My truck is dead....Any ideas?

Last week I was travelling home from Stoke to the south coast and needed to get some diesel, so I stopped at Cherwell Park services. I filled up with diesel and carried on down the M40, for about 5 minutes anyway because the navara's engine decided to destroy itself. I phoned the breakdown people and the few question they asked was 'did you put unleaded in it?' I checked the receipt (for the 82nd time in two minutes!!) and it was definitely diesel.

Nissan have now confirmed there was unleaded in the tank and it needs a whole new engine - NINE F*CKING GRAND!!!!!! I've spoke to an engineer friend of mine who was very surprised it needed a whole new engine, but apparently the predicament has been referred to nissan uk because they can't understand how it managed to completely destroy either!!!

Has anyone on here had any experience with contaminated fuels? There was a load of building work going on at the fuel pumps - could the pipes from the tanks get mixed up or be tampered with? Can't help but think it's going to be a long while til this gets resolved....

Incidently Nissan, in the same phone call to tell us we had a £9k bill, tried to sell us a second hand Navara for £10k!!!

our joiner put unleaded in his transit and as long as its drained and filled with diesel early enough is usually runs fine,smokes a bit till the petrols burned off but seems strange to have cooked your engine,especially after 5 mins.if the reciept says diesel id put a claim through to them,obviously theyve fooked up somewhere.hope this helps abit.

id look at finding if anyone else had any similar occurance at the garage . if there was unleaded in the diesel tank you wont be the only one that used it .

id also be finding out why putting unleaded in a diesel engine had resulted in needing an entirely new engine . id ask exactly what parts had failed and why

Yeah, if you have a receipt then just claim on the services, after all it's not like they don't make enough money now is it :roll:

25% petrol + 75% diesel is fine, it wont make your engine smoke and you'll not notice the difference.

I have done it by mistake 3 times. My car is still running with over 378,000 on the clock.

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im not very clued up on derv even though a mate i lived with used to teach it , cant for the life of me remeber what he would tell me on an evening basis

i cant picture anything from inlet to exhaust manifold that would be that detrementally damaged to warrant a new engine :? im guessing the bods who checked it over confirmed it was unleaded in it ? even it it had been run on acid the builders used to wash down the brickwork it would at most ruin seals/gakets , thin the oil and score a bore :?

what appened when it gave up , did it cut out ? sieze ?

find an owners forum for it , if you hadnt already

my manager put 1/2 tank of unleaded in her diesel Kia Sorrento the other day and managed to drive for 30 miles as it hiccuped a bit. she took it to her garage and they charged £500 to fix it inc. 50,000 mile service while they were at it. maybe she was lucky.

The items that gets damaged when you try and run a diesel vehicle on petrol are the fuel pump ( not the lift pump, the injector pump) and injector nozzles - because petrol doesn't have any lubricating properties, unlike diesel. With common rail diesels there might be further implications.

I'm not a diesel technician BTW - this is just based on my experience of sorting out cars for people that have done this.

I can't see why a new engine would be neccessary though. No doubt someone will be along soon who knows more about this to shoot me down in flames............ :roll:

I'd say go see CAB or a Solicitor straight away. Don't delay.
You need to inform the garage owners in writing immediately . Do not rely on phoning or talking to garage staff they are just employee's the garage can claim you didn't notify them.Put it in writing send a photocopy of your bill with the letter. Don't give the original receipt to anyone including your Solicitors. its the only proof you have got

Go back to the garage and take photos of the building works around the pumps etc. In a month ot two it will all be gone and the garage will claim it was your mistake
good luck

Erm, there was a thing on BBC watchdogs show about diesel Navara engines blowing up

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/200 ... tml?page=7

If I were you I would get an independent view on exactly what caused the failure! Could be Nissan trying to pass the blame.