What Not to Do When You Drive a Diesel Car

While in France we rented a diesel car, manual shift. I'd heard the fuel costs would be less. It worked out pretty well. We did witness an accidental regular gas fill up in a diesel car. That is what NOT to do! BUT, if you are going to do it, you'd better be at a full service station, and realize your mistake before you start the engine.

When the driver realized the error, she had not re-started the engine. I went back in and asked the clerk if this was a big problem. Uh - oui! It sure is! He had the mechanic drain all of that gasoline into jugs (two very large jugs, which were soon filled with expensive but useless gasoline), refilled the tank and charged only 25 euros for the service...plus the cost of two tanks of fuel. At that, they got off lightly. Had they started the engine, it would have been ruined and it would have been much more expensive.

At least there were many vistas of sunflowers to enjoy as they traveled around with that extra expensive tank-full.