the VOSA fuel men can take the to off your tank and if you’ve got red in they will tell you whos fuel it is. if you’ve topped up your tank they will perhaps know how much red up put in by mistake. and would listen to your problem. I d risk it and say nothing and keep filling up
as soon as you can get another 100 litres in.
John
Wayne:
Would there be any damage to a tractor unit if, by mistake, you happened to have put 115lts of red diesel in the tank by mistake. Beside the obvious legality of using red diesel, would it affect the engine or make it smoke more. May divulge more if I get some positive answers…
even 260 lts of red wont do any damage 
Trouble is, I may never drive that unit again, or I could be in it tomorrow. It would almost certainly be used over the weekend by many drivers. I only realised my mistake when I was driving home and thinking what a funny set up the fuel pumps at this yard were, It was late, dark and I had a very long week, swiped the fob at the pump and filled it up, the thing that started to make me think about the possibility of putting red in was that it took ages to fill the tank. I sat in the cab and filled in paper work etc while it filled.
So the choice is say nothing, play dumb (won’t be hard) or own up.
I wonder if the police are running their new CAMCABS on red ?
Wayne:
Trouble is, I may never drive that unit again, or I could be in it tomorrow. It would almost certainly be used over the weekend by many drivers. I only realised my mistake when I was driving home and thinking what a funny set up the fuel pumps at this yard were, It was late, dark and I had a very long week, swiped the fob at the pump and filled it up, the thing that started to make me think about the possibility of putting red in was that it took ages to fill the tank. I sat in the cab and filled in paper work etc while it filled.So the choice is say nothing, play dumb (won’t be hard) or own up.
If its a large company i’d be tempted to say nowt, if it ever was tugged it would have to be investigated and if it was it would come to light it was a simple mistake.
It wont do any damage to the engine and will go just as well on it,just dont get caught using it…
somerset bus driver:
‘RED diesel is not always just ordinary diesel with red colouring added’
Agreed, because I understand that red does not have the same antifoaming properties that white enjoys.
To expand: I ‘learned’ this from a recent H&S debrief after submitting an ‘incident’ whereby a red pump nozzle back-pressure sensor had a (suspect?) failure on me.
Basically, the usual(?) sensor didn’t stop red diesel froth swamping & trashing my glove/cuff/sleeve when the tank was nearly full and froth spewed out of the narrow filler stack-pipe in the dark. I’d appreciate learning more if that is duff info, because it seemed too close to a company cop-out to me. Their solution was to, er ‘train me on refuelling’, which was a flippin insult - when part of that ‘training’ involved having to watch - & thus breath, the fuel vapour laden filler stack-pipe for spewing froth!
Cheers, Keith
hi all,
red and white diesel are one and the same.think about it you proffessional drivers,it’s all delivered using the same road tanker.
regards andrew
red diesel is exactly the same as your usual supermarket fuel but with a little more sulpher and the dye in it , the only diffrence is the diesel that comes from say shell for instance has been treated more as in more cleaning agents and additives have been put in where your red is just bog standard diesel , dont beleive anybody who says it cloggs injectors / smokes alot / ruins the engine . those people dont have a clue and have probably heard it from a friend of a friend of a friend , or just had a nakkard transit that was on its last legs and would smoke with any fuel put in.
if you want to know why its higher in sulpher read the below link
Happy Keith:
somerset bus driver:
‘RED diesel is not always just ordinary diesel with red colouring added’Agreed, because I understand that red does not have the same antifoaming properties that white enjoys.
To expand: I ‘learned’ this from a recent H&S debrief after submitting an ‘incident’ whereby a red pump nozzle back-pressure sensor had a (suspect?) failure on me.
Basically, the usual(?) sensor didn’t stop red diesel froth swamping & trashing my glove/cuff/sleeve when the tank was nearly full and froth spewed out of the narrow filler stack-pipe in the dark. I’d appreciate learning more if that is duff info, because it seemed too close to a company cop-out to me. Their solution was to, er ‘train me on refuelling’, which was a flippin insult - when part of that ‘training’ involved having to watch - & thus breath, the fuel vapour laden filler stack-pipe for spewing froth!
Cheers, Keith
Sounds like a cop out to me Keith, although not due to any technical knowledge.When our bunkered fuel tank was filled with ‘bio diesel’ it always frothed like mad into the truck tank, and when it was ‘ordinary diesel’ you could notice the difference easily. Either way, whether it frothed or not the fuel cut out on the nozzle worked fine with either.
There are many people on this site who used nothing but red diesel for years, it will have no effect on an engine or the fuel system at all, as has been said it’s the same as duty paid diesel, it just has a dye added. People used to say it clogged filters quicker, but that was probably due to the condition of the belly tanks.
newmercman:
There are many people on this site who used nothing but red diesel for years, it will have no effect on an engine or the fuel system at all, as has been said it’s the same as duty paid diesel, it just has a dye added. People used to say it clogged filters quicker, but that was probably due to the condition of the belly tanks.
UK or Belgium Red was definitely the same stuff, although it was still cheaper in Wingene 
but I reckon the fact that the tanks were mainly home made and from the box of that’ll do fittings you are probably right.
The only thing I remember was on the numerous occasions I was pulled by HMCE and dipped, they normally played a little game and they proceeded to tell me where I had filled up last, and providing the red fuel was of a quantity less than 3% in my tanks, they didn’t care whether the rest was Hungarian, Greek or Russian fuel with all of the colours that were produced in the test tube.