Ooops .. Put petrol in diesel car..

Yes, why is that? My Touran has the same warning - I was wondering what that was all about? I agree it seems ironic, though only academically as Monsieur Brown will never allow bio-diesel to take an economic advantage.

Cheers

Tim

The high pressure diesel pumps require diesel of the correct spec. Putting more than 5% biodiesel takes the diesel out of spec, and it can kill the pump.

Allegedly.

Pete.

Pete Smith (pete snipped-for-privacy@lethe.org.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

With you so far...

Not necessarily. Biodiesel has the lubricity that petrol lacks - and it's the lack of lubrication that kills the very high pressure pumps on common rail diesels.

CRDs are still able to run on higher than 5% biodiesel mixes - Cit put out a press release last year that all their press fleet is run on 30%

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Ivan" saying something like:

It's more to do with the seals and rubber tubes. BD can attack older rubber, but if you replace the rubbery bits with Viton (a fluropolymer) they are quite resistant to BD. Fwiw, I've been running my 01 Tranny on BD for thousands of miles with no problems, and the handbook mentions the 5% max. VW diesels are generally ok with BD also, leaving the factory with Viton rubber.

Those rubber seals and tubes are the same ones that dry out and break down when low and ultra low sulphur diesel is used, so hopefully the cars that would have a problem with BD will have already been culled or refitted by now.

Not sure why Ford say 5% max - if the engine runs on ULSD, it should run on pure BD. Probably don't want to spend any money testing, but the French have been running on 5% BD for a while now, so have tested that mix for them.

Bob

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Bob Smith" saying something like:

Also the Germans; they've been using various blends of BD for years and many older Mercs and VWs are quite happy running on it and vegoil.