Bredon: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and the ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. A drain and a full flush, done right where the car stands around Bredon, is usually what it takes when caught before the engine runs. Nothing happened yet? Below, the page explains the why it takes place and the how to avoid it for good.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads about Bredon and Westmancote carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust gas and cleans it.
There's a filler on every tank. Other cars keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty more have both side by side behind one flap. The diesel side is filled at the pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less often. It's in that gap that the mistake lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank happen around Bredon?
Carelessness seldom explains it. Instead is three things coming up together.
On a driveway off Back Lane before work, or in the car park outside The Fox & Hounds Inn on the way home: that is where the hurried top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue gets low the car warns you, and if it is gone, limp mode kicks in.
The old car's filler is where the hand goes — but a rental car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere else. That is the second factor: a strange motor.
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. Mill End or the middle of Bredon: it is the same few seconds in both.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Whether a Bredon forecourt or a drive over in Bredons Hardwick, spend a couple of seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not its position.
- On plenty of motors, size tells: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- Can't find it beside the diesel filler? In that case look below the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook will say which.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Ashchurch for Tewkesbury, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever around Worcestershire, use this routine.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Main Road.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" out loud as unscrewing it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- 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 a second time that your diesel cap was never came off.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Step five is out.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Bredon already?
The short order of things, beginning with no starting the engine. The fuel pump runs on many diesels as soon as the ignition goes on — so keep it off. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where the fuel is pulled from — so do not top up with diesel to thin it.
Ask the attendants to help roll your car clear of the pump if you are at a forecourt — the BP, the Gulf or somewhere else. On your own drive in Bredon? So the vehicle remains where it is.
Already run? Pull over when it is safe, then switch off. Bredon lies under a mile from the M5; on it, take the next exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Bredon is less a job than a trip of under 15 miles towards Worcester, and so say.
Our arrival in Bredon, and what happens next
Our van comes to the vehicle anywhere it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Saint Giles Church, or by Bredon Hancock's Endowed CofE First School. The replies determine this work and the price, and so our engineers ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether it's run. Nobody heads out before you've heard our quote over the phone.
The fuel system is then rinsed thoroughly, after your tank is emptied. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and none of it clears out by itself. Hence it counts more. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and your car is tested. We do not leave until it has been started and is running properly.
Using pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor has not run take roughly half an hour once we are there. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Before we get there, take a look at your policy; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Bredon
Bredon is a village situated on the banks of the River Avon in Worcestershire, with a mix of old and new buildings, including many detached homes. Bredon lies near the junction of the A438 and B4080 roads, approximately 12 miles from Worcester and 92 miles from London. Bredon has a population of around 1076 residents, who live in a relatively low-lying area, at an elevation of about 27 metres above sea level. Bredon is close to other small settlements, including Mill End, Lower Westmancote, and Kinsham.
Bredon and Worcestershire: AdBlue drains across the area
Lower Westmancote and Kinsham are among the places around Bredon, a village, that the same teams cover, over GL postcodes. Give a postcode beginning GL20 7, and our van gets there fastest.
Shifting the car isn't necessary. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Bredon Playing Fields, a side street near Bredon Village Hall: we drain it where it stands. Awkward to explain, like the back of Kinsham Baptist Chapel? Close to a border? Checking beats guessing, so phone.
For Bredon people, the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the vehicle switched off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, throughout Worcestershire.