Aston Upthorpe: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Leave the motor and ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before the engine runs, it's normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in Aston Upthorpe. The rest of this page covers why it occurs and how to make sure it doesn't — useful if you're reading ahead of time.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of modern diesels on the roads around Aston Upthorpe and Tadley carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Your exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the gas to clean them, from its own tank.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the layout on a lot of vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler is under the bonnet or in your boot instead. Filling your diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less regularly. The slip lives in that gap.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place in Aston Upthorpe
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the car, and running out leads to limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off The Croft, perhaps outside The Chequers on the way home that evening.
Then the vehicle is strange. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part stops the pour once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Aston Tirrold or the middle of Aston Upthorpe: it takes the same few seconds in both.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Be it a Aston Upthorpe forecourt or a drive over in Woodway, spend a couple of seconds over these before anything goes in.
- Position misleads; the cap does not. AdBlue ones are often blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps usually don't.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of cars say there which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler is if it's not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Cholsey.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
On the day the warning comes on — anywhere it is around Oxfordshire — a simple routine to follow.
- Stop somewhere level, engine off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Fullers Road.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, yes, but it does the trick.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, and check again — confirm your diesel filler remained shut throughout. Only then, start the car.
Find at the second or third stage that the bottle went in the diesel tank? That is where you stop. Skip step five altogether.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Aston Upthorpe?
Short order, then. First: the engine remains unstarted. Keep your ignition off too, because on many diesels switching it on by itself starts the fuel pump. Topping up with diesel will not thin it: instead, AdBlue drops to the base of that tank, right where fuel is taken from.
If you're at a forecourt, whether it is the Shell or the Texaco, ask the staff to help roll your car away from the pump. At home in Aston Upthorpe? So the vehicle stays put.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if the motor has already run. On the M4, under 10 miles from Aston Upthorpe, that means the next exit. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Oxford, under 15 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Aston Upthorpe.
Aston Upthorpe: what occurs when our engineers get there
By South Moreton Primary School, near Aston Tirrold Village Hall or on your own drive: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our technicians come to it. Those answers settle this work and the price, so our technicians ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether it's run. That price comes over the phone, before any van leaves.
Then the tank is drained and the system purged thoroughly. More than with petrol, it counts here: crystals build up, certain metals corrode, and nothing clears out on its own, however long it sits. Filter flushed or, if it must be, swapped; fresh diesel in; and then a test of the vehicle. Then our engineers fire it up and confirm it runs properly before we go.
If the engine hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork your insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
About Aston Upthorpe, briefly
Aston Upthorpe is a small village in south Oxfordshire, situated near the River Thames and close to the North Wessex Downs. Aston Upthorpe lies in a rural area, approximately 12 miles south of Oxford and 46 miles west of London, with neighbouring villages including Aston Tirrold and South Moreton. Aston Upthorpe has a population of around 568 people, predominantly living in detached houses.
AdBlue drains around Aston Upthorpe and across Oxfordshire
Being a rural village, Aston Upthorpe has the same vans as surrounding places — South Moreton, Blewbury — all the way through OX postcodes and the surrounding area around them. Quote a postcode beginning OX11 9, and our van arrives quickest.
The car stays where it is. Draining happens on the spot, whether a drive, a street by All Saint's, or a lay-by on the way to Astons Recreation Ground. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of St Michael's, ring and ask instead of assuming.
Aston Upthorpe drivers: the short version
Read the cap before you pour. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the car switched off and call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, across Oxfordshire.