Originally posted by tens6
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All nozzles for petrol and diesel used to be the same size (same as diesel now). Then in the late eighties they brought out cars with catalytic converters in the exhaust to reduce emissions that could only run on unleaded petrol. Petrol used to come in 2* 3* and 4* with different octane levels and it all contained lead to stop the engine knocking. Which is where the fuel ignites before the piston is in the right position (pre-ignition). Leaded fuel kills the catalyst element straight away, so they can only run on unleaded fuel. To stop people putting leaded fuel in an unleaded only car with a catalyser, the car industry decided to make a smaller nozzle for unleaded with a smaller filler hole on the car and kept the larger nozzle for leaded petrol and diesel cars. As leaded petrol has now been banned, it means all petrol nozzles are now unleaded and hence petrol nozzles are now smaller than diesel nozzles.
If you lived through those times there was some other silly mistakes that oil companies made that mixed everybody up.
Texaco at one point had black nozzles for leaded petrol while others made diesel black.
Esso had blue for diesel and BP made their Ultimate unleaded blue originally (they were forced to change back to green for Ultimate unleaded due to the amount of misfill claims but they are still light blue in some European countries). Hope this makes sense...
Regards
Andy
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