Goss Fill Safe Cap

GOSS FillSafe filler cap has a few problems – After 13 years of driving a diesel engined car, in a moment of distraction, I put 20 litres of petrol into the fuel tank. Luckily I realized what I had done and didn't start the engine. I spent the next four hours waiting for a fuel recovery service vehicle to arrive (they were very good) and nearly $700 to get the tank pumped out, refueled and… Read more

checked. A very expensive exercise indeed. When I bought the car in 2011, one thing I specifically looked for was a fuel cap that would prevent me from misfueling the car. I think that RACQ had one, but when I tried to fit it to my car, it just wouldn't go in properly, despite it supposedly being suitable for my vehicle. I found the GOSS FillSafe filler cap on the internet, and it was listed as being suitable for my vehicle. There was a You Tube video promoting it and showing how it fitted into the existing filler tube of a vehicle. It looked like my problem was solved. It was easy to fit (and remove) and the quality of manufacture seems to be good. However, when next I tried to put fuel into my car, I noticed that there is a major issue with the FillSafe filler cap. While it allowed the bowser nozzle to pass through the in-built gate, it increased the distance between the end of the nozzle to the gate already inside the original fuel tank filler tube. What happens, is that if the fill lever on the nozzle is pulled right back for fast refueling as one normally does, the bowser shuts off the flow of fuel as the nozzle doesn't pass through and open the fuel tank gate enough which results in a back up situation and the flow of fuel stops. The only way around this problem is to slowly trickle fuel into the fuel tank, which takes a very long time, or remove the FillSafe and risk another wrong fuel filling incident , which defeats the purpose of using a FillSafe fuel cap in the first place. I contacted GOSS Vehicle Mechatronics about the problem and I was told that they know it is a problem, and they know what causes it, but their suggestion is to 1) wiggle the bowser nozzle to see if it can open the fuel filler gate on the car, or 2) Look for a servo that has longer bowser nozzles. Well, I've tried the wiggle technique, and it didn't work. I've tried another servo, but it seems to me that all bowser nozzles seem to be the same length, regardless of what fuel is being dispensed. I'm going to suggest a redesign to the manufacturers, but in the meantime, I'm not going to let the fuel tank get to less than half full as an interim measure.