Bodiniel: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? Then put this page aside a moment, keep your ignition and engine off, then ring 0333 366 0103. Around Bodiniel, finding it before the motor runs normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush on the spot. Reading before the event? Then what follows covers why it comes about and how to stop it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads round Bodiniel and Bodmin carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. AdBlue's own tank holds it, and from there it goes to your exhaust, and there a spray cleans the fumes.
Each tank has its own filler. Plenty of vehicles have a single flap for the two, while others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel gets filled at each filling station call-out, week in, week out. Seldom topped up, AdBlue normally comes out of a bottle, poured by someone who has to stop and think what filler it needs. The mistake grows in that gap between them.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs around Bodiniel
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the car drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Higher Bodiniel Road before work, or in the car park at The Borough Arms on the way home.
The old car's cap is where the hand reaches — yet a rental car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers elsewhere. That's a second thing: a new vehicle.
Third, the bottle goes in: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it slides in just as easily, and after the pour starts, no part stops it. It's seconds, be it in Clerkenwater or bang in the centre of Bodiniel.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Mount Charles or a forecourt in Bodiniel, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Where it sits can mislead; the cap doesn't. AdBlue caps are often blue or carry the word "AdBlue" — diesel caps usually don't.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- Open the filler flap and check for a label — many cars mark which belongs in each filler just there.
- The handbook shows where it lives if the filler is not next to your diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- The previous driver will know. Ask when you collect a hire car or company car — from Bodmin Parkway's car park, perhaps — not when the warning comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Cornwall that is.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Scarletts Well Park.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start your car, shut the cap and look again that the diesel cap never came off.
Find at the second or third step that AdBlue went in the diesel filler? That is where you stop. Never go on to stage five.
Bodiniel: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Short list, then. Top of it: the motor stays unstarted. Leave the ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels it by itself starts your fuel pump. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where your fuel is drawn from — so don't top up with diesel to thin it.
Ask the attendants to help push the car away from the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the Texaco, the Gulf or anywhere else. On your own drive in Bodiniel? Then the vehicle remains put.
Already started? Stop once it's sensible, then switch off. Come off the M5 — over 50 miles out of Bodiniel — at the next junction. Mileage counts — a short hop across Bodiniel is a smaller job than driving under 25 miles to Truro — so tell us roughly how far it went.
Bodiniel: what occurs when we arrive
Anywhere the car has stopped, whether outside Berrycoombe School, near Bodmin Jail or on your own drive, our van comes to it. Both the work and the price depend on three answers — which liquid, which amount, and whether it's run — so our engineers ask. The price comes over the phone, before any van leaves.
Then that tank is emptied and your system purged thoroughly. More than with petrol, it counts with AdBlue: crystals form, some metals are attacked, and none of that washes away unaided, however long it is left. A test is at the end: before that, clean diesel goes in, and the fuel filter is flushed or replaced if necessary. Before we go, we start it and check that it is running correctly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour after our technicians arrive, as long as your engine hasn't run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a live forecourt and quiet after dark outside a house. Nothing in advance; you settle up on the day. At the end, the VAT invoice and a report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. It is worth checking your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Bodiniel, briefly
Bodiniel is a small locality in Cornwall, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 114 metres, with detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Bodiniel lies near several other small places, including Clerkenwater, Town End, and Dunmere, and is approximately 20 miles from the city of Truro. Bodiniel is characterized by its rural setting and relatively small population of around 561 residents. Bodiniel is also some distance from major urban centres, with London being around 213 miles away.
AdBlue drains round Bodiniel, and Cornwall beyond
Bodiniel is a small village, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Town End and Dunmere among them, across the PL postcode area. The van reaches you fastest with a postcode starting PL31 2.
Moving the car is not needed. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street close to Bodmin Library and Information Service, a lay-by on the way to Tredanek Meadow, a driveway. Awkward to explain, like the back of Bodmin Christian Felowship? Close to a county line? Asking beats guessing, and so phone.
In short, for Bodiniel drivers
Pour nothing until you have read the cap. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it is, wherever across Cornwall: keep the car off then ring 0333 366 0103.