The Automotive Blog

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.