Hitchcocks Forum

To those of us that think we may have had a bad day, i share this tale of woe...

Picture in your mind a Tesco's garage forecourt, where i'm leaning my back against the van as i fill up with derv..

Not much else to do but watch others doing the same thing, like the chap on the other side of the same pump filling a Landrover Discovery.

My hearing is not up to much but i think he shouted something like "BAD LUCK"...

I glanced over to see him standing there, wide eyed, looking from the pump nozzle to the car and back at the pump..

Yes you've guessed it, 50 litres of Tesco's cheapest petrol had been pumped into what transpired to be his bosses disco..

Now some phone calls can be difficult to make...

As i drove away i thought, shall i have that chop for dinner? or maybe a nice piece of fish....

Hmm, life can be tough sometimes..

Been there, done that, TWICE! On my Freelander. Some folks never learn!

Over here there are large locking- covers with warning signs on them which have to be lifted before the hose can be removed from the bowser. Workplace Health and Safety need to get their act together.

On the scale of 1 to 10, my little fuel mixup is not nearly as bad as the geezer at Tescos, but I managed to put 3 litres of paraffin into my motor mower. It only started to dawn on me what had happened when I found it difficult to start and clouds of white smoke came out of the exhaust. When it did go it revved a lot faster than with petrol but was difficult to extinguish when I'd finished - I suppose paraffin must run a lot hotter and the exhaust valve was probably glowing by the time I wanted to shut off and empty the grass box!

I guess there was enough petrol in the float bowl to start the motor and then gradually as the fuel changed to paraffin, the heat would be enough to vaporise the Kero and keep running..

Would work being as its probably a low compression engine.

Bit like the old TVO tractor engines that used petrol to start..

Probably talking out the rear end and i need to study the subject a bit...

What i do find strange is that we all know that a small amount of diesel in a petrol engine will not do any great harm mechanically, also that petrol in a diesel engine is a big problem with possible damage to fuel injector pumps etc..

Yet it seems in there wisdom, that a diesel fuel nozzle won't fit into a petrol filler cap but a petrol nozzle will fit into a diesel tank..

Precisely the worst combination is easily facilitated??

One person who likes the arrangement is the Wrong Fuel man with his yellow van, Obviously lives close by as he was on the scene in about 2 minutes flat..

Back in the early 70's fuel shortage it was common practice to use a 50/50 petrol/paraffin mix. It was a bit smokey and the motors did knock a bit but I didn't have any terminal problems.

My guess about Diesel nozzles being larger; is they were mainly used by trucks/lorries with tanks holding hundreds of gallons/litres, larger nozzles allowed for faster filling.
As they say in the classics, If all else fails, read the instructions.