The Automotive Blog

In May 2009 a Skelmersdale man was jailed for 11 months  for the theft of hundreds of litres of fuel from HGV’s at a Burscough haulage firm

Fortunately for the haulage firm  an employee had seen Mark Livesley and an accomplice running away from the scene of the crime and alerted his boss. Later that day police found barrels in a field which contained over 300 litres of fuel , syphoned from their lorries.

Livesley, 35, admitted theft of diesel valued at £930 from Grahams Haulage between June 16 and 17 last year.

As the problem of fuel theft increases, aide automotive has a number of porducts that ease the worry of concerned haulage firms.  There are a range of anti-syphoning devices such as TP Anti Syph and Van Syph visit our website for more details at aide automotive. Also another product, Diesel Key acts as an anti-theft device and anti syphoning device.

A spate of fuel thefts from cars and lorries has hit North Staffordshire over the past few days.

A quarry in Hurst Road, Biddulph where Two trucks and a Ford Transit van were targeted, Overnight on Saturday between 50 and 60 litres of diesel was stolen from an artic unit parked in Higherland, Newcastle.

The following night the fuel tank of a Fiat Punto in Newcastle had its fuel removed.

Dave Twist, North Staffordshire crime reduction manager, said: “We are warning motorists to be on their guard if they are offered cheap fuel for sale.
“People are obviously buying illegal fuel from the thieves and we are urging anyone offered the fuel to contact us.”
All offences of “bilking” – where offenders drive off from garage forecourts without paying for fuel – and other fuel thefts are investigated.

Mr Twist continued: “We are also concerned that such fuel may damage people’s cars due to the risk of fuel contamination. Fixing such problems could cost thousands.

Fuel theft is not stopping and van and cars users must look to protect fuel, aide automotive offer a couple of products to help protect against fuel theft. Diesel Key protects agaisnt siphoning and mis fuelling from cars and vans, where the Van Syph device stops fuel siphoning from vans.

Matthew Burke stated ” We are selling increasing calls from customers who have been hit by fuel theft, for a little cost of around 40 pounds you can protect your fuel from theives.

aide automotive have introduced a new website for the Diesel Key mis fuelling device.

Mis fuelling or using the wrong fuel has become more popular over the last fews years and is easily done. The nozzle of a petrol pump is smaller than a Diesel nozzle, and therefore fits into the fuel tank without resistance. All you need is for something to catch your attention and you have an expensive repair bill on your hands (and sometimes an insurance claim!)

Diesel Key is the only device to help stop car fuel theft, this device will stop siphoning from a diesel car.

Visit aide automotives main site and the mis fuelling site by clicking on the highlited names.

aide automotive has introduced a number of new automotive products to it’s range in the second phase of it’s website

The new products appeal to a range of different industries across the Automotive Sector

For Cars and Light Commercial Vehicles  we have products such as the Driver Eye for keeping an eye on employee driver habits, PressurePro for the best tyre pressure monitoring or Right Fuel to prevent misfuelling of diesel vehicles.

For Commercial Vehicles products such as the Fresnel Lens covers a vehicles blind spot and X-Driven a hand-held portable camera system to act as a witness of a crime.

Commerical Workshop Products such as the TruckCheck Automatic Voltage Tester and TrailerCheck II the next generation in truck diagnositics.

These are just a few of the products that we now have to offer in addition to our longstanding range of quality products such as misfuelling devices, brake testers, and tyre pressure monitoring products to name a few. So take a browse through the aide automotive website to find the product to suit you or call one of our team for further information.

The North Wales Police have been reported to mis fuel 26 vehicles even though preventive measures had been taken.

This demonstrates the only way to stop misfuelling is by using a device that stops diesel being put into petrol cars!

aide automotive have been involved with mis fuelling products for 5 years, DieselGuard the warning device was first introduced in 2003  but has now seen to be replaced with actual preventive devices such as RightFuel.

Click for aide automotive’s website or go straight to our mis fuelling device here.

Read more about North Wales Police’s mis fuelling problem by clicking here.

Drivers who mis-fuel their diesel cars with petrol can expect a costly bill to repair the damage, according to Lex Vehicle Leasing.

The Lex maintenance department, which spends around £50m a year on the upkeep of its 123,000 vehicle fleet, is seeing repair costs range from £300-£3,000 depending on the type of diesel engine fitted to the car.
Most at risk are the modern common rail diesels which are built to more exacting tolerances than standard diesel engines. If petrol fuel gets into the common rail diesel system it can mean replacing both low and high pressure fuel pumps, injectors, rail, line filters and tanks, which can easily cost a few thousands pounds to fix.

“The cost of the repair depends on whether the driver has simply started the engine or they have driven it for a few miles with the wrong fuel in the system. The longer the petrol has been in the system, the more money it will cost to repair,” said Jamie Wiseman, Lex Vehicle Leasing’s maintenance manager.

“Manufacturers are now giving their dealers detailed advice as to which stage the mis-fuel has reached and the correcting action they must take. We had two Mercedes common rail diesels to repair recently which cost £3,000 per engine,” he added.

All costs to repair mis-fuels have to be met by the consumer as manufacturer breakdown cover does not cover mis-fuels, although they are likely to come out to your car and take it to the nearest dealership. Also if a car is on a PCP or contract hire agreement it will still be up to the driver to pay for the damage, rather than the finance company.

RightFuel is now the common device to stop diesel mis fuelling.

Actricle taken from carpages.co.uk

Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney filled his wife’s Range Rover up with the wrong type of petrol and subsequently broke down, it was reported today.

