Wrong fuel in my car :/
 

Hi.

I know it is a bit stupid, what happened to me, but I need some help on this matter.

I was driving and I saw that I was low on gas, so I went to a petrol station to refuel my car. Right as I wanted to refuel my phone rang, so answered it with one hand and started to fill up my tank with the other.

Here comes the "best" part :mad:

As I finished refueling...I saw I was holding PETROL nozle instead of diesel!
I had to push my car over to the side and call my mechanic to tow it away. He said something about draining my tank, cleaning fuel filters....damn...this is gonna cost me a fortune!!!



I know that diesel fuel nozles are wider than petrol so diesel vehicle drivers can mess up, but petrol drivers can't. Can somenone tell me, if there is a way to phisicaly protect my fuel tank. I heard that BMW is installing some kind of systems that prevent these mistakes.

Has anyone made the same mistake as I did? How did you solve it? Was there any damage to the car?

There is a plastic nozzle you can buy (i hve no idea where from) that will only fit a diesel pump in. i work for police and they have recently fitted them to all there vehicles, there not perfect but they work!!

as long as you never ran it, there will be no damage. What usually happens is the cashier goes mental over the tannoy as she thinks you are trying to blow everyone up, but she obviously never watched brainiac with the phones, petrol and a caravan.....anyway i digress, petrol is a solvent, so it strips the lubricating diesel off the pump, injectors etc etc, and diesel pumps cost as much as a small bungalow in anglesy, so providing the engine wasn't run, you should be looking at a tank drain and fuel filter, and thats it........

Truck drivers used to put petrol in their diesel tanks years ago during the winter to stop the diesel fuel 'waxing' (solidifying due to the cold). I think it wuz about 10% (try google it) It shouldnt harm your engine and may not necessarily damage your CAT......petrol in a diesel engine not really a problem, diesel in a petrol engine BIG PROBLEMS...............

It has never happened to me though, but I remember seeing some tank caps that prevents you from refueling your car with petrol. I googled it a bit and came up with this site:

- SoloDiesel (Diesel Engine Protector)

I hope that it helps.