My Wrong Fuel Woes – When I Filled Petrol In A Diesel Car!
I have always loved travelling around the world. I started after I graduated from high school, and have stuck to road trips since then. I have mostly travelled across Europe, Asia and North America, with many exciting and strange experiences to talk about!
Probably no other incident strikes me as much as the one when I accidentally filled the wrong type of fuel in the vehicle we had rented to travel across France. Let me narrate to you what we had to go through when I accidentally filled petrol in diesel car that we had been driving during that night.
Hasty travel plans
It was one of the shortest tours I had planned out on my own, and that too on a very short notice. A friend and I had decided to drive across France and get the most out of the road trip. However, we got very little time to organise things, which may be one of the reasons why we landed in trouble later on!
Tired after a long drive
Since it was a road trip across practically the whole country, we were on the road most of the time, taking turns with driving the SUV we had rented. We had been driving twelve to sixteen hours on a daily basis, which generally left us extremely tired at the end of the days. But we were having the time of our lives, enjoying each and every moment, just as we had expected!
At the service station
Tired after a very long drive on the last day, we pulled up into a service station to fill up the car. That was when things went wrong! Instead of paying attention to what the signboard said above the fuel meter, I filled in petrol instead of diesel in the SUV! I was too sleepy to notice what I had done.
The worst part of it was that we didn’t even realise that we had filled in the wrong type of fuel in the car. We paid the bill and simply drove off!
Stuck on the highway!
After a while, the engine started making an unusual noise, and the ride started to get bumpy. Finally the car simply stalled and wouldn’t start anymore. By this time, we were far from civilisation, headed towards the Pyrenees! Initially we had no clue as to what might the problembe. It took us quite some time to understand the situation!
Insurance and luck
Once we realised what we had done, we called up for help from the nearest service station – luckily we got the number off the internet. When the friendly mechanic arrived, which was after almost quarter of an hour, and inspected the vehicle, he said that it needed to be towed to the service station before anything could be done to it. The whole fuel system was clogged. It needed replacing before the car could be driven again.
Luckily, our insurance covered almost the whole of the expenses. That saved us a huge amount of money. This was the first and last time I ever filled in a diesel car with petrol, or for that matter a petrol car with diesel. It was definitely a lesson well learnt through a really tough experience, quite late in the night and far from civilisation, on the way to the Pyrenees!
Arthur is an avid blogger with a strong interest in travelling. He has written many blogs on what he has experienced while he has been travelling around the world. Here, he shares how he managed to solve his problems when he accidentally filled his diesel car with petrol on one of his tours.