How Often do People Misfuel

misfueling, – putting the wrong fuel in a car, is a fairly regular occurrence

In the UK the general “fleet” of cars is shifting towards diesel and has done for the last 15 years, this is the biggest reason for the rise in incidents of misfueling.

Fuel filler nozzles are made in 2 sizes, petrol being the thinner one will fit snugly into a patrol car, diesel nozzles are slightly thicker and will not fit into a most petrol cars, that said there are a few notable exceptions, petrol powerd Japanese grey market imports do not have the narrow petrol filling necks and it is possible to fill them up with diesel by mistake.

There are devices on the market that aim to prevent you from putting the wrong fuel in, these work with varying degrees of success and I have also seen them not work when supposed to, Land rover/rangerover/jaguar fit a device on new cars and have done so for a few years, this is a mechanical device that shuts the filler neck with a spring loaded flap – which stops you from putting and more fuel in, (until it has been re-set by the reset tool onboard the car in the glove box or spare tier compartment)

The idea behind the spring load trap is simple and I think it is better than nothing, but it is not fail proof, the device works by being triggered if the contact points are touched in the filling neck, a diesel nozzle being wider than a petrol nozzle will not go down the neck far enough to hit the contact points (there are 2, both or either of them will active the flap if touched), If you try and fill these cars with petrol and push the nozzle in it will eventually hit a contact point, the point where it falls down is that unless you put the petrol nozzle in dead straight and in the middle, it will not get past the diesel nozzle rest, and thus not activate the spring

If this does happen then all is not lost, a mobile fuel drain can come to you and drain the wrong fuel or petrol in diesel from your vehicle and get you back up and running again within an hour.

There are about 60 small companies in the UK that deal with this as a specialty and most of them advertise at petrol stations with cards left behind the counter.

The AA offer wrong fuel removal service called fuel assist and this is available to its members for about 180 pounds, for nonmembers this may be a bit more, they have an average cover of the UK but can sometimes take a while to attend

The RAC also have a fuel draining service but this is smaller and not as well established, it was started in the west of England as a testing ground and eventually is being rolled out across the country

Halfords offer fuel draining in certain locations, check on their website for more info.

Here is a list of the questions I get asked on or before nearly every job! Like wrong fuel, petrol in diesel this isn’t as catastrophic as you might think and there is a simple, effective solution in a mobile fuel drain – a service we provide all over the south east and we attend most call outs with 50 minutes, 24 hours a day. there are many different things that can happen with misfuelling, I have covered most of them below.