I don't live in the south, but after watching BBC TV this morning where they interviewed a motoring journalist and a representative from the petrol retailers association, I decided against my usual habit of doing the weeks shop and filling up at my usual supermarket. What the journalist said will have set the supermarket chains back several years in their marketting stragegies, and I'm sure that the best PRs and advertising brains in London have now been commissioned to recover the situation. When the interviewer said that the industry were now were trying to discover where the fuel originated SWMBO laughed in immoderate kind of way and said that it would be Iraq.
We used to have several filling stations near to us, but now there are only four within ten miles, and two of these are of the offending supermarkets.
I filled up at an out-of-town BP station, and the middle aged lady on the desk advised me to buy 'Ultimate' in future. She really is a good advocate, and described all of the benefits. I must run a Forum search on it.
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Nasty stuff silicon, or 'sand' as we used to call it in our quaint old-world way. Clog up injectors and even carburettors with that, oh yes! Who needs these modern substances anyway?
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Tesco in Leicester was deserted, both petrol station and shop!, incredible.
I filled up my Mondy 2l as ever with petrol, it has been fine on Tescos, as was the Escort before that for 112K miles.
All Tesco need to do is reduce the price, the Brits cannot miss a bargain, vis the ship wreck a few weeks ago.
It seems odd how few cars were affected, many 000s must have put this fuel in their cars.
Still perhaps Tescos will be even better value in the future?
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re silicone vs silicon
rtj, cheddar, oldgit, et al may all be correct that the silicon identified is from silicone.
however, none of the main players (tesco, harvest-energy, greenergy, vopak, etc.) have made that link.
in fact, they are all amking vague statements about silicon having been found in some unspecified quantity in "excess" over the "usual" unspecified quantity.
and they are using confusing terms such as "product" and "component" and "fuel in the product".
it does not take a genius to just state clearly "we have found x parts per million of silicon" in the contaminated fuel over and above the normal "y parts per million" in control samples of fuel; and that the source of silicon found is the compound "z" of silicon.
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Dalglish I think you need to understand basic O level/GCSE chemistry. It's possible to measure how much SILICON is in the petrol but working out the actual compound (chemical compound being a combination of elements) is very difficult. Petrol is not a simple compound in itself either which complicates things and is made up of several compounds, all of which contain hydrogen and carbon. And from fuel batch to fuel batch the mixture in petrol can change. It has to meet certain standards but putting 5% bioethanol in still meets the standards.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrol
So working back from X amount of hydrogren, Y of carbon and Z of silicon, how do you work out if X and Y were from the hydrocarbons making up the petrol or were some part of the silicone compound associated with the amount Z of silicon.
And you're right they have not said it's from a silicone combound but if it was solid silicon the fuel filters would have probably stopped it!
If you're worried about your donation I never assumed you'd pay up as the odds were the fuel as to blame :-)
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Dalglish I think you need to understand basic O level/GCSE chemistry
rtj70 - you presume or "think" wrong.
1. i already have a lot more than "o" level chemistry. i also have "close" connections with many research labs in various universities in the uk and abroad. suffice it to say gc lc icp ms nmr aa raman etc.etc. are no strangers to me. but i won't bore you with pompous facts.
2. also, the amount i am donating to this charity is only a part of what i normally donate to it and other similar charities every year, but again i won't bore you with pompous facts.
incidentally, the fuel has shown to be blamed for only a small proprotion of cases reported, and the rest was pure hysteria. but then sho would like to let facts get in the way. not you, eh ? ;-)
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Could someone go round to Dalglish's house and take the shovel off him please?
He must be knackered with all that digging.
It's OK, no-one's going to make you pay the money - it's your choice.
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Could someone go round to Dalglish's house and take the shovel off him please?
sorry, i cannot reply to this man as i have promised in the past not to respond to him.
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It seems odd how few cars were affected, many 000s must have put this fuel in their cars.
Now that the ?facts? have become clearer; the scale of this is beginning to make sense.
