IT IS easily done – and the RAC says someone does it about once a day, every day, in York.

A motorist pulls up at the filling station and fills their tank with petrol, when their engine actually runs on diesel. Or they put in diesel, when their car uses petrol.

The RAC says over a period of 1,826 days, it attended 1,612 breakdowns in York caused by fuel contamination. There are potentially disastrous consequences for drivers’ cars from such “misfuelling” mishaps, which are believed to happen about 150,000 times a year across the country.

But now a specialist patrol team has been launched by the breakdown organisation in York to aid motorists who have made the expensive mistake.

RAC Fuel Patrol, which is available for a fee to non-members as well as RAC members, aims to get drivers back on the road faster after misfuelling.

The patrol vans are fitted with specialist equipment to extract the contaminated fuel and flush the fuel system on the spot with motorists able to drive away, on average, 40 minutes after the patrol arrives at the scene.

However, a spokeswoman warned if motorists ran their engine before realising their mistake, the damage could be a lot more costly to put right. The vehicle would need to be towed to a garage to assess the extent of the damage and it would be kept off the road for at least a day.

She said RAC Fuel Patrols were already operating in other cities, including Liverpool, Bristol, Nottingham, Derby, Plymouth, Leeds, Reading, Cardiff and London, but was now expanding to cover additional misfuelling hot spots such as York.

David Bizley, RAC’s technical director, said: “Misfuelling is a common and costly issue – every three and a half minutes a motorist makes this simple but expensive error. York will benefit from having a local Fuel Patrol who can drain and flush misfuelled vehicles at the roadside, getting motorists back on their way more quickly.”