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Ran out of diesel - d'oh!

Ran out of diesel in the City o' London today - for those that know London, it started stuttering a bit on Gresham Street (approaching Princes St), then straight on to Lothbury and around the corner towards Threadneedle Street and it stalled. Got it going again, then right onto Threadneedle St, waited at the lights, up Cornhill, hoped and prayed, lights went green, onto Leadenhall St (delivering to Bilitter St so not too far to walk), round the one-way streets (Lime St, Fenchurch Ave) and it finally made it to outside the building I'm delivering to before conking out. Try and fire it up again after delivering (silly move and I knew it) and it went then died. Tried again (turned over several times) and nothing, introducing loads of air into the system at the same time. Wrote note to stick in windscreen that read "RAN OUT OF FUEL - PLEASE DO NOT GIVE ME A TICKET, HAVE A HEART", then got a cab to the petrol station, bought a petrol can and a gallon of derv, cab waited and took me back, tenner for the cab, just under a tenner for can + fuel, put derv in tank, still won't go after several attempts of turning over for a few seconds then waiting a minute or two before trying again. Think "shit". Contemplate phoning around local recovery places to sort me out, then realise RAC membership is not vehicle specific and hasn't yet expired. Call them out, they say up to 45 minutes, they turn up in 50 minutes, give me a jump start as I'd run the battery flat, RAC man loosens injector pipes. Turn over several times, second booster battery gets attached, RAC man pumps on some rubber gizmo on the side of the engine several times, then it starts. He revs it hard for a while to make sure it won't stall and bingo, I'm on my way.

Stupid thing was, the day before we cleared out the shed and found 3 jerry cans and I commented that every time I'd ran out of fuel I'd bought another one.

So, out of the people on this group, who's got the biggest collection of jerry cans???

Peter

Reply to
AstraVanMan
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Jesus Peter, sometimes you are just not fit to be allowed out! Lucky not to have been ticketed by some right bastard though eh? God knows there's enough about in the City. Stay lucky! JB

Reply to
JB

LOL!! True, very true.

Well, on return to the van there was no ticket, but after trying to start it several times (with the gallon in the tank, and it was a downhill slope which couldn't have helped) a traffic warden was there. It was clear what my problem was, but he explained he had to write a ticket out, but as I was broken down I should have no problem getting it cancelled as long as I can provide proof of the RAC call-out. He even advised me to mention that I broke down, rather than ran out of fuel! The bastard thing was I only ran it so low as I was running really close to a deadline for a pissed off customer, so couldn't f*ck it up, and most of the time I've easily managed

420-430 miles to a tank with 3-4 litres to spare, so didn't think I was chancing it too much at 410. Anyway, it's running again so that's all good.

About traffic wardens in the city - in the actual City (i.e. Corporation of London) they seem to be a hell of a lot less of them than in the West End (City of Westminster) or Holborn (Camden Borough), where you'll have 2 or 3 pounce on you if you leave your car for a couple of seconds!

Peter

Reply to
AstraVanMan

I've got about 5, never run out of petrol yet but do have a few cars to keep toped up and a petrol mower.

Reply to
Depresion

The message from "AstraVanMan" contains these words:

Only one, and it's full of paraffin.

Reply to
Guy King

Lucky not to be looking down the business end of an H&K and asked if his van's full of fertilizer....

Reply to
Grant Mason

So where do you stand if you repair/recover it yourself then?

Reply to
SimonJ

Three cans; two red -one empty, one marked Derv but with a couple of litres of two stroke mix in it and one green with something that smells like white spirit, could be paraffin-maybe. I don't put antifreeze in a Mateus Rose bottle though. DaveK

Reply to
DaveK

%some dood% scribbled:

Thats typical, you broke down and got a ticket but when someone actually deserves a ticket, theres no warden about to give one. Me and a work colleague were on an emergency job at our companies Tottenham Court Road shop so we'd parked inside the delivery bay round the back.

3 hrs later we open the delivery bay to reverse the car out and someone had parked straight accross the "crossover" stopping us moving the car at all. We spent two hours on the phone to Camden car pound requesting that they send someone to look at it and tow the car away and eventually they just point blank refused to come out saying he wasn't breaking the law. I always thought the highway code said you weren't supposed to block an entrance. Even two passing "special" police who passed by said it was illegally parked and we should phone the car pound to get it moved. Good job the owner didn't come back while we were still there. After three hours a car down the road moved and we had to drive down the pavement to get away.

Lee.

Reply to
LeeEskriett

Unless it's changed recently it used to be the case that itwas illegal to block access from the road to the drive but not from the drive to the road.

Reply to
Duncan Wood

Isn't that the same thing though, we couldn't leave the loading bay and no one could have got in because of this car in the way.

Reply to
LeeEskriett

The most I've ever had is about 6 or 7, IIRC. Which I started giving away because I was tired of falling over them. Then I got carried away and realised when I needed one I didn't have any left :(

Reply to
Stuffed

Too big to 'bounce' was it? Or did you not think of that?

Reply to
Mike Faithfull

More like not enough space at each side to bounce. It looked like the driver has scraped the bumper of the car in front getting in to the space to start with because of colour scrapes on the bumpers. The only thing that would have "bounced" that day would have been the driver if he or she had returned to the car while we were waiting!

Reply to
LeeEskriett

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