The silicone contaminated fuel passed through the system [in vastly varying concentrations] 10 days ago and is now long gone. The tank-draining is a PR exercise; they?ve been refilled enough times since then to dilute any silicone to oblivion. [This is not some remote village garage we?re talking about.] They could always just add some TEL to the removed fuel and call it four-star for old cars....
It?s very rare for a failed oxygen sensor to give the effects most reported. Only a tiny fraction of cars respond with these stalling and erratic running faults when their sensors routinely die. Most normally show little obvious effect. It may be therefore that there are actually many times more sensors destroyed than are currently known. They will only become apparent over time as the long-term fuel trims edge out of normal parameters and start to set fault-codes.
Later [post 2001] cars have better emission monitoring and will show the MIL light quickest. Some sensors may not be affected at all; there does seem to be some connexion to the distance between sensor and engine - running temperature maybe?
Poisoned cats will take longest of all to discover. Later cars have basic cat-monitoring systems; pre-2000 cars won?t know if the cat is dead until the MOT tester breaks the bad news - and that could be up to a year away.
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I agree Screwloose. The real problems due to the fuel are probably unknown and many (the majority?) of problems might only show at MOT time. And at that point impossible to blame Jet/Tesco/Asda/Morrisons/etc. So this is probably a time bomb for petrol cars in the SE.
So... there are those who would say never buy a second hand common-rail diesel in case it had petrol. Now we have to add "steer cleer of petrol cars fuelled in the SE in case the catalyst shot".
So we all have to bye new or pre-cat petrol or pre-common-rail diesel :-(
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Oh no..... in order to get a good re-sale price........does that mean that apart from keeping the full service history, every bill & every MOT ....i've now got to keep all the fuel receipts to show i've always re-fuelled at a quality supplier?
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>>....i've now got to keep all the fuelreceipts to show i've always re-fuelled at a quality supplier?
We're told that the Tesco and Morrisons fuel was delivered by Vopak from tanks previously used [and contaminated] by storing Harvest Energy's petrol. If just the tank residue was enough to show this level of effect in the supermarkets' customer's cars - then where did that Harvest Energy petrol end up; it must have been many times more potently contaminated?
I'm beginning to think that a precautionary code-read and 4-gas print-out is advisable for anyone who feels that they may be a potential victim and need to claim. This is not pennies we're talking here.
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OK, given that there is a probability that my car is affected (see above), and it goes in for corrective action tomorrow, what should I ask for? I'm thinking (assuming it IS the sensor):
1. The old sensor
2. A petrol sample
3. A gas analysis to see if the CAT is knackered too
Anything else?
UPDATE: Just spoke to Tesco customer care - they took all details, and advised that the store is one of those affected. Oh dear, as the wife's newish Focus is also filled there (but is showing no signs). They advised to get the work done then send receipts to them.
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I'd heard Ford's, for whatever reason, had been less effected by this. But that probably means the Oxygen sensor. If the cat's damaged that will not show until MOT time.
I still think this could be a big issue come MOT time and any one effected needs it sorting now if they want to claim for repairs.
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>>in reply to cheddar: you are adding nothing to what i already know about silicone, silicon-oxide, and silicon.
harvest-energy do not mention silicone compound at all. they mention silicon element. unless (their chemists or their public relations press people) have got their facts wrong.
if the fuel depot storage tanks have silicone contamination as you state, then that is what the vopak and harvest-energy chemists should find. unless you are implying that the silicone in their tanks was converted to silicon-element by mixing with petrol.
cheddar, if you are correct about silicone, you should either find silicone-compound in the storage tanks, or find silicon-oxide coated on the lambda sensor. to emphasise, i repeat, harvest-energy claim to have found "silicon" and refer to "elements" rather than "compounds".>>
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Dalglish:
1/ The PR people probably do not know the difference between Silicon and Silicone, likewise most journalists no doubt.
