Why It Happens and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Bassingham
Leave your motor and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Usually, if the motor hasn't run, it's emptied and fully rinsed where the vehicle sits in Bassingham. The rest of this page explains why it occurs and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you're reading before it has happened.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Plenty of modern diesels on the roads round Bassingham and Aubourn carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into your exhaust gas to clean it.
Different tanks, different fillers. Plenty of vehicles have a single flap for the two, while some put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Filling the diesel side at the pump goes on constantly. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less commonly. That gap is where the error lives.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur around Bassingham?
Carelessness rarely causes it. Instead is three things coming up at once.
On a driveway off Eastgate before work, or in the car park at The Five Bells on the way home: that is where the rushed top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue gets low your car tells you, and once it's gone, limp mode follows.
The old car's cap is where your hand goes — yet a rental car, a new vehicle or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That is a second factor: a strange vehicle.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, and so nothing stops the pour once it has started. Whether it happens in Thurlby or the middle of Bassingham, it is the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
A few seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Witham St Hughs or a forecourt in Bassingham.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue ones are often blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually are not.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on many vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- Open the flap and look for a label — plenty of cars show which goes in which inlet right there.
- Can't see it next to the diesel inlet? Then check below the bonnet or in the boot — the handbook says which.
- The person who drove the car last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park at Swinderby, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever around Lincolnshire, use this routine.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Chapel Jetty.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, yes, yet it works.
- The diesel cap remains on. Where both share a flap, confirm it's shut before the bottle comes up.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Spot at step two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? Then stop just there. Never go on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Bassingham?
What follows is a short order of things, beginning with no starting your engine. Keep the ignition off too, since on plenty of diesels it by itself runs the pump. Thinning it with more diesel won't work, since AdBlue sinks to the base instead of blending — and that's where the fuel is pulled from.
Ask the attendants to help push the vehicle away from the pump if you're on a forecourt — the BP, the Shell or somewhere else. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Bassingham.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your engine has already run. The next junction is where to come off if you're on the Doncaster By-Pass, under 25 miles from Bassingham. A short hop across Bassingham is a smaller job than a run towards Lincoln, under 10 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
What occurs when our engineers arrive around Bassingham
By Bassingham Primary School, near Cricket Club Pavillion or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, we come to it. What fluid went in, the quantity, and if it ran: our engineers ask since the replies decide the work and price. The price is given over the phone, before any van leaves.
Then your tank is emptied and your system purged thoroughly. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own — which is why that counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. After the filter is flushed — or renewed, where required — clean diesel is added, and then the car gets tested. Before leaving, our engineers start the engine and confirm that it's running properly.
Using pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where your engine hasn't run take about half an hour once our technicians are there. Nothing in advance; you settle up that day. At the end, the VAT invoice and the report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. Misfuelling cover is included in many insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Bassingham and where it is
Bassingham is a village situated on the banks of the River Witham in Lincolnshire, with a low elevation of around 17 metres. Bassingham lies approximately 8 miles south of Lincoln and 114 miles north of London, placing it in a relatively rural setting. Bassingham is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock and is surrounded by nearby villages such as Thurlby and Carlton-le-Moorland. Bassingham has a population of around 1234 residents.
AdBlue drains across Lincolnshire, Bassingham included
Carlton-le-Moorland and Norton Disney are among the places near Bassingham, a village, that the same vans cover, over LN postcodes. Give a postcode beginning LN5 9, and our van gets there quickest.
The car stays where it is. The drain takes place on the spot, whether a drive, a street by St Michael & All Angels, or a layby towards Bassingham Covert. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you are near a border, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of St Germain.
Bassingham drivers: the short version
Always, the cap; after that, the pour. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it stands, anywhere around Lincolnshire: keep the vehicle off and phone 0333 366 0103.