Have i killed my car

[Andyk]

I think they all have some sort of agreement

As an old petrol pump engineer I can hopefully clear up the nozzle size discussion and why they are different.

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

[RBH]

Yep....I'm one of the ones who remembers all this.
Also the wee cans with one shot of redex in the petrol stations.
Shell promotions of glasses, soup bowls, super car models etc

Back in the day .

[tens6]

As an old petrol pump engineer I can hopefully clear up the nozzle size discussion and why they are different.

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

Since you tagged me, it was meant as a joke but makes sense . They'll have to think of something to prevent what happened to the OP but I doubt that they'll bother now.

[Langy]

Yep....I'm one of the ones who remembers all this.
Also the wee cans with one shot of redex in the petrol stations.
Shell promotions of glasses, soup bowls, super car models etc

Back in the day .

Damn, i can remember this as well, does this mean i'm as old as Rab ?

[PeteH]

Yep....I'm one of the ones who remembers all this.
Also the wee cans with one shot of redex in the petrol stations.
Shell promotions of glasses, soup bowls, super car models etc

Back in the day .

And world cup coins, Tiger tails, bullet hole transfers, green shield stamps.... So my granddad told me

[RBH]

And world cup coins, Tiger tails, bullet hole transfers, green shield stamps.... So my granddad told me

Bollocks.....you had the first car with a starting handle

[PeteH]

Bollocks.....you had the first car with a starting handle

Tell you what, starting handles were great, had one on my Anglia. Seem to recall early minis used to have them too, but with the transverse engine the hole was in the wheel arch.