Might be a bit late, but with the hot weather we are having, I thought I would tell people not to fill their cars to the brim with fuel. This warning is prompted by last nights site of a night trunker coming in to work, checking the fuel cap on his tractor and getting showered in diesel. The last time he finished, he filled up for the next driver (as is normal), parked up and went home. By an odd set of circumstances, his vehicle wasnt used yesterday, so his fuel tank was in the hot sun all day, heating up and pressurising the tank as the fuel expands. And 600 litres produces a lot of expansion. such that when he checked his cap it came showering out. On him.

The obvious lesson here is that if you do this with your car, then although you probably wont get showered, cars have plastic tanks and fillers, so the chances of a rupture are that much greater. And in this heat thats a lot of dangerous fumes for the unwary. (diesel is safer as I think its flashpoint, the temperature at which it starts to give off flammable vapours, is around 60 degrees, from memory). Plus fuel is too expensive to waste.

So if you simply have to top it off, please do it just at the start of a long journey.

WTM