Bellevue: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Leave your engine and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Normally, if the motor hasn't run, it's emptied and thoroughly purged where the car is around Bellevue. Reading in advance? Then what follows explains why it happens and what to stop it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
No single liquid but two: that's how plenty of modern diesels around Bellevue and Nichols Town carry, with diesel feeding your motor. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Every tank comes with one filler of its own. Other cars put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty more place the two side by side under one flap. The diesel side is fuelled at the petrol pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less often. Mistakes happen in the gap between the two.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank happens around Bellevue
Carelessness seldom causes it. What does is three things coming up together.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the vehicle, and letting it run dry means limp mode — so a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off Asylum Road, or at The Alexandra Arms on the way home after work.
Next, the hand reaches for the cap it knew on the old motor — because a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
A spouted bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, after begun, carries on. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Bellevue or out in Bedford Place.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Look at these before pouring, on a forecourt in Bellevue or a driveway over in Polygon. A few seconds, that's all.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Trust the cap, not its position.
- Many vehicles give AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Check inside the fuel flap: plenty of cars have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook says where it lives when the filler is not next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Southampton Central.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
Anywhere around Hampshire the light comes on, this is a routine for that day.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Bellevue Road.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap works — once you've found your filler and read the cap.
- The diesel cap stays on. When the two share a flap, confirm it is shut before lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
Spot at step two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? So stop right there. Never go on to step five.
Bellevue: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
What follows is a short order of things, starting with no starting your engine. On many diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch the vehicle on. Diluting it with more diesel fails, because AdBlue sinks to the bottom instead of blending — and that is where your fuel is pulled from.
Ask the attendants to help push your car away from the petrol pump if you are on a forecourt — the Esso, the Texaco or somewhere else. If you're on your own driveway in Bellevue, leave the car where it sits.
When your motor has been run already, stop safely and switch the car off. Leave the M3 — under 3 miles out of Bellevue — at the next junction. A short hop across Bellevue is a smaller job than a run towards Southampton, under a mile away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
When we get there around Bellevue, what happens?
Our engineers come to the car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Banister Primary School, close to The Edmund Kell Church or on your own driveway. Our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether it's run, because the replies decide this work and the quote. The price comes over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, once your tank is drained. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. Once the filter is cleaned — or renewed, if required — clean diesel goes in, and then your vehicle is tested. Your engine is started next and tested to be sure it runs properly, all before we head off.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once our engineers get there, provided your motor hasn't run — and the pumps our technicians use are safe on a live forecourt and quiet after dark beside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Bellevue
Bellevue is a suburban area located on the coast of Hampshire, near the city of Southampton. Bellevue sits at an elevation of 22 metres, with its predominant housing consisting of flats. Bellevue is close to nearby places such as Bedford Place, Newtown, and Banisters Park, and is situated approximately 68.8 miles from London.
AdBlue drains across Hampshire, Bellevue included
Bellevue is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the towns near it, Newtown and Banisters Park among them, across the SO postcode area. Quote a postcode that starts SO15 2, and our van arrives fastest.
No need to move the car. Anywhere it stands — beside Friends Meeting House, in a layby en route to Alpine Garden & ponds, at home — that is where it is cleared. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Southampton Crown Court.
For Bellevue people, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will drain it wherever it is, wherever around Hampshire: keep the car off then call 0333 366 0103.