Bere Alston: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? Then set this page aside a moment, keep your ignition and motor off, and phone 0333 366 0103. In Bere Alston, finding it before the engine turns normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
No single fluid but two: that's how plenty of modern diesels around Bere Alston and Okeltor run, with diesel for your engine. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Every tank comes with one filler of its own. Under one flap, side by side: that is the layout on a lot of cars. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits under the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. Far less regularly, the AdBlue side gets filled — normally from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. The mistake grows in the gap between them.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Bere Alston: how it happens
Rarely is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from your car, and running dry means limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Fore Street, or outside Edgcumbe Hotel on the way home after work.
Unfamiliar cars come second, as well. Rentals, new vehicles and company motors put their fillers in new places, and the hand goes for the cap used on the old one.
No part halts 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. Tuckermarsh or the heart of Bere Alston: it is the same few seconds either way.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Check these before pouring, at a forecourt around Bere Alston or a driveway out in Calstock. A few seconds, no more.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- On plenty of cars, the size tells: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on many motors. Look for it.
- Cannot see it beside your diesel inlet? Then look beneath the bonnet or in the boot — the owner's manual says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at the nearest station? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before you set off, not when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around Devon that is.
- Turn off after you park — level ground, engine off, and never rushed by Pilgrim Drive on the verge.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" aloud while unscrewing it. It seems daft. It works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Only after that, start the vehicle: close the cap, check again, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Step five is off limits.
Bere Alston: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. On plenty of diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so do not switch it on. Thinning it with more diesel won't work, because AdBlue settles to the base instead of mixing — and that's where the fuel is pulled from.
If you are on a forecourt, whether it's the the nearest petrol station or the Asda, ask the attendants to help push the car clear of the petrol pump. At home around Bere Alston? Then the vehicle remains put.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your engine has already run. The next exit means the place to leave if you're on the M5, under 50 miles from Bere Alston. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Plymouth, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Bere Alston.
Bere Alston: what happens when our technicians get there
Our technicians come to the car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Bere Alston Primary Academy, near United Church or on your own driveway. Those replies determine the work and our quote, and so our technicians ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it has run. You get that price on the phone, before anyone heads out.
Then your tank is cleared and the fuel system rinsed thoroughly. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears out unaided. That is why it matters more. The filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running smoothly.
With pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where the motor hasn't run take about half an hour once our engineers are there. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the documents an insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Wrong-fuel cover is part of many insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Bere Alston itself
Bere Alston is a village in Devon, situated near the coast and approximately 7.9 miles from Plymouth, with a mix of semi-detached housing and other types of homes. Bere Alston sits at an elevation of around 128 metres, overlooking the surrounding countryside. Bere Alston is close to several nearby places, including Tuckermarsh, Holes Hole, and Cotts, and is part of the wider South West region. Bere Alston has a population of around 2062 people, according to recent estimates.
AdBlue drains around Bere Alston, and Devon beyond
Holes Hole and Cotts are among the places near Bere Alston, a coastal village, that the same vans cover, over PL postcodes. Quickest of all: quote a PL20 7 postcode for the van.
There's no need to move the vehicle. Wherever it stands — beside The Youth Hut, in a layby en route to Dog Exercise Area, on a drive — that's where it gets cleared. Awkward to explain, like the back of Holy Trinity Church? By a county line? Asking beats assuming, and so phone.
The short version for Bere Alston motorists
Before you pour, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere around Devon, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — and so leave it off and call 0333 366 0103.