Unleaded petrol mixed with Diesel in a Chrysler 2.5CRD

"Duncanwood" wrote>

Millions of Deutchmark spent in research and development was not wasted. They even went to the expense of a different material for petrol tanks to fit in the same space on the car. Wow.

Huw

It still doesn't mean I like them, but it has to be hard to make a worse car than the last Escorts.

I have to admit that of all the cars we tested on our New Civic day, the Focus was actually the biggest worry.

I have no idea, although they are both different chemicals anyway, petrol would dissolve many things where diesel would not.

Jeezus, you have 85% parts stock??? that must be crippling. I would suspect your statement there is wrong too, nearly all main dealers have nothing in stock, it would be commercial suicide to do otherwise, especially now we have such short stock order times.

I suspect it's a self-sealing liner. As both fuels have different flow characteristics surely the liner would need to be designed differently for optimum performance.

Here in the East coast of the USA, back in the 60's, we had a number of 2 cycle Saab's running around. Especially in the State of Conn., where most seemed to have been sold, gas station attendents would automatically add 2 cycle oil into the tank after filling up the little tike with petroleum.

When Saab switched to 4 stroke motors it was very common for station attendents to add the 4 stroke oil into the tank.

It seems that whenever people are involved mistakes of this kind will happen. [At least that mistake would not kill the motor]. A different size fill port would make a great idea for diesel fueled vehicles, especially if this catches on in North America.

Richard.

We have over £1.75million of parts for many big names in stock including bearings, engine parts, steering, transmission brake etc etc. chains filters oils greases and many tools, welders etc which are stocked front of shop, supermarket style, which I suspect is more stock than some manufacturers keep and gives you some idea of the scale and scope of operations. We have just opened a third depot and the second to have a major franchise area and currently have five fully equipped service vans allocated to workshop staff who can use these for home service and repairs in and out of normal business hours. We also have two recovery trucks which double as new and used delivery trucks to collect and return vehicles if that is more convenient to the customer and ourselves. Up until now most common rail repair work [as in reconditioning etc, not dismantling and reassembling] has been outsourced to a specialist. Our Mercedes Vito is currently with Shorts, a big mistake because we mistakenly diagnosed a fuel system problem which turned out to be bent conrods. We could easily have reconditioned this engine in-house but it is now in bits many miles away with no-one apparently able to put it back together. It will probably end up with a new engine partly paid for by insurance. Present costings indicate that there will be a grand bill plus VAT even insurance adjustments. We won't be buying another Vito.

Huw

Huw .

That is a fundamentally different point from that of a reasonable person making the mistake of mis-fuelling a car - a mistake that evidently is easily made, judging by the reports that tens of thousands of people do it a year.

I think we are both coming at this from our own work backgrounds and we are unlikely to agree, so I will leave it there. Thank you, sincerely, for your time.

It's a tank for Gawd's sake!

Huw

As it happens they *could* be inspected at any time especially as I use a similar quantity of red diesel for another business. I use so much derv that it is not realistic to think that I would dilute it, especially running so many common-rail engines ;-)

Huw

You may have the advantage that it is not yet commonplace so it might work. However it would have to be a smaller nozzle to work and I am a great believer in bigger nozzles for faster filling. A square nozzle would be good. A tight fitting octagonal with remote venting one even better. There is nothing worse than diesel spitting back over your shoes as the tank fills. One of the worse offenders for this is the US built Mercedes ML270CDi. A real pig to fill.

Huw

Are you talking genuine parts or pattern stuff here?

Haven't thought to work out the cause of bent conrods then?

I can assure you, noise is not an issue with the new one, and the diesel is the 2.2 lump from the Accord.

The message from "Huw" contains these words:

If I were cynical I'd say it's deliberately careless.

About half and half. Franchise parts are all genuine while other makes are mostly, but not all, pattern.

Shorts conveniently say water ingress which we know is not correct. We will not argue with that diagnosis for reasons which should be obvious. Our own fitters' opinion is that the valves stuck due to the high volume of EGR in these engines and the gunk that builds up on the inlet valves as a result. Many of those Mercedes CDi engines meet the same fate by all accounts. Shorts have three failures in now including ours. The air filter was absolutely dry with crisp leaves in the housing, yet they say water ingress LOL.

Huw

Probably is their wording - of course, since everyone else out there is doing the same thing, these bozos don't realize the intimidation factor is gone in a puff of smoke.

Ted

Hmm.. are you really sure of this?

In the US "premium" gasoline costs quite a bit more than "regular" I cannot recall a single time in the last 20 years (have I really been driving that long, Jesus I'm old!) that I have mistakenly fueled with Premuim than Regular, and thus had to pay the extra money for gasoline that is pretty much worthless. And keep in mind also that I live in a No-Self_service state so not only do I have to pay close attention to the minimum-wager who is doing the fueling, the minimum-wager has a vested interest in selecting the more expensive grade of fuel! (during this time I also have owned a motorcycle and ridden it as a daily commuting vehicle, and the attendants don't even try fueling bikes - that I do myself)

And that's just making a mistake between 2 different grades of gasoline, that come out of the same hose. The thought of doing it with Diesel, which comes out of a completely different hose althgether, one that's painted green not black, is even more farfetched.

Ted

tank capacities are often different for diesel and petrol models - so I assume the tank is different also

The message from "Ted Mittelstaedt" contains these words:

What's that all about then?