2/ Whether a Silicone compound is found in the tanks will depend on whether the compound in question breaks down in petrol (though perhaps not diesel, its intended use) if it does then it will be traces of Silicon that will be found.
3/ I suspect that it is Silicon Oxide that is contaminating oxygen sensors.
Regards.
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I think the companies knew about the problem and its cause long before it was admitted. Anyone who read their PR issues before silicon(e) was officially diiscovered would note the use of legalese..." viz: " meets BS Standrads for unleaded petrol".. knowing full well there was no text for silicon(e).
Of course I may be wrong and doing them all a misservice... but the balnket denials in face of evidence of a problem suggest someone was desperate to avoid the considerable costs of what I suspect is going to be a PR disaster..
and given the lack of publicity by the supermarkets on how customers can reclaim all costs, I feel I am on the right track. After all under consumer law the supermarkets are liable to the consumer who bought petrol not of merchantable quality. Full stop..
So why no announcement of an easy to claim method? Or have I missed it...?
madf
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And guess who is going to pay for somebodys mess up, us joe public 2p / litre on fuel. And the forecourts that were not involved they will milk use as well and jump on the band wagon.
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rustbucket (the original)
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That is a fair point however most would rather pay 2p/ltr and avoid the issue in the first place ........ which I suppose is what we have done by buying BP or Shell instead of Tesco etc fuel.
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I'd love to see a definitive list of affected filling staions.
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"but the balnket denials in face of evidence "
Not least by some BRs :-)
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I shall be sending my tenner to The Children Society, as it is clear that contamination has taken place. In the interests of balance, I think that the other side of the wager should also pay up, for it seems to me that the widespread hysteria has caused more contamination than any amount of silicon compound. OP's comment (or rather that of his chum the Picasso dealer) seems to be proof of the hysteria:
>>A vehicle with us today had travelled up from Cornwall, stopping at Fleet services for a refuel.....it got to M25 when it had the first symptoms......(Fleet services havent had any complaints)
Firstly, there is no suggestion that any supplier other than Tesco or Morrisons has been involved in this contamination event.
Secondly, these symptoms seem to take several days to take effect - rather than the twenty miles from Fleet to the M25.
And thirdly, I'd guess that even the Tesco next door is not supplied by the depot in question.
Finally, all these references to silicon dioxide... isn't that silica, otherwise known as sand? All petrol contains some of this, that's why we have fuel filters and why it's bad for a car to run out of fuel.
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Firstly, there is no suggestion that any supplier other than Tesco or Morrisons has been involved in this contamination event.
According to some press releases Asda said it was replacing unleaded petrol at the 30 forecourts in the South East which are supplied from the affected depot which supplies most supermarket forecourts as a ?precautionary measure?.
tinyurl.com/36e5qz
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Ah well, not being the usual smug PU and not really caring about being wrong or right., £50.00 gone to Hope House Charity in N Wales - seeing as the area gives us so much on holiday and we need fuel to get there ! Done it by Gift Aid so they get the tax that Brown will be chewing his nails even more. (50 x .28p).www.tyhafan.org/
Mark are you going to pay up ?
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Mr. PU, try Volume 2 at Sat 3 Mar 07 10:05
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I wouldnt consider it to be hysteria that caused the customer to come into us with running problems, and my comment that Fleet Services hadnt had a problem was said with a degree of cyncism........if his oxygen sensor hadnt failed it would have been easier for me and less expensive for him to get back home.
Prior to the news breaking in the papers, and prior to posting a message on the Picasso Forum we had already asked our customers where they were filling up:
Asda, Sainsburys, Total, Texaco, Tesco, Morrisons were the ones that cropped up most often...this wasnt hysteria, this was customers responding to an unloaded question......we were aware of problems but didnt know the source or if it was just related to our franchise.
We contacted 2 other dealers just outside our area to enquire if they had problems, again several days before the papers or anyone else publicised it.........they were having identical problems.......this wasnt hype it was fact.
