Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Alconbury Weston
Pause reading for a moment when the diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, then phone 0333 366 0103. In Alconbury Weston, finding it before the engine runs normally means a drain and a thorough flush on the spot. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel car, and its separate tank
Plenty of modern diesels on the roads round Alconbury Weston and Alconbury Weald carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. The exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the fumes to clean them, from its own tank.
Each tank has a filler of its own. Other vehicles put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot of others place both together behind one flap. Topping up the diesel side at the petrol pump goes on constantly. Far less frequently, the AdBlue side gets topped up — mostly from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. The mistake lives in that gap.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank happens in Alconbury Weston
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the car drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Spires End before work, or in the car park outside The White Hart on the way home.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Third, the bottle goes in: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it goes in as easily, and after the pour starts, nothing halts it. Alconbury or the middle of Alconbury Weston: it is the same few seconds either way.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A few seconds is all these take — so check them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Coppingford or a forecourt in Alconbury Weston.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally are not.
- Plenty of vehicles fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Lift the filler flap and look for a label — plenty of cars show which belongs in which filler just there.
- Can't find it beside your diesel inlet? In that case look beneath the bonnet or inside your boot — the owner's manual will say which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park at Huntingdon? Ask the person who drove the vehicle last before leaving, rather than once the light goes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
On the day the warning comes on — wherever it is across Cambridgeshire — a simple routine to use.
- Stop on level, engine off, with time to spare — not hurried on the side of Butchers Close.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap works — once you have found your filler and read it.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where the two share a flap, make sure it's closed before lifting the bottle.
- Stop once your tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; until then, tip gently using the own spout.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Find at step two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? So stop right there. Don't go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Alconbury Weston already?
Do not start your engine: that's where the short order of things begins. Don't switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is pulled from.
The attendants at Alconbury Services, Pace or another forecourt will normally help pushing the car away when asked. Leave it where it is if you're on your own drive in Alconbury Weston.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your motor has already run. The next junction means the place to come off when you are on the A1(M), under a mile from Alconbury Weston. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Peterborough, under 15 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Alconbury Weston.
What occurs when we get there in Alconbury Weston
Our engineers come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Alconbury CofE Primary School, close to St. Peter's & St. Paul's or on your own drive. Our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it's run, since those answers determine the work and the quote. You hear that price by phone, before anybody heads out.
Draining the tank comes next, then a full flush of your system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why the flush matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. Once the fuel filter is cleaned — or replaced, if needed — clean diesel is added, and then the car gets tested. After that we fire it up and check it runs properly before we leave.
Unrun vehicles mostly need a half-hour job from the moment we arrive. The kit is safe on a busy forecourt, and quiet enough for a residential street late at night. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Before we get there, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Alconbury Weston and where it is
Alconbury Weston is a village in Cambridgeshire, situated on the banks of a river at a low elevation of around 20 metres. Alconbury Weston lies near the villages of Alconbury, Upton, and Buckworth, and is approximately 13.5 miles from Peterborough. Alconbury Weston has a population of around 802 people, predominantly living in detached houses.
Alconbury Weston and Cambridgeshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Alconbury Weston is a village, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Upton and Buckworth among them, across the PE postcode area. A postcode starting PE28 4 gets our van to you fastest.
The car does not need to move. Anywhere it stands — near Alconbury Memorial Hall, on a lay-by en route to Football Fields, at home — that's where it gets cleared. Awkward to explain, like the back of View of Meadow and Church? By a county line? Checking is better than assuming, and so ring.
For Alconbury Weston people, the short version
Read the cap before you tip. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will empty it wherever it stands, anywhere across Cambridgeshire: switch the vehicle off then phone 0333 366 0103.