AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Avening: Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It
Leave the engine and ignition off then call 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before the engine runs, it's generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Avening. The rest of this page explains why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't — useful if you're reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Plenty of modern diesels in Crackstone, as well as Avening, run on two fluids; the engine gets only the diesel. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank has its own filler. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in the boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. Much less often, the AdBlue side gets filled — normally from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. The slip lives in that gap.
Avening: how AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs
Rarely is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
Hurry comes from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a drive off Tetbury Hill, or on the way home in the car park at Queen Matilda.
Then the vehicle is new. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Lastly, the bottle goes in: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it slides in just as easily, and once the tip begins, no part stops it. It takes seconds, whether in Nags Head or bang in the centre of Avening.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Balls Green or a forecourt in Avening, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap normally isn't. Read it instead of going by where it sits.
- Plenty of motors fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- Can't see it beside the diesel inlet? In that case check beneath the bonnet or in the boot — the handbook will say where.
- 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 at Stroud.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
Wherever across Gloucestershire the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Hampton Hill.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it does the trick.
- The diesel cap remains on. When both share a flap, confirm it is closed before lifting the bottle.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Only after that, start the vehicle: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Find at step two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? Then stop just there. Don't go on to stage five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Avening?
What follows is a short order of things, starting with no starting the motor. Don't switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Diluting it with extra diesel fails, because AdBlue settles to the base rather than blending — and that's where the fuel is pulled from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the vehicle away from the pump if you are at a forecourt — the Tesco, the Shell or somewhere else. If you are on your own drive in Avening, leave the vehicle where it sits.
When the engine has run by now, pull over somewhere safe and turn the vehicle off. Avening lies under 10 miles from the M5; there, take the first junction. Roughly how far did it go? Crossing Avening is smaller a job than a trip of under 15 miles towards Gloucester, and so say.
What takes place when our engineers get there in Avening
Our van reaches your car anywhere it stopped — your own driveway, near Avening Memorial Hall, or by Avening Primary School. Those replies settle the work and our quote, so we ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether it's run. You hear that price on the phone, before anybody heads out.
Emptying that tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the system. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own. A test is at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and the fuel filter is flushed or replaced if necessary. Your engine is started next and checked to make sure it runs correctly, all before our technicians go.
Unrun vehicles usually mean a half-hour visit from the moment we arrive. The kit is safe on a busy forecourt, and hushed enough for a residential street late at night. Your insurer usually wants an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both once the job is done. Payment is on the day, with no money upfront. It's worth checking your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Avening, for a moment
Avening is a small village in Gloucestershire, situated inland at an elevation of 117 metres, approximately 13 miles from Gloucester. Avening has a population of around 706 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Avening is close to nearby places such as Nags Head, Hampton Fields, and Cherington, and is about 88 miles west of London.
Avening and Gloucestershire: AdBlue drains across the area
Being a rural village, Avening has the same vans as nearby places — Hampton Fields, Cherington — right across GL postcodes and the surrounding area around them. Quickest of all: quote a GL8 8 postcode for the van.
Shifting the car is not necessary. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Church of the Holy Cross, Avening, a lay-by on the way to Lee Croft, a driveway. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Norns Tump, ring and ask rather than guessing.
In short, for Avening motorists
Read the cap before you pour. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank anyway, leave it off then phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it waits, anywhere around Gloucestershire.