It seems that Essex police isn’t the only police force wrestling with costly misfuelling problems – breakdowns caused by drivers filling up vehicles with the wrong type of fuel.

Avon & Somerset Police has had to fork out nearly £24,000 over the last three years as a result of drivers filling up diesels vehicles with petrol and vice versa.

The bad news is that the problem is inevitable – with drivers often switching vehicles. The good news is that major manufacturers such as Ford are starting to factory-fit misfuelling prevention devices to prevent diesels being filled with petrol.

Putting petrol into diesel vehicles is the most common type of misfuel due to petrol nozzles being slightly smaller than diesel nozzles. Filling a petrol vehicle with diesel is harder as the nozzle will not fit into the filler neck as easily as normal. This alerts most drivers to their mistake before they start fuelling.

Just in case you aren’t familiar with the problem, misfuelling a diesel vehicle with petrol can cause costly damage to the engine if the vehicle is started. At the very least, the vehicle will have to have its fuel system drained – a time-consuming and hence costly procedure.

Click here for more information on misfuelling.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Motoring News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.