Rooney, who is married to model and TV presenter Coleen McLoughlin, was driving from Liverpool to Prestbury in Cheshire when he was forced to pull over on the M62.

The customised Range Rover Sport V8 has a turbo-diesel engine – but the 23-year-old filled it up with unleaded petrol. This mistake can cost in the thousands to rectify.

An onlooker said the traffic was going quite slowly at that time so “we got a good look”.

“The hazard lights were flashing on the car and Wayne was standing talking to a Highways Agency patrol driver,” the driver said. “He looked pretty sheepish.”

Rooney has an extensive collection of cars including a BMW M6, Aston Martin Vanquish and a Bentley among others. Keeping up with the footie stars cars would reportedly be worth over £1 million.

All Wayne had to do was fit RightFuel the preventive miss fuelling gadget.

Misfuelling is a costly problem for lots of companies, when employees fill diesel vehicles with petrol. It’s estimated that at least 150,000 drivers put the wrong fuel in their car each year, one every three and a half minutes!

However there is a device that stops misfueling ever becoming an issue. Right Fuel is a smart little gadget that is a direct replacement for a filler cap. The device’s cap incorporates both a vacuum and pressure relief system to enable it to replace almost all automotive filler caps. The device allows a diesel nozzle to be inserted however if someone attempted to insert a petrol nozzle  it would butt up against the device, and quickly alert the user that the wrong nozzle is being used.

With the high cost and inconvenience of a diesel engine being misfuelled with petrol, this device will cut out expensive repair costs and vehicle downtime.

Right Fuel was designed and is made right here in the UK under strict quality guidelines.

Poorly educated and trained company car drivers are causing thousands of breakdowns a year because they are failing to carry out basic vehicle maintenance and are not fully briefed on the vehicle they are driving.

Company drivers are putting petrol into diesel cars, which can cost up to £6,000 to repair, and plugging so many electronic gadgets into their cars that their vehicles’ batteries run flat.

Such common mistakes, which according to the RAC mean fleet vehicles are off the road for 11,757 days annually, could be avoided if drivers conducted simple maintenance checks and undertook driver training.

The RAC estimates that over 40,000 fleet breakdown call outs could be avoided this way.
The company’s analysis of fleet vehicle breakdowns revealed that 17 out of the top 20 reasons for breakdowns are beacuse drivers fail to carry out simple actions.

The top call out is for punctures, although this has more to do with health and safety policies than poor driver education, as Debbie Floyd, fleet manager for Bauer, explained.

“The days of a young female sales rep trying to change a flat tyre at the side of the road are over,” she said.

“It is part of our driver health and safety policy that a breakdown service must be called to repair a puncture.”

The most common avoidable call out is for flat batteries.

“Fleet vehicles have become like mobile offices with more and more current-hungry gadgets, such as mobile phones, PCs and navigation systems, and drivers seem to think their cars are bottomless pits of energy,” said Elvin Ravenscroft, tactical development manager for RAC.

“Modern batteries are designed for a high discharge of power when starting the car, but not for a constant, steady power flow as in the case of lights or charging mobile equipment.”

Fleet drivers are continuing to mis-fuel their cars in massive numbers.

Diesel contamination now makes up almost a quarter of the top 20 driver-induced faults.

“If a vehicle is misfuelled, the car should not be unlocked and the key should not be put in the ignition.

“Under no circumstances should the engine be started, since it could result in a repair cost of around £200 to have the fuel tank drained and between £3,000 and £6,000 to repair an engine,” said Mr Ravenscroft.

As well as education regarding their vehicles, fleet managers must continue to ensure their drivers improve their road skills.

RAC data revealed that fleet drivers are twice as likely to be involved in a collision as an average motorist.

“If fleet drivers adhered to road rules, took adequate breaks to avoid tiredness or considered undergoing training to improve driving skills, the number of fleet call outs to a collision could be reduced by as much as 50%,” said Mr Ravenscroft.

One of the biggest causes of car insurance claims could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a handy new device that prevents drivers from putting unleaded petrol into a diesel car.

It is thought that around 150,000 put unleaded fuel into a diesel car each year, and this leads to a number of car insurance claims, many of which ar turned down and seen as negligence on the part of the driver.  This can then lead to costly repair bills for the car owner.
However, a small innovative piece of kit known as Diesel Guard™ can help prevent these unfortunate mishaps.

Diesel Guard™ is a smart little gadget that will remind you at the pumps that your vehicle runs on diesel fuel. On opening the fuel flap there is an audible warning advising that this vehicle runs on diesel. The device’s volume is such that you cannot ignore it, even on a noisy forecourt! DieselGuard also has a small button to terminate the message once acknowledged.

Diesel Guard™ attaches to the inside of your fuel flap with just a high strength sticky pad.

With the high cost and inconvenience of a diesel engine being filled with petrol, this device will cut out the risk of expensive repair costs and vehicle downtime.

The inspiration came from an unfortunate experience when, on a dark and rainy evening, the innovator grabbed the wrong pump when he went to fill up his car.

It was night and the weather was bad, I couldn’t see much. I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing and I picked up the wrong pump. I just wasn’t paying attention. I suddenly realised that it must happened to thousands of drivers every day and decided there was a need for some kind of warning device.

In today’s society there is a bigger need than ever for this kind of device. People are so busy, always rushing around. It’s very easy to make a mistake like filling up with the wrong fuel.

If you’re consistently forgetful then a Diesel Guard™ device is well worth the investment.  The stern, audible warning from the device will ensure that you never put the wrong fuel in your car again and save you from both embarrasment on the forecourt and the cost of the repair bill that follows.

For more information on the DieselGuard product, visit the Aide Automotive web site.