Did you know that over 160,000 motorists will fill their car with the wrong fuel this year in the UK alone.
That’s an astonishing one every three minutes, and the numbers seem to be increasing every year! This problem has become so wide spread that breakdown recovery companies are now offering mobile wrong fuel drains as a separate service to their breakdown service. With repair bill running into the thousands, what can you do to minimize the cost of mistakenly putting the wrong fuel in ayour car? After all it was just a mistake! The most important thing to point out at this stage is the importance of not turning on the engine. As obvious as it may sound, over 55% of motorists who put the wrong fuel in their car, don’t realize until they have driven off the forecourt. By this time it could already be too late as driving with the wrong fuel can cause catastrophic damage to the engine and its components. If you have started the vehicle you should turn it off as soon as possible to avoid damage.
You will need to contact an expert team who are used to seeing wrong fuel in cars, to get the fuel tank and the fuel lines drained and flushed with a cleaner. Once the system has been completely removed of fuel, the car will have the correct fuel placed back into its tank and the vehicle will then be started back up so that you can continue your journey.
This problem is so wide spread that even the police and ambulance services have filled their vehicles with the wrong fuel. The most common is motorists putting petrol into a diesel car rather than diesel into a petrol car, this is due to the size of the nozzles at the filling station and also the size of the filler hole on the vehicles.
Diesel is a thicker fluid compared to petrol as it has more oil in it. This means that diesel fuel requires a larger nozzle to dispense the thicker fluid. This has enabled car manufacturers to design a filler whole smaller enough that the petrol nozzle will fit in but the diesel nozzle is too big. This however doesn’t work both ways round and putting both the petrol and diesel nozzles into a diesel car is possible. On circumstances where the vehicle has been driven, its recommended that you contact a petrol in diesel car specialist to resolve the problem as they will be able to asses the damage that could have been caused by putting the wrong fuel in your car, and can also provide a solution to prevent any further damage from occurring to your engines components.
The sort of damage that can occur from putting the wrong fuel in your car ranges from something relatively small like a fuel pump to complete internal engine damage, this is why it is so important to get specialist advice if you have mis-fueled your vehicle.