Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Bishops Green: Why It Happens
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and your ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103. Around Bishops Green, finding it before your engine runs normally leaves a drain and a full flush on the spot. The remainder of this page explains why it takes place and how to ensure it does not — handy if you're reading before it has happened.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Plenty of current diesels on the roads around Bishops Green and New Greenham Park carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into your exhaust stream and cleans it.
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 goes in at every forecourt visit, week in, week out. The AdBlue side is filled far less frequently, usually from a bottle, and usually by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. It's in that gap that the slip happens.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs around Bishops Green
It is hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Ash Road before work, or in the car park at the pub in the village on the way home.
Then your car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new vehicle 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.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the pour once it has started. North Sydmonton or the heart of Bishops Green: it takes the same few seconds either way.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Be it a Bishops Green forecourt or a driveway over in Brocks Green, take a few seconds over these before anything goes in.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Trust the cap, not its position.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- Check inside your fuel flap: plenty of vehicles have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by the diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Newbury Racecourse.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
When the light comes on, anywhere in Hampshire, use this routine.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time in hand — not hurried on the side of Harrier Road.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the car on.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Spot at step two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? Then stop right there. Skip stage five entirely.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Bishops Green already?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting the motor. The fuel pump runs on many diesels as soon as the ignition is switched on — and so keep it off. Don't top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is pulled from.
On a forecourt — Tesco, Shell or another — the staff will usually help roll your car away, if you ask. Your own driveway around Bishops Green is the place it stays.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Come off the M4 — under 10 miles out of Bishops Green — at the first exit. Mileage counts — a quick hop across Bishops Green is a smaller job than driving under 25 miles to Winchester — so say roughly how far it went.
What occurs when our technicians turn up around Bishops Green
The van reaches the car anywhere it has come to rest — your own driveway, beside Greenham Peace Garden, or by Highwood Copse Primary School. The replies determine this work and our quote, and so we ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has run. No one sets off until you have had the price by phone.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, once your tank is emptied. 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 matters more here than with petrol. A test is last: before that, fresh diesel is added, and the fuel filter is cleaned or replaced if necessary. Then we start the engine and check it runs properly before we go.
With pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where the motor has not run need about half an hour after our engineers are there. No money upfront; you settle up that day. Afterwards, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. Misfuelling cover is included in many insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Bishops Green
Bishops Green is a village situated in a riverside setting in Hampshire, with an elevation of around 96 metres. Bishops Green lies near the villages of North Sydmonton and Adbury, and is also close to Goldfinch Bottom. Bishops Green has a population of approximately 673 people, and its housing stock is predominantly semi-detached homes. Bishops Green is located around 20.9 miles from Winchester and 50.7 miles from London.
AdBlue drains across Hampshire, Bishops Green included
Adbury and Goldfinch Bottom are among the places around Bishops Green, a village, that the same vans cover, over RG postcodes. Give a postcode that starts RG20 9, and the van arrives fastest.
Shifting the vehicle isn't necessary. Draining takes place on the spot, be it a drive, a road near Broken Symmetry, or a lay-by on the way to Sydmonton Common. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you're near a border, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of 17th Airborne Division Memorial.
For Bishops Green drivers, the short version
Pour no AdBlue till you have read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the car switched off then call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, throughout Hampshire.