How to prevent petrol being put into diesel car by mistake?

I've got a feeling one's bigger than the other - I think it prevents petrol going in a diesel. I say this as I've heard of lots of people putting derv into a petrol car before.

Failing that, get a "DIESEL" sticker and put it just in side the fuel filler flap.

In message , AstraVanMan writes

Nope, it's the other way around. The filler on an unleaded petrol car is much narrower so that it will only accommodate the unleaded nozzle on the pumps. This was originally to stop you filling it with four star and wrecking the cat, but it also stops you putting diesel in too.

Or just be very careful for the first few months, and after that it'll become second nature. (Says he who's about to go from petrol to diesel for the first time, and will probably end up filling the thing with unleaded at some point.)

From what I remember, you can get away with a certain percentage of unleaded mixed with the diesel. So if you realise your mistake after pumping in a few litres of unleaded, you can just switch pumps and brim it with diesel.

No. Not so. You can put an unleaded (and maybe leaded as well) petrol nozzle into a diesel filler hole. (personal experience)

I say this as I've heard of lots of people putting derv

Doesn't necessarily stop this though! (personal experience)

Rob Graham

*But*, IIRC, putting 'some' petrol in a diesel is OK. Run it and frequently top it up with diesel to reduce the proportions.

Put 'some' diesel in a petrol engine and you are looking at a very expensive job.

So the consequences are a *lot* better this way round.

Our local Asda filling station had its petrol reservoirs filled with diesel by the tanker driver. They didn't realise anything was wrong until motorists gradually started calling in. It even made the main Ceefax news pages!

The message from Paul contains these words:

Yes - engage brain!

The message from "AstraVanMan" contains these words:

Other way round. UL spouts are much smaller to stop people putting the big 4* nozzle in cat-equipped cars.

In message , Guy King writes

Doesn't always work! After 30 years of driving both petrol and derv vehicles I finally cocked up 2 weeks ago and put 5 litres of petrol in a my Mondeo, not enough to cause a problem but F***ing embarrassing all the same. I blamed it on the young lady using the next pump, if she hadn't been so good looking my brain may have been on the job in hand.

>

You can get a little gadget that sticks to the inside of the filler cover with a light sensor and a tiny speaker. When you open the cover it tells you to put diesel in.

I've seen the link posted in the last couple of days but I can't remember where it was now

Thinking about it, that was a silly idea to do it that way around. It's a lot less likely, IMHO, that people driving petrol cars will accidentally put diesel in their car (as most of them are used to petrol, and have mainly used petrol for ages) than people who normally drive petrol cars will accidentally fill a diesel van/minibus they've hired/borrowed with petrol, because that's what they're used to.

So I reckon they've done things the wrong way around.

The job in hand!

...castration then.

...or blinkers?

They're solving a different problem - the small UL nozzle isn't to stop you putting diesel in a petrol car, it's to stop you putting leaded into a car which can't take it.

The other thing is putting leaded into a car which can't take it merely wrecks the cat, and you can't tell it has until you do an emissions test. It would appear to work, so a lot more people would do it. Also you can't distinguish the two types of petrol as easily as petrol vs diesel.

cheers, clive

In message , Mark W writes

Now there's an idea as a punishment for CLOC members.

I thought the savings on diesel weren't so great these days when you include the higher diesel fuel cost, higher initial vehicle purchase cost and then more frequent servicing - unless you do ALOT of mileage?

Not your hand on the job? :o)

Diesel only costs about 4% more than unleaded and should get anything up to

50% better mpg than a petrol car. Yes , the car will cost more to buy (say a grand or so on a typical family car) but you will also get a good chunk of that back when you resell the car depending on age and mileage. The servicing usually is no more frequent or expensive than a petrol car. It's still worth doing some proper calculations though.

Over 3 years and 90000 miles I'l have saved 3000 in fuel in my 1.9tdi compared to a 2.0 petrol with similar performance. Even taking into account the higher purchase price I'm still much better off.

In one of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books, the proposed sentence for all first time offenders was castration as this would prevent them breeding even more criminals. Unfortunately the people of that particular planet weren't prepared to wait 50 years to rid themselves of crime so they upped the sentence to death.