Fuel Contamination - Gold Coast/Brisbane

Hi all, after a sleepless night last night I have decided to warn others out there.

on Sunday my wife filled up her 2008 Honda CRV with Shell unleaded fuel... 49 litres all up. The car got 100 metres up the road and stopped. I met her where the car was (35 degree heat with a 5 month old on the side of the road is not good).

Turns out 19 cars were hit with contaminated fuel from Shell Yatala (I am guessing I can name them as channel 9 did a story on it last night after an old fella with no RACQ etc was stranded as well). Our Honda was towed along with 5 others that never made it out of the servo exit.

Shell denied all responsibility and continued to sell Unleaded until I yelled at the consol operator to shut the bowsers off... (the place is still not selling Unleaded as of tonight) All shell could offer was a denial that it wasn't their petrol that caused the problem and offer a phone number (which wasn't manned on a friggin Sunday).

I rang RACQ. Car was towed. I made a claim through NRMA insurance (didn't think they would cop it but they did).

The petrol in the tank was tested today... 50% petrol, 40% water, 10% a dark unidentified chemical substance. Car looks like it's stuffed! Fuel tank, fuel lines, injector system, oxygen sensor, exhaust system, cat converter... all Honda parts!!!! It's still yet to be officially examined by NRMA's assessor tomorrow.

on Monday Shell (about the only positive thing they have done so far) have offered a hire car as long as I go with a claim through them... They admitted liability. I declined (sounds like a dud deal to me) and I am running with my insurance claim (no $600 excess due to liability being established against Shell). I am hoping the insurance company will write it off as i am sure they wouldn't be able to guarantee the repairs...

Looks like the Honda will be a write off... 13 months old and half full of water and some other crap!!!

Just a warning...Go well, Go Shell (yeah right!!!)

Any further word how it happened? Intentional perhaps? (disgruntled servo attendant...)

Bad luck man....that's fuqd up alright.

that scares me.

main reason being i dont have racq. probably get it monday

... just get it when you need it .. can pay over the phone and then get RACQ to come out :)

I don't know what happened with the fuel at Shell's end. All i know is that shell admitted liability. A mate of mine did however say that the next day they were there with one of those liquid waste trucks pumping out a tank. In the end I think this whole exercise would have cost them $1000's in lost sales not to mention the very bad exposure they got on channel 9 news that same night....

Just got the car back. It's all ok so far. $1800 on the insurance with no excess due to shell admitting blame. Apparently the fuel was that bad that it immediately clogged the fliters in the fuel pump so basically none of the contaminated fuel got out of the fuel pump and up to the injectors. New fuel pump ($1000 apparently), tank cleaned out by some company, fuel lines flushed, re-assemble, new fuel and away I went. I am not sure whether I will have any problems in the future but I have my fingers crossed that the fuel filter was totally clogged before any got out of it. Just drove the car hard for 50kms at about 120km/h with no apparent problems. All up I am out of pocket about $54 worth of the original fuel and 5 days without the car.

In short, I will never use Shell again. Just fuelled up with BP Ultimate.

dam thats messed .. lately the BP Ultimate at Capalaba has been shoit house i fuel up and the car feels like shit lags runs like dogs balls .. so just a heads up who ever is around that area ..

Not sure what's going on out there but years ago, if you bought fuel, that's what you got...fuel, not a mixture of water, fuel and some other crap!!! You would expect this kind of quality from a no name brand independent servo, not a big multinational brand...

i find the middle eastern ppl that own servos have decent fuel i base it down on there international connection :p

slippin into the country somehow to out beat the rest ;)

Just a FYI - a lot of Brisbane BPs are going to be short supplied on BP Ultimate especially over xmas. So grab it while you can.