As far as vehicles breaking down out of the area........Maybe they filled up in kent......i recon i could get a fair way up the M1/M6 or down the M4/M5........the point here is that people have been affected and they dont live in the area of contamination.
The 3 technicians in our workshop who have running problems caused by probe failures...they wouldnt spend money unnecesarily fixing there own cars if they knew there was an easier/cheaper fix.
The fact that people here havent had a problem shouldnt be reason to dismiss the problem as hype.
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As far as vehicles breaking down out of the area........Maybe they filled up in kent......i recon i could get a fair way up the M1/M6 or down the M4/M5........the point here is that people have been affected and they dont live in the area of contamination.
Still to get mine checked out as only been affected today but we last filled up on 22nd Feb at a station acknowledged by Tesco as being "affected". Since then covered 150+ troublefree miles at urban speeds only, today on first trip anywhere that demanded some revs/speed >40mph, straightaway the emission warning light has come on, anything over 4k revs makes the warning flash (manual says that is cat about to give up). The engine then proceeded to be erractic with very sluggish/juddering perfomance. The ABS warning and speedo also went haywire for a while before settling back down. I'm most surprised that it has taken this long to affect the car (which is the one nagging doubt that it could be a run of the mill issue and unrelated), but for now the coincidence is too much. Either way it's either Tesco or the warranty paying I guess.
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Our Picasso dealer wrote>>>As far as vehicles breaking down out of the area........Maybe they filled up in kent......
Ah well, then that's a fact. A car driving from Cornwall to London via a service station at Fleet failed. Therefore it obviously filled up in Kent!?!?!?!?
You ignorant fool. And people like me trust people like you to service our cars.
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You haven't read this too closely I think Mapmaker. "Maybe they filled up in Kent" is a possibility - not a fact!
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Oh yes I have, Mr Shanks!
Our dear Picasso dealer holds himself out as an expert with cars. I don't doubt his experience with these beasts far outweighs my own. However I have been trained (very much inter alia) as an auditor.
He holds out a car filling up in Hampshire (where I presume Fleet to be) as an example of an as-yet unrecognised problem. Clearly nobody other than him has yet accused Fleet services of selling contaminated fule. In order to justify his position, he states 'As far as vehicles breaking down out of the area........Maybe they filled up in kent......'
The last time I drove from Fleet to the M25 (which he told us the car in question had done), I didn't go via Kent.
Would you?
On that basis he is a fule, spreading unsubstantiable rumour. Whilst no doubt he was early in noticing a real problem, he now spreads irrational hysteria.
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Furthermore Fleet services north bound is IIRC BP, not Tesco, Morrisons or Asda.
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Mapmaker - you have obviously put more time into reading this thread than I have - I admit that! Without going into top level legal terminology or geography (where is Fleet?) at a basic level, something that is a "maybe" isn't a "fact" and nobody is claiming that it is.
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You ignorant fool. And people like me trust people like you to service our cars.
An ignorant fool?......i have been called worse, and by more intelligent people......until such time as proven otherwise i'll just put it down to the fact that you seem incapable of reading & understanding, you'll be glad to hear your not on your own there are plenty of others in the same boat......unfortunately i can help you with either so i'll leave you and your chums to have fun.
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Still to get mine checked out as only been affected today but we last filled up on 22nd Feb at a station acknowledged by Tesco as being "affected". Since then covered 150+ troublefree miles at urban speeds only, today on first trip anywhere that demanded some revs/speed >40mph, straightaway the emission warning light has come on, anything over 4k revs makes the warning flash (manual says that is cat about to give up). The engine then proceeded to be erractic with very sluggish/juddering perfomance. The ABS warning and speedo also went haywire for a while before settling back down.
Sounds like you have an electrical fault there - unlikely that the malevolent influence of the contaminated petrol spread as far as your ABS and speedo!
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Sounds like you have an electrical fault there - unlikely that the malevolent influence of the contaminated petrol spread as far as your ABS and speedo!
