Billingborough: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and your ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. Caught before the motor runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Billingborough. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
No single liquid but two: that's how plenty of newer diesels around Billingborough and Stow carry, with diesel feeding your motor. Its own tank holds it, and from there it goes to your exhaust, and there spraying cleans the fumes.
Every tank has a filler of its own. On a lot of vehicles 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 at each forecourt visit, again and again. Much less regularly, the AdBlue side is topped up — normally from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. It's in the gap that the error lives.
Billingborough: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the vehicle, and letting it run out means limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off Chapel Street, perhaps at The Fortesque Arms on the way home after work.
Then the car is strange. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part stops the tip after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Billingborough or out in Horbling.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
A couple of seconds is all these take — so run through them before you pour anything, on a drive in Pointon or a forecourt in Billingborough.
- Position can mislead; the cap does not. AdBlue ones are often blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps normally don't.
- On plenty of vehicles, size tells: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- Check inside your fuel flap: plenty of motors carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- Can't find it next to the diesel inlet? In that case look below the bonnet or inside your boot — the owner's manual will say which.
- 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 Heckington.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
Anywhere in Lincolnshire the light comes on, this is a routine for that day.
- Switch off after you park — flat ground, engine off, and not rushed by Allen Close at the roadside.
- Daft as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — after you have located your filler and read the cap.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the vehicle on.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Before you start the car, shut the cap and check a second time that the diesel cap never opened off.
Find at the second or third stage that the bottle went in the wrong filler? That's where you stop. Step five is out.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, around Billingborough?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. Do not switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, because AdBlue sinks to the bottom instead of mixing — and that is where the fuel is sucked from.
Ask the staff to help roll your car away from the pump if you are on a forecourt — the the nearest petrol station, the another forecourt nearby or anywhere else. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway around Billingborough.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the engine has already run. On the Great North Road, under 25 miles from Billingborough, that means the next exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Billingborough is smaller work than a run of under 25 miles to Peterborough, so tell us.
Our arrival around Billingborough, and what takes place next
The van reaches the vehicle wherever it stopped — your own drive, near Billingborough Village Hall, or by Billingborough Primary School. Both the work and our quote rest on three replies — which liquid, which quantity, and if it's run — so we ask. During the phone call itself, you are told the quote — before anything else.
Draining your tank comes next, followed by a full flush of the fuel system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks certain fuel-system metals, and none of that washes away unaided. Hence it matters more. The filter flushed or, if it must be, replaced; fresh diesel in; and then a test of the vehicle. The engine is fired up next and tested to be sure it runs smoothly, all before we leave.
Using pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor hasn't run need about half an hour once our engineers are there. The insurer usually wants the engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and both are yours once the job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. Before we get there, take a look at your policy; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Billingborough itself
Billingborough is a village in southern Lincolnshire, situated on the banks of the River Witham at an elevation of around 13 metres. Billingborough sits in a rural area, with nearby villages including Horbling, Sempringham, and Birthorpe, and is approximately 22.5 miles from Peterborough. Billingborough has a population of around 1130 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Billingborough is located about 96.2 miles north of London, in the East Midlands region.
AdBlue drains around Billingborough, and Lincolnshire beyond
Over NG postcodes, our vans that cover Billingborough — a village — work the surrounding locations too, Birthorpe and Sempringham among them. Fastest of all: give a NG34 0 postcode for the van.
The car stays put. Draining happens on the spot, whether a drive, a street near St. Andrew, or a layby towards Piperdam Holt. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of St Andrew, ring and ask instead of assuming.
The short version for Billingborough people
Before you tip, read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Leave the car off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, throughout Lincolnshire.