A man facing a £260 repair bill after filling his car with diesel he alleges was contaminated with water from Helston Tesco - something the store denies - is now looking for others who also had problems.

Derek Wood, who lives in Falmouth Road, Helston, told the Packet he filled the tank of his Volvo with £50 of diesel from pump 11 at the supermarket fuel station on January 6, somewhere between 10.30am and 11am.

Within ten or 15 miles of driving it away he began to experience problems, with the engine misfiring time and again. He and his wife were "lucky to get home" from their trip out, but Mr Wood decided to give it one more try the following morning.

However, after stopping seven times in a hundred yards while on the way to Constantine Church they admitted defeat and had the car towed to a garage owned by one of the members of the congregation.

The fuel tank had to be drained, resulting in a total cost of £260.

Mr Wood claims the verdict of the garage was that "there was water in the diesel" - but that after making a complaint to Tesco, he received a letter this week to say "sorry we can't help you at this time."

He was told that the company had carried out its own investigation of the diesel at the store and found no problems - but Mr Wood pointed out that with the amount of fuel sold, this may have been different diesel to the batch he filled his car with.

He has since offered the company a sample of the fuel drained from his car, but claims they were not interested in testing it.

Mr Wood would now be interested to hear from anyone who may also have experienced similar problems after filling their car with diesel from the store around that time.

"I'm asking for anybody else affected, to all get together in a group - then we might all get some payback," said Mr Wood, who can be contacted on 01326 560352.

A spokesman for Tesco said: “We are sorry to hear of the problems that Mr Wood had with his vehicle. Having investigated the matter, we do not believe that this is as a result of filling up at our Helston petrol filling station.

“If water should find its way into our fuel it would set off a monitoring alarm and we would expect to see other motorists affected. Neither of these occurred on or around the date Mr Wood used our petrol station.”