Talking to a driver the other day in a MSA and he says he runs his car on red diesel. What would be the fine for this (i know car can be impounded) as if you were to save £30 a week on fuel how long would it take for you to have covered the fine if you were ever pulled.
Once caught, he’ll be a target forever… used to be first offence civil penalty thereafter court and confiscation order, lad near us knows only too well , caught out as he purchased red, supplier is obliged to notify HMRC who twigged that he lived on an estate, wasnt a farmer etc and was paid a visit. first time they took £500 off him , second time went to court , he lost the car
and a fine as well and order to repay duty and vat.
Ta for that. I think sales of cooking oil may be going up soon. I have heard you can run this no prob but i think id want an older car to do it in as i paid £600 for a recon fuel pump not long ago.
Anyone concerned about illegal fuel usage would do well to mark their fuel with something like this 
dieseldye.com/
It prevents all that illegal stuff, and also anyone pinching your fuel would be easily identifiable. The possibilities are endless !! 
One very rainy day many years ago I pulled up on a filling station forecourt and in an effort to remain as dry as possible jumped out of the cab and shoved the first fuel nozzle I could grab into my tank and climbed back in the cab while the tank filled.
You can imagine my horror when I got back out of the cab to find I had just put 300 litres of red diesel in my tank.
I was then faced with a moral dilemma, what do you think I did… 
I thought the fine was more like £300 or we take your car.
Depends what kinda car you have, if say somthing like a 106 which was bought for £200, think car would be going 
Suppose as well where you buy it from, driving into a place filling up with red gonna get you caught, but if your clever could get round that. The its a case of taking your chances of not getting stoped at a check point.
I don’t own a diesel car, i own a petrol car so of no use to me. But heard of others at work using it and chances of getting caught seem pretty slim,
Seen stuff on ebay before which supposedly can re-dye the red and other mircle stuff but supposedly doesent really matter the colour, its the chemicals the red diesel has it in it, is how they test it rather than the actual colour. When they tested my truck for red diesel, they took away a sample and did some tests on it took a matter of minutes.
Cooking oil works well, depending on the type of car you have. Old mechanical injectors don’t seem to mind it. My mate had a ZX which he used to run on cooking oil, up to 75% cooking oil with no modifications to the car. Changed the fuel filter regularly and added injector cleaner at times. Can become a problem in the winter when its cold supposedly the cooking oil changes and can be a right ■■■■■■■ to start the car.
In my previous job, where the vehicles routinely ran on red (they were allowed under law) I came in one evening to find a departing driver (as in, leaving the company) attempting to fuel his own car via the works fuel pump.
He claimed his excuse was he had forgotten that he had parked his car there and thought it was a truck.
He said he had left his gear here. I rang the on call mechanic who got the picture pretty fast but oddly enough the drivers’ phone was switched off.
If you want to risk it go ahead. I won’t. I value my wheels
Smee:
One very rainy day many years ago I pulled up on a filling station forecourt and in an effort to remain as dry as possible jumped out of the cab and shoved the first fuel nozzle I could grab into my tank and climbed back in the cab while the tank filled.
You can imagine my horror when I got back out of the cab to find I had just put 300 litres of red diesel in my tank.
I was then faced with a moral dilemma, what do you think I did…
I did a similar thing a long time ago, it was 3 in the morning in a thunderstorm. At 0800 I phoned my boss, he notified C & E immediately and explained the circumstances and the call was logged. C & E sent a form to the company that enabled them to pay the duty on the fuel. That was the end of the matter. The important thing is that C & E are notified immediately and provided there was no intent to avoid duty then it’s not a problem.
Tiger.
Back in the early 80’s I was driving for Gateshead Council, one of the Old Timers, a guy called Alfie McDonald bought himself a Brand New Land Rover, Now Alfie was one of these guys who only drove a Mechanical Brush and was as honest as they come, if he spotted a £5 note lying in a bus shelter he would hand it in and I aint exagerating either 
Now Alfie also had a Paper shop near Blackhill (Consett) where he only did Sunday Papers, a Nice type of hut although I never saw it personally.
On his way to the Papershop one Sunday Morning he called in at the Jet garage at Hamsterly and duly filled up with diesel taking something like 14 gallons, he paid for it and off he went.
Around 1pm he’s heading home and got pulled by the Police, who had Customs and Excise with them, they dipped his tank and thought they had hit the Jackpot
When they dipped his tank it was full of Red Diesel so he was arrested on the spot, poor bugger was arguing the toss that he had only filled up that morning, he explained he owned his papershop and had no need to use Red, they asked if he had heating in the shop and what it ran on Lol Poor Alfie drops himself further in the crap by saying it ran off heating oil, not realising the hole he was digging for himself he went on to say, why the hell would he use Red Diesel when he also had a full time job on gateshead council, so could comfortably afford to buy white diesel, the Customs and Excise guy asks what he did on the Council to which he replied, Drive a Mechanical Brush Lol
Straight away Alfies said the Customs bloke says Oh Yeah, dont they have a donkey engine that runs off red diesel?
Alfie said the more he opened his mouth the deeper he was getting Lol
Anyway he was taken to Consett Police Station where he was still protesting his innocence and luckily the Sargeant on duty knew he was as honest as the day.
He finally Persuaded Customs and Excise to dip the tanks at Hamsterley Garage where they found the delivery driver had dumped the red into the wrong tank,
Jet had to pay out for a new fuel tank for the landrover along with a hire motor for him whilst it was off the road.
Boy did he not get some stick at work for weeks after that
The fine for using red illegally is £500. i know this for a fact because I was stopped by Customs and Revenue on April 2nd. The law regarding road sweepers changed on April 1st, after this date no road sweeper can run on red on the road engine. I warned my boss about this impending change, but in his infinite wisdom he decided it would not apply to him…
I was stopped and my sweeper seized, another of our sweepers in West Yorkshire seized on the roadside, and our two depots in West Yorkshire and North Lincs visited by C+R. I think this may have cost him somewhat…
Re the ebay products - forget it, the nice C+R man showed me how their roadside test showed the the chemical markers pesent in red diesel, apparently the ebay products may remove the dye but that is all - they can even tell the percentage of red to white in the roadtank.
Dean.
Now isn’t that odd! They’ve removed the right of canal boats/barges to use Red and they’ve also said a permanent YES to platform trucks over 3.5t in weight.
All those transit vans operated now have to run on white, but if it’s a heavy duty axle and weighing 4.5t then they are allowed.
All the way up to the big stuff. Cranes still use it too.
I cannot believe none of you old continental boys haven’t popped up with a comment or 2 about this, Dover was full of snap-tight connections & motors on tickover to clear the filters before venturing up the hill
Ok heres a continental boy…used to work for a guy doing only switzerland…he had a tank made which was the size of the headboard on a tautliner…we used to fill that up in Barking. that would take us to swiss and back, and no one knew any different. we used an existing air line to blow the air in, and another line that screwed on the bottom of the tank.
used to carry a belly tank and filled that up with cherry when on mid east work,we had to get the seals put on in dover before we left, and because the underside of the trailer was dirty, customs would let us do it, what they didnt know was the valve was in the open position, when we did it. of course the handle to this valve was a round one and not a tap, so they couldnt tell the difference. This allowed us to fill up anywherein the eu and beyond. I filled up one night in a german layby, the car parked behind me was german registered, and although the german owner pretended to walk his dog, saw what i was doing, and called the politzi. nosy.B*****d…and i got a hefty fine, and they re-sealed the tank…too late by then…