Ashton Common: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. In Ashton Common, catching it before your motor turns usually means a drain and a full flush where it stands. Reading before the event? Then what follows explains how it comes about and how to prevent it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Many modern diesels in Great Hinton, like those in Ashton Common, carry on two fluids; your engine takes only your diesel. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust gas and cleans it.
Each tank has a filler of its own. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on many cars. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is under the bonnet or in the boot instead. Filling your diesel side at the petrol pump happens constantly. Far less commonly, the AdBlue side is topped up — normally from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. Mistakes happen in that gap between the two.
Ashton Common: how AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from your car, and letting it run out leads to limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Common Hill, perhaps at The Longs Arms on the way home that evening.
Then the car is new. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Lastly, the bottle fits: a diesel filler or AdBlue one, it slides in just as easily, and after the pour starts, nothing stops it. Bleet or the heart of Ashton Common: it is the same few seconds either way.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Check these first, on a forecourt in Ashton Common or a driveway over in Steeple Ashton. A few seconds, no more.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap usually is not. Read it instead of going by where it sits.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of motors. Check for it.
- The handbook says where it lives if your filler is not next to your diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Trowbridge? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before you set off, not once the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
For the day the light appears — wherever it is in Wiltshire — a simple routine to use.
- Not in a rush on the side of Yarnbrook Road, not on a slope, not with the motor running: park then switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the vehicle on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Find during the second or third stage that AdBlue went into the wrong tank? That's where you stop. Leave out step five altogether.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Ashton Common?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your motor. The fuel pump starts on many diesels the moment your ignition goes on — and so keep it off. Filling up with diesel won't thin it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of your tank, just where fuel is taken from.
At a forecourt — BP, Tesco or another — the attendants will usually help push the car clear, when you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Ashton Common.
Already started? Stop once it is safe, then turn off. Come off the M4 — under 15 miles out of Ashton Common — at the first exit. A short hop across Ashton Common is a smaller job than a run towards Bath, under 15 miles away, so tell us about how far it went.
Our arrival around Ashton Common, and what happens next
Our engineers come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Keevil CofE Primary School, close to Steeple Ashton Methodist Church or on your own driveway. The answers decide this work and our quote, and so our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. During the phone call itself, you are told our quote — ahead of dispatch.
After that: a drain, then a thorough flush of the entire system. Unlike petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and neither washes away by itself. Hence it counts more. The filter cleaned or, where it must be, replaced; clean diesel in; then a check of your car. After that our technicians start the engine and confirm it runs properly before we go.
If your motor hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It's worth checking your insurance while we travel to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Ashton Common
Ashton Common is a small village in Wiltshire, situated inland at an elevation of around 60 metres, approximately 10 miles from the city of Bath. Ashton Common has a population of around 619 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Ashton Common is close to nearby places such as Bleet, Cold Harbour, and Bullenhill, and is about 88 miles west of London.
AdBlue drains across Wiltshire, Ashton Common included
Being a rural village, Ashton Common has the same vans as nearby areas — Cold Harbour, Bullenhill — all the way across BA postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. A postcode starting BA14 6 gets our van to you fastest.
The vehicle stays put. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street near Great Hinton Memorial Hall, a lay-by on the way to St. Mary's Recreation Field, a drive. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of St Mary the Virgin, ring and ask rather than assuming.
Ashton Common motorists: the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will drain it wherever it is, wherever around Wiltshire: switch it off then call 0333 366 0103.