AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Bloxham: Why It Happens and How to Prevent It
Stop reading for a moment when the diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, then call 0333 366 0103. Caught before the motor runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is in Bloxham. Here before the event? In that case what follows covers how it happens and how to prevent it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Many newer diesels on the roads about Bloxham and High Meadow View carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. The exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the fumes to fresh them, from a separate tank.
Each tank comes with one filler of its own. Under one flap, next to each other: that's the layout on a lot of vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Filling the diesel side at the pump happens all the time. Seldom topped up, AdBlue usually comes from a bottle, tipped by a driver who has to stop and think what cap to use. That gap is where the slip lives.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place in Bloxham
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from your car, and letting it run out leads to limp mode — so a hurried top-up, perhaps before work off Humber Street, perhaps at Elephant and Castle on the way home after work.
Unfamiliar vehicles come second, as well. Hire cars, new motors and company cars place their fillers in new places, and habit goes for the cap 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, and so nothing stops the pour after it has started. Whether it happens in Milton or the middle of Bloxham, it is the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Look at these before pouring, at a forecourt around Bloxham or a driveway out in Lower Tadmarton. A few seconds, that's all.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is often blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap normally is not. Read it instead of going by position.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- Check inside the fuel flap: many vehicles have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by the diesel cap, it is in your 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 collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Banbury.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
When the light goes on, anywhere in Oxfordshire, follow this routine.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of High Street.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after finding the AdBlue filler and reading it. Daft, perhaps, but it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the vehicle on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the car, shut the cap and check again that the diesel cap never came off.
Discover during the second or third step that the bottle went in the diesel filler? That is where you stop. Step five stays off limits.
Bloxham: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. Do not switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Topping up with diesel will not dilute it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of that tank, just where fuel is drawn from.
If you are on a forecourt, whether it's the BP or the Esso, ask the staff to help roll the car clear of the pump. On your own drive in Bloxham? So your car remains where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the engine has already run. Bloxham sits under 5 miles from the M40; on it, use the next junction. Distance counts — a short hop across Bloxham makes a smaller job than heading under 25 miles towards Oxford — so say about how far it went.
Our arrival around Bloxham, and what takes place next
Wherever the vehicle has stopped, be it by Bloxham Church of England Primary School, beside Bloxham Ex Servicemen's Village Hall or at home, the van travels to it. We ask what went in, about how much, and if it has run, because those answers determine this work and the price. No one heads out before you've had our price over the phone.
Then the tank is emptied and the system flushed thoroughly. More than with petrol, it counts with AdBlue: crystals form, some metals are attacked, and none of that clears away on its own, however long it is left. The fuel filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. Before we go, our engineers fire it up and check that it's running correctly.
Unstarted cars usually need a half-hour visit after the moment we arrive. The equipment is fine on a live filling station, and quiet enough for a driveway late at night. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Misfuelling cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About Bloxham, for a moment
Bloxham is a village in north Oxfordshire, situated in a rural area at an elevation of around 117 metres. Bloxham lies approximately 19 miles north of Oxford and 64 miles west of London, with nearby villages including Milton, Milcombe, and Broughton. Bloxham has a population of around 1945 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Bloxham remains a quiet, residential community with a strong sense of village identity.
AdBlue drains in Bloxham and across Oxfordshire
Milcombe and Broughton are among the towns near Bloxham, a rural village, that the same vans cover, over OX postcodes. Quote a postcode that starts OX15 4, and our van gets there fastest.
The vehicle remains where it is. Anywhere it stands — beside Saint Mary, on a layby heading to Jubilee Park, at home — that's where it gets cleared. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Bloxham Village Museum? By a county line? Asking beats assuming, and so phone.
For Bloxham motorists, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the car switched off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, throughout Oxfordshire.