September 24, 2008

Well to be more accurate he put them both on the hard shoulder of the M62, when he filled her supercharged Range Rover Sport with unleaded petrol instead of diesel.  To make matters worst the hapless England and Manchester United forward could be left with a bill of in excess of £6,000 for his blunder. 

A Range Rover engineer commented: “Putting petrol in a highly tuned diesel engine can be catastrophic. It can cause extensive damage and the engine can seize up.”

Petrol wrecks diesel engine lubrication processes and is especially damaging to a diesel engine's high-pressure fuel pump. Petrol removes the pump case hardening and if a film of hardened metal disintegrates into swarf it will greatly harm or even wreck the engine's internal moving parts. 

An estimated 150,000 people make the mistake annually, with many realising that they have done so before the fire up, only to find that it’s too late anyway as the fuel pumps are activated when the doors are opened. 

It's possible to buy an attachment to put into the neck of the fuel filler pipe to prevent mistakes of this kind.  Made by Caparo the device won't allow a petrol pump in to fill up a diesel tank with the petrol.

Maybe they’ll see the sense in getting a more suitable car for the time and opt for a G-Wiz electric car.  At least they can't put the wrong kind of electricity into it...

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