I have heard that on some cars when the engine management light is on (presumably whatever the cause) systems such as Traction Control are disabled due to the ECU running a more basic back up programme, perhaps ABS and an electronic speedo could be effected, as with TC the ABS wheel sensors are perhaps the common factor.
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I really don't think so. ABS and speedo should continue to function as normal, even with a defective EGO sensor and MIL on.
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Oh KFK. "ignorant fool" was somewhat intemperate of me, for which abject apologies.
I remain however completely bemused.
A customer of yours filled up in Hampshire, at a BP (? - Cheddah sez so, and he's usua'ly rite) garage.
This is not a company that is alleged to be a part of this scandal. This is not so far as I am aware a part of the country that is alleged to be a part of this scandal.
Accordingly I must presume that you have single-handedly discovered a completely new case of fule contamination. It's clearly nothing to do with Tesco's problems, any more than is the aforementioned ABS failure. Presumably oxygen sensors do fail routinely? Based on the above (complete lack of) evidence of correlation with the circumstances being discussed, I should be tempted to suggest that the Fleet services failure is a result of routine failure.
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I agree the BP have not been associated with this problem.......however, neither does it mean they are blameless......when bringing fleet services into the conversation i was merely indicating that a customer had travelled from Cornwall to Hampshire with no problem, and then had problems after a refuelling stop. Now call it coincidence but unless its contaminated air being sucked into the engine it only leaves fuel or a breakdown due to general wear and tear....but given the current fuel conditions i consider it unlikely.
I know of another supermarket chain that is currently offering there customers courtesy cars and offering to pay repair bills.......but its only Tesco's & Morrissons that have stuck there hands up and admitted anything.
With regard to Tesco's & Morrisons, it should also be considered that it isnt these brands that have created the problem. The problem has come from there suppliers, who else do there suppliers supply?
This whole issue on the has affected 'a good few' people, and i would be the first to say that there are others jumping on the band wagon trying to get a free repair at the expense of the fuel companies.
Oxygen Sensors do fail......if i do 2 a year i would be suprised.
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>> A customer of yours filled up in Hampshire, at a BP (? - Cheddah sez so, and he's usua'ly rite) garage.
Usually perhaps though not always!
I did say IIRC BP, in hindsight perhaps I did not RC, I now have a feeling it might be Shell, nevertheless the point remains, it is not Asda, Tesco or Morrisons. If it is important someone local to the area like TVM could clarify, otherwise I will be going past there on Friday.
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, I now have a feeling it might be Shell,
Tis Shell according to
www.welcomebreak.co.uk/FindMotorwayService/Fleet.h...m
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Tesco in car repair payment offer:-
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6421783.stm
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If anyone thinks they have filled up with contaminated fuel, then the following link may be of interest and help to you.
www.faultyfuel.com
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To get people back into the nearest Tesco filling station (Stockport just off the M60), you got a 3p off a litre voucher starting today. Not sure how much you needed to spend but it was less than when they do the 5p a litre offer. Probably find this offer is now all over the UK? We're obviously nowhere near the problem but they also have a big banner saying "Petrol all clear".
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I was wondering what was done to get rid of the recent batch of contaminated petrol.
It must be a big problem for the repairing garages or the forecourts to dispose of it cleanly and safely - does anyone know how this is done?
Thanks in advance
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It won't be "disposed of", it will be retreated and resold.
--
L\'escargot.
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retreat = dilute with 5 imes its volume so contamination levels low. imo
madf
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retreat = dilute with 5 imes its volume so contamination levels low. imo
You could well be right. The same principle is applied in the manufacture of plastics if a certain batch doesn't meet the requirements.
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L\'escargot.
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>> retreat = dilute with 5 imes its volume so contamination levels >> low. imo You could well be right. The same principle is applied in the manufacture of plastics if a certain batch doesn't meet the requirements. -- L\'escargot.
Ultimately it gets down to the principle as illustrated by homeopathic medicines i.e continue diluting until, for all intents and purposes, the material does not exist any more.
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