Reply With QuoteDiesel mini cooper s? I thought these were 1.6 petrol??
Just filled my wife's new diesel mini Cooper s with unleaded, realised before driving off, so not a total disaster. Just feeling like a total prat!
Total bill to get it out £220, great!
Just joined the ranks of the other 300,000 who have done exactly the same thing, nows there's a business idea, creating an item that prevents you doing it.
BTW I drive an unleaded car.
Diesel mini cooper s? I thought these were 1.6 petrol??
Originally Posted by melhick
They make them, they're fitted on ambulances in case you can't fill up at the station.
They're called 'Fuel Angels.'
They fit in your existing opening, and won't allow the wrong pump nozzle into it.
Probably ranging from £28 to £45.
Greg.
It's definitely a mini Cooper s diesel.
Chap at the garage thought it was hilarious, although I can see the funny side now!
Interesting, the chap from fuel doctors who pumped the unleaded out said there was nothing on the market to prevent you doing it, apart from common sense that is.
My car is due to be changed in the next month or so and I'll be having a diesel!
Common sense?
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I can confirm that the "road angels"' are fitted to our ambulances. Before they were fitted was costing the service a fortune emptying the tanks plus they lost the availability of an A&E vehicle. Most of the mistakes seemed to happen during nightshifts at around 6am
Some cars have it in-built. My old Range Rover diesel certainly had it - if you put in an unleaded nozel, it actually closed the opening until you reset it with a little tool that was housed in the glove box.
25 years ago I filled my petrol engined car up with diesel
I got about 100 yards down the road before it started belching out black smoke and stalled
Cost me £150 to have it towed to the main dealer and put right - plus the cost of a whole tank of diesel whatever that was at the time. To this day I double check every time I fill up. An expensive lesson.
Believe it or not I actually pushed it off the forecourt and rolled it down the road so that it wasn't in the way at the petrol station, cost me £20 for a bit of diesel in the tank so that I could drive it 20 yards back to the petrol station to fill up again!
It's easily done... my company car is a diesel, my personal car is unleaded - I have got in to thwarting habit of talking myself through filling up ;)
I got one free with my Grand C-Max. It lives in the glove box.
My friend put diesel in his Ducati when we were on our way to a track day at Silverstone. He belched smoke and came to a stand still not far from the petrol station. Luckily we were able to unbolt the tank, empty it and fill it with unleaded. Made it to Silverstone and although the bike ran a little rough from time to time it pretty much sorted itself by the end of the day.
Probably didn't do the bike much good thought!
You'll probably find that the 220 quid is cheap compared to the new ace that your wife has whenever you say anything that annoys her!
Some years ago, I went to a wedding in France and on the way back we stopped off at an Aire for fuel to find one of the the guests who'd gone over a bike draining their tank of diesel - luckily the guy on the till was a biker and had literally run out and stopped them before they'd finished and fired the bike up.
Easy to make a mistake when you're tired or in unfamiliar surroundings...
My car is diesel, partner's is petrol. Whenever I fill either, I stand there for half a minute checking and double checking I've got the right nozzle. And even after all that I pull the trigger with some trepidation
Ditto.My car is diesel, partner's is petrol. Whenever I fill either, I stand there for half a minute checking and double checking I've got the right nozzle. And even after all that I pull the trigger with some trepidation
Cheers,
Neil.
Why don't they just make them multi-fuel?
You could have selectable programming for the DEC to allow "mistakes" to be handled by a flip of the switch....
One of the car recovery company Green Flag I think now advertise as being the only company that cover this as standard membership.
So there are gadgets available to prevent unleaded going into a diesel tank but how about a failsafe method, is that too hard?
Could be as simple as a round hole for unleaded and an oval hole for diesel, or am I missing something?
Simple, yes.
Easy to roll out, no.
Every car on the road, worldwide, would need to be changed, as would every pump in the world.
And when would you do it? It would have to be done literally overnight to get cars/pumps all onto the new system at the same time.
Ryan, I'll supply them with a vice to make those round nozzles oval but yes on a world wide scale it's a daunting task.
It is however a fact that when diesel was introduced, the designers missed the point, luckily for them it's not an health and safety issue!
The chap at the filling station was totally unfazed, saying "happens all the time" adding " you do have to pay for the fuel though! "
Last edited by melhick; 3rd March 2014 at 08:35.
The system us such that the unleaded pump nozzle is smaller than the diesel pump nozzle so it's not possible to put diesel in a petrol car. The devices make use of the fact that the internal diameter of the petrol nozzle is also smaller.
It wouldn't be a big job to put the gadget in every new diesel car which would solve the problem going forward. Existing cars could be retrofitted.
Hopefully there'll only be one type of electricity going into cars if the future!
Yes, my wife's Freelander has this as well - saved my ass on one occasion (& £220 by the looks of it) - very useful feature.
Mines a petrol,so I use the pump which delivers "petrol" NOT "diesel".
Yep, I have 3 cars, a motorhome and a Harley, 3 are diesel ,2 are petrol, I usually try and put the correct fuel in each one, seems this time I didn't!
I bought my first diesel recently , my other car is petrol. My insurance offered me me a special cover for £12 a year in case I put the wrong fuel in the car. I took it just in case. I have to double check every time I'm filling up the cars in case I'm putting in the wrong fuel.
I think I'd prefer a petrol engine nowadays, - there's too much to go wrong with diesels, turbo's, DPF's, DMF's and who knows what else.
Last edited by Jim W; 3rd March 2014 at 17:49.
My friend did this too - was an old bike so we disconnected the feed to the carbs and used the fuel pump to empty the tank by turning the iginition on/off repeatedly and no cats to worry about in those days either so filled it up with petrol and on our way.
I have never had a diesel but still think and check before I fill as hear so often people making this mistake.
Carbs... those were the days.
Diesels definitely still have their place. Off roaders and cars which do a lot of miles are still better off with a diesel engine imho
Put 20 litres of petrol in my old BMW 320D a few years ago. Kept topped it up with diesel drove carefully for a few weeks. Ran like a dream til I sold it 30K miles later.
In hindsight if it happend again I think Id pay the £200 to get it drained.
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