Its that time again, someone somewhere says something and before you know it the whole country is out buying fuel.

This week has been our busiest ever, lots of people filling up cars with the wrong fuel, and its not 20 quiders either – its whole tanks.

If you are looking for places that still have petrol in london or looking for petrol stations that still have fuel then I hope you find it, driving around I cover a large area across london and the southeast and the one thing I have noticed is that if there is a que for fuel then the british public can’t resist joining it, but in the countryside if there is no que – they dont que and buy as normal, herd mentality I guess

Me? I stocked up, we get very busy if there is “a fuel crisis” as misfuellings tend to peak when fuel buying peaks (paydays etc), but we will have a quiet patch after the dust settles as everyone will be running around with full tanks and not needing to top up for a while

but the way these things go is in fits and starts and for the rest of the summer we can be sure that the “fuel crisis” will be rearing its head a few more times this year.

Tanker drivers? striking on 45K a year? who do they think they are – fueldrainers?

chances are you need a fuel drain, or just had one if you are reading this.

the cost of a fuel drain from an independent fuel draining company  is between £145 & £250, the price depends on

1) distance from drainer

2) type of car (some cars require more complex drains such as volvo xc90 or twin tankd BMW’s & Mercedes, some Audi’s etc

3) whether the car has been driven on the wrong fuel and needs a fuel system flush, which is a straightforward procedure but tankes longer than just draining the tank.

the time of day or night does not really come into it, unless its a very unsocial hour, weekends, public holidays etc are all the same as a normal weekday.

a dealer may charge £4000 to £9000 for major fuel system and engine rebuilding, which in my opinion is mostly unnecessary.

The AA does do fuel drains and have a fleet of mobile fuel draining vans, they do charge members and cost about £230, they are quite often very busy and have long waiting period

The RAC have a few fuel draining vans but I havent seen many in the south east, they used to sub contract out most of their jobs to garages and fuel draining companies.

some dealerships will charge between 400 and 800 for a drain that does not involve pulling the engine to bits, but for some reason they often say they will take the tank off and swill it out.

your friendly local garage will charge the same as a fuel draining company, but you normally have to get the car to them

and of course you can do one yourself, or get a mechanically minded friend to help out.

Surely someone else has noticed the drip feeding of news stories based around freedom of information requests to various police and local authorities and how often they misfuel.

I was lost on google tonight and instead of watching the latest you tube potato cannon videos, I was researching wrong fuel (sad I know), after reading 2 or 3  ”news” articles about wrong fuel and the police/ambulance/local authorities etc, I thought there must be a bit of a pattern emerging, so I started sniffing and ended up on a “freedom of info” site and found that some guy called  ”Nick Panchaud” has made 838 Freedom of Information requests to government and local authority agencies, housing associations, fire brigades and all sorts, his modus operandi Is to send in the usual cut and paste FOI requests, and chase them up with the usual cut and paste nudges.

once he gets his FOI information back he releases a news story based around ….. some device he is selling that prevents motorist using the wrong fuel.

I can think of better ways to market a new product than asking the overstretched public sector to  trawl through years of vehicle service records, receipts, etc..

The Emergency services do a tough job, as it is, and yes they do occasionally misfuel, but no more than anyone else, the Met got a particularly hard bashing for this, but when you consider how many vehicles they have, it really is nothing to write home about.

We have attended many blue light misfuels, during the London Riots last year one of our drivers attended a Welsh police van in Croydon that had been misfueld with 10 armour suited riot police on board and a menacing crowd gathering across the road, our driver  didn’t even have the heart to charge them for a drainout, (and he didnt want to be hanging around to run a credit card either).

As for the misfuel prevention devices there are many of  them on the market and most of them work, halfords have about 4 different types in stock, the best one I know of is the annoying little robot that you stick to the fuel cap that starts yelling “diesel” “diesel” as soon as you open it.  - if you put the wrong fuel in after that you have no business leaving the house let alone driving a car.

see  http://davidcoveney.com/1928/freedom-of-information-is-abuse/#comment-1350 for further details about freedom of information abuse

The Freedom of information act is a powerful tool and used for the right reasons it is a good thing, abuses – especially commercially driven, bring a bad name to FOI, and tie up already overwhelmed public services…….. and  (time to put the boot in) as for his diesel key there are cheaper and better alternatives on the market

bit political for a fuel drainer eh?