percentage.

If it is diesel in the petrol, you have more than likely picked it up when you filled up.

Alfrescodave

99iainb said:

Today's update:

Anyway, Hyundai have not sent the fuel off for analysis but I will be doing so tomorrow, kerching another £250. The repairing dealer still has all of the fuel drained from the system and said that if I want it to bring a container to put it in. They also have the damaged fuel injector that "doesn't look right" and I can have that too. When I get it I'll see if I can share the image for those of you that are interested and maybe know why it doesn't "look right".

I do think that you're putting too much effort into identifying what fuel is in the tank. At best the analysis will show that incorrect fuel is present but NOT how it got there. Unfortunately you cannot prove that you or anyone else didn't add the wrong fuel unless you have 24/7 video footage of the fuel cap.

As others have said, persuing the damaged fuel injector option with Hyundai could be the answer. Their unwillingness to analyse the fuel prevents them from possibly blaming the fuel as a cause for injector failure. 

daveyjp

I'm afraid its time to go legal.  Hyundai are playing the 'Post Office Ltd' game.  There is no way you can fill a petrol tank with 100% diesel and drive a few hundred miles.  The vehicle has suffered a fault other than a misfuel.

Many years ago my sister had an i30, bought due to the warranty length.  She had a few warranty issues and it was a battle every time to get the jobs done.

99iainb

Alfrescodave said:

99iainb said:

Today's update:

Anyway, Hyundai have not sent the fuel off for analysis but I will be doing so tomorrow, kerching another £250. The repairing dealer still has all of the fuel drained from the system and said that if I want it to bring a container to put it in. They also have the damaged fuel injector that "doesn't look right" and I can have that too. When I get it I'll see if I can share the image for those of you that are interested and maybe know why it doesn't "look right".

I do think that you're putting too much effort into identifying what fuel is in the tank. At best the analysis will show that incorrect fuel is present but NOT how it got there. Unfortunately you cannot prove that you or anyone else didn't add the wrong fuel unless you have 24/7 video footage of the fuel cap.

As others have said, persuing the damaged fuel injector option with Hyundai could be the answer. Their unwillingness to analyse the fuel prevents them from possibly blaming the fuel as a cause for injector failure. 

The thing is you could say the exact same thing about Hyundai, I'm going to ask them for evidence that they have put petrol in... like I the evidence that I have.

All I can do is gather as much evidence as I can and then hand it over to an independent adjudicator.

I have a brand new £24,000 car that I've had to spend another £1,000 on in repairs, potential damage to other parts of the fuel system and no warranty for it... and I'm pretty bloody angry about it! I can't just let it go, somebody is responsible.

Nobbie1967

99iainb said:

Alfrescodave said:

99iainb said:

Today's update:

Anyway, Hyundai have not sent the fuel off for analysis but I will be doing so tomorrow, kerching another £250. The repairing dealer still has all of the fuel drained from the system and said that if I want it to bring a container to put it in. They also have the damaged fuel injector that "doesn't look right" and I can have that too. When I get it I'll see if I can share the image for those of you that are interested and maybe know why it doesn't "look right".

I do think that you're putting too much effort into identifying what fuel is in the tank. At best the analysis will show that incorrect fuel is present but NOT how it got there. Unfortunately you cannot prove that you or anyone else didn't add the wrong fuel unless you have 24/7 video footage of the fuel cap.

As others have said, persuing the damaged fuel injector option with Hyundai could be the answer. Their unwillingness to analyse the fuel prevents them from possibly blaming the fuel as a cause for injector failure. 

The thing is you could say the exact same thing about Hyundai, I'm going to ask them for evidence that they have put petrol in... like I the evidence that I have.

All I can do is gather as much evidence as I can and then hand it over to an independent adjudicator.

I have a brand new £24,000 car that I've had to spend another £1,000 on in repairs, potential damage to other parts of the fuel system and no warranty for it... and I'm pretty bloody angry about it! I can't just let it go, somebody is responsible.

This will be decided on the balance of probabilities, so I think you are taking the right course. Assemble all the evidence you have and a clear timeline for what happened ready to present to the Ombudsman.

jimjames

99iainb said:

Then unbelievably they said that the fuel taken out of the car was 100% diesel!!!!!!

Anyway, Hyundai have not sent the fuel off for analysis but I will be doing so tomorrow, kerching another £250. 

How can they possibly say the fuel taken out was 100% diesel if they have also said they haven't had it tested? The two statements can't both be true!

sevenhills

99iainb said:

The Repairing dealer said there was something not right with the engine and they'd never seen anything quite like it before, almost as if somebody had tried to remove some fuel from the engine, I'm not engine savvy, so I don't really know what he was on about.

What does it mean, sounds like the dealer doesn't know if it is diesel in the tank or something else, surely they have seen that before?

99iainb

jimjames said:

99iainb said:

Then unbelievably they said that the fuel taken out of the car was 100% diesel!!!!!!

Anyway, Hyundai have not sent the fuel off for analysis but I will be doing so tomorrow, kerching another £250. 

How can they possibly say the fuel taken out was 100% diesel if they have also said they haven't had it tested? The two statements can't both be true!

I think they've done some kind of "burn" test on it, petrol would burn, diesel wouldn't... who knows tbh, I'm getting mixed messages from everybody