Butterrow: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep your engine and ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. A drain and a thorough flush, done right where your vehicle sits in Butterrow, is normally what it needs if found before your engine runs. Here before the event? In that case the rest explains why it comes about and how to prevent it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Plenty of newer diesels around Mount Pleasant, like those in Butterrow, carry on two liquids; the engine takes only the diesel. Your exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the fumes to fresh them, from its own tank.
Different tanks, different fillers. On a lot of motors the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Topping up the diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. It is in that gap that the mistake happens.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place in Butterrow?
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things coincide.
Haste comes from the warning. The vehicle tells you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank sends it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a driveway off Rodborough Lane, or on the way home in the car park at The Bowbridge Arms.
New-to-you motors come second, as well. Rentals, new cars and company cars put their fillers in new places, and the hand goes for the cap used on the old one.
Nothing halts the tip once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It's a few seconds, whether out in Bowbridge or right in the heart of Butterrow.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Check these before pouring, at a forecourt around Butterrow or a drive out in The Butts. Seconds, no more.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually are not.
- Many vehicles fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of cars say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by your diesel cap, it's in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park at Stroud, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
Wherever in Gloucestershire the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Not in a rush on the side of Butterrow Hill, not on a slope, not with the engine running: park and switch off first.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It works.
- The diesel cap stays on. When both sit under a flap, make sure it is closed before the bottle comes up.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, and look again — making sure the diesel filler stayed closed the whole time. After that, start your car.
If at step two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Never go on to step five.
Butterrow: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your motor. Leave your ignition off as well, because on plenty of diesels switching it on by itself starts the pump. Filling up with diesel won't weaken it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the base of that tank, right where fuel is taken from.
At a forecourt — BP, Tesco or any other — the attendants will usually help roll the car clear, if you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own drive around Butterrow.
When the motor has run by now, pull over somewhere safe then switch the vehicle off. Butterrow lies under 5 miles from the M5; on it, take the next exit. Mileage matters — a quick hop across Butterrow is a smaller job than heading under 10 miles towards Gloucester — so tell us about how far it went.
When we get there in Butterrow, what occurs?
Our engineers come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Stroud Valley Community Primary School, near In Transit or on your own driveway. We ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has run, since the answers determine the work and our price. No one heads out until you have heard our quote over the phone.
Emptying that tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the system. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own. Once the fuel filter is cleaned — or replaced, where needed — fresh diesel goes in, and then the vehicle gets tested. Next our technicians fire it up and check it runs correctly before we leave.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour once our technicians arrive, provided the engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet at night beside a house. Your insurer will ask for the engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and both are yours once this job is done. Payment is on the day, with no money upfront. It is worth looking at your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Butterrow itself
Butterrow is a village situated on the riverside in Gloucestershire, with a mix of detached housing and a population of around 658 residents. Butterrow sits at an elevation of 108 metres, close to the nearby places of Bowbridge, Thrupp, and Bagpath. Butterrow is located near Gloucester, which is approximately 9.1 miles away, and is about 90.7 miles west of London. Butterrow remains a quiet residential community with a rural character.
AdBlue drains around Butterrow and across Gloucestershire
Being a village, Butterrow has the same vans as surrounding areas — Thrupp, Bagpath — all the way across GL postcodes and the surrounding area around them. A postcode starting GL5 2 gets our van to you fastest.
Your car does not need to move. Anywhere it stands — near Trinity Rooms, in a lay-by en route to Arundel Mill Ponds, at home — that is where it is cleared. Assuming won't help at the back of Rodborough Community Hall, on a boundary, or anywhere awkward to describe; phone and ask.
Butterrow people: the short version
Tip nothing until you have read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave the vehicle off then ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it sits, anywhere across Gloucestershire.