Beechdown: 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 your motor and your ignition off then call 0333 366 0103. Usually, if your engine hasn't run, it's drained and fully flushed where your car sits in Beechdown. The rest of this page explains why it occurs and how to make sure it does not — handy if you're reading ahead of time.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Plenty of modern diesels around Higher Yalberton, as well as Beechdown, carry on two fluids; your engine takes only your diesel. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas to clean it.
Every tank has one filler of its own. On a lot of motors the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel gets filled on each forecourt call-out, week in, week out. Much less often, the AdBlue side is topped up — normally from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. That gap is where the error lives.
Beechdown: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
It is seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
On a drive off Totnes Road before work, or in the car park at The Blagdon Inn heading home: that's where the rushed top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue gets low the car tells you, and if it's gone, limp mode follows.
Then your car is new. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, once begun, keeps on. Little Blagdon or the heart of Beechdown: it takes the same few seconds in both.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Be it a Beechdown forecourt or a driveway over in Higher Blagdon, spend a few seconds over these before any goes in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap normally isn't. Read it rather than going by position.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- Can't find it beside the diesel inlet? Then check beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook will say where.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Paignton? Check with the person who drove the car last before leaving, rather than once the light goes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
Wherever in Devon the light comes on, here is a routine for that day.
- Switch off after you park — flat ground, engine stopped, and not rushed by Blagdon Road at the roadside.
- Daft as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you have found your filler and read the cap.
- The two behind a single flap? So confirm the lid on the diesel filler stays closed before lifting the bottle.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Find at step two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? Then stop right there. Don't go on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Beechdown?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting your engine. Don't switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
On a forecourt — Sainsbury's, Morrisons or another — the attendants will normally help push the vehicle away, when you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Beechdown.
Already run? Stop once it's safe, then turn off. Come off the M5 — under 25 miles out of Beechdown — at the first exit. Distance matters — a quick hop across Beechdown is a smaller job than heading under 25 miles to Exeter — so say roughly how far it went.
Beechdown: what occurs when we arrive
The van reaches your car wherever it stopped — your own driveway, near Collaton Saint Mary Church, or outside Collaton St Mary Church of England Primary School. Which fluid was put in, the quantity, and whether it ran: we ask since those replies set the work and price. Nobody heads out before you've heard the price over the phone.
Then the tank is emptied and your system flushed thoroughly. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own — which is why that counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. The filter cleaned or, if needed, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a test of your vehicle. We don't leave until it has been started and is running smoothly.
Unrun vehicles mostly need a half-hour visit from arrival. The kit is fine on a busy forecourt, and quiet enough for a residential street after dark. Paying is on the day, not upfront, and you receive the documents an insurer wants: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Misfuelling cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Beechdown and where it is
Beechdown is a small suburban area in Devon, situated near the coast and approximately 20 miles south of Exeter. Beechdown has a relatively low elevation of 71 metres and is characterised by detached housing. Beechdown is close to nearby places such as Little Blagdon and Collaton St Mary, and is located within the South West region of England.
AdBlue drains in Beechdown and across Devon
Beechdown is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Collaton St Mary and Lower Blagdon among them, across the TQ postcode area. A postcode starting TQ4 7 gets the van to you fastest.
No need to shift your car. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Site of Old Torbay Aircraft Museum, a lay-by on the way to Brake Copse, a drive. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Great Parks Community Centre.
In short, for Beechdown drivers
Read the cap before you pour. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank anyway, leave the vehicle off then phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it waits, anywhere around Devon.