Ascot: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Leave your motor and ignition off and call 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. A drain and a full flush, carried out just where your vehicle sits around Ascot, is normally all it needs if caught before the motor runs. Reading before the event? In that case the rest covers why it happens and what to prevent it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Diesel feeds your motor — yet plenty of current diesels seen round Ascot and Cheapside hold a second fluid as well. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Separate tanks, different fillers. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at every forecourt visit, week in, week out. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less often. That gap is where the slip lives.
Ascot: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
It is rarely carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
On a driveway off High Street before work, or in the car park outside The Stag on the way home: that is where the rushed top-up takes place. Why the rush? As AdBlue gets low the vehicle warns you, and once it's empty, limp mode kicks in.
Next, your hand reaches for the cap it knew on the old vehicle — because a hire car, a new motor or a company car places the fillers where your last one didn't.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. So the tip, after started, carries on. It takes seconds, whether in South Ascot or bang in the heart of Ascot.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you tip anything, whether on a driveway in Brookside or a forecourt in Ascot, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is often blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally is not. Read it instead of going by position.
- Many motors fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Look inside your fuel flap: plenty of motors carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by your diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park at the nearest station? Check with whoever drove it last before leaving, rather than once the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
On the day the light comes on — wherever it is around Berkshire — a simple routine to use.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Station Hill.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — after you've found the filler and read it.
- The diesel cap remains on. Where both share a flap, make sure it's shut before the bottle comes up.
- Finish when the tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; until then, tip slowly through the own spout.
- Close the cap, and check again — confirm the diesel filler stayed shut the whole time. After that, start the vehicle.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into the diesel side. Step five is out.
Ascot: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Do not start your engine: that's how the short order of things begins. Keep your ignition off as well, because on plenty of diesels switching it on alone runs your fuel pump. Filling up with diesel won't thin it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of your tank, just where fuel is taken from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it is the Esso or the Murco, ask the attendants to help push the car away from the petrol pump. Leave it where it is if you're on your own drive in Ascot.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Come off the M3 — under 5 miles out of Ascot — at the first junction. A short hop across Ascot is a smaller job than a run towards Westminster, under 25 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
What happens when we arrive in Ascot
Wherever the vehicle has stopped, whether outside South Ascot Village Primary School, beside Ascot Durning Library or on your own drive, our van travels to it. Those answers determine this work and the price, and so our technicians ask what got in, about how much, and if it has run. Nobody sets off before you have heard the quote over the phone.
Then the tank is drained and the fuel system flushed thoroughly. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and none of that washes away unaided. Hence it matters more. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and your car is tested. Before we go, our engineers start it and make sure that it's running correctly.
If the engine hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It's worth looking at your insurance while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Ascot itself
Ascot is a small village in Berkshire, situated inland at an elevation of 87 metres, approximately 24.5 miles from London. Ascot has a mix of housing types, but is predominantly composed of flats. Ascot is surrounded by nearby places such as South Ascot, North Ascot, and Sunninghill, and remains a distinct village entity within the wider area.
AdBlue drains round Ascot, and Berkshire beyond
As a rural village, Ascot has the same vans as surrounding places — North Ascot, Sunninghill — right through SL postcodes and the wider area around them. A postcode starting SL5 7 gets our van to you fastest.
No need to shift the car. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street near Royal Ascot Tennis Club, a lay-by on the way to South Ascot Playing Field, a drive. Tricky to explain, like the back of Ascot Racecourse? By a county line? Asking is better than assuming, and so ring.
The short version for Ascot motorists
Read the cap before you pour. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it wherever it is, wherever in Berkshire: keep it off then phone 0333 366 0103.