AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Calcot Row: Why It Happens and How to Avoid It
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and the ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. A drain and a thorough flush, done just where the car stands around Calcot Row, is normally what it needs when caught before your motor runs. Here in advance? In that case what follows explains why it happens and how to stop it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
No single fluid but two: that's what many modern diesels near Calcot Row and Churchend run, with diesel for your engine. Your exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the fumes to clean it, from a separate tank.
Each tank has its own filler. Plenty of cars have a single flap for both, whereas some put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, the diesel side gets filled all the time. Rarely filled, AdBlue normally goes in from a bottle, poured by someone who must stop and think which cap to use. Mistakes happen in the gap between them.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place around Calcot Row
Carelessness seldom explains it. What does is three things coming up together.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out completely, the car goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Langley Hall Drive before work, or in the car park outside The Water Tower on the way home.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part halts the tip once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It's a few seconds, be it out in Calcot or right in the heart of Calcot Row.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A couple of seconds is all these take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Tilehurst or a forecourt around Calcot Row.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue ones are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally aren't.
- The size. On many motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by your diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before knows. Ask as you collect a hire car or company car — from Theale's car park, perhaps — rather than once the warning appears.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
When the light goes on, anywhere around Berkshire, use this routine.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time in hand — never rushing on the side of Langley Hill.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you have located the filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, then look again — making sure the diesel filler stayed closed throughout. After that, start your car.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into the diesel side. Skip stage five altogether.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Calcot Row?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting the motor. Keep your ignition off as well, since on many diesels switching it on by itself runs the pump. Topping up with diesel will not weaken it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of the tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
On a forecourt — BP, Sainsbury's or another — the attendants will normally help push the car clear, if you ask. If you're on your own driveway around Calcot Row, leave it where it stands.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your motor has already run. On the M4, under a mile from Calcot Row, that means the next exit. A short hop across Calcot Row is a smaller job than a run towards Oxford, under 25 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
Our arrival in Calcot Row, and what occurs next
Outside Calcot Junior School, near Saint Birinus or on your own drive: wherever the car has stopped, our engineers come to it. Both the work and our price depend on three answers — what liquid, which quantity, and whether it has run — so our engineers ask. You get that price on the phone, before anyone heads out.
Then your tank is cleared and your system flushed thoroughly. Much more than with petrol, it matters with AdBlue: the crystals build up, some metals are attacked, and nothing clears away unaided, no matter how long it is left. The filter flushed or, if needed, replaced; fresh diesel in; then a test of the vehicle. Before we go, our engineers fire it up and confirm that it's running properly.
If your engine has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. The insurer usually wants the engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and both are yours at the end. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. It's worth looking at your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with many policies.
About Calcot Row, briefly
Calcot Row is a suburban area situated on the riverside in Berkshire, with an elevation of around 60 metres. Calcot Row lies near the villages of Calcot and Little Heath, and is also close to Horncastle. Calcot Row is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, and is located approximately 23 miles from Oxford and 40 miles from London.
Calcot Row and Berkshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Calcot Row is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Little Heath and Horncastle among them, across the RG postcode area. Our van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting RG31 4.
The vehicle does not need to move. Wherever it stands — beside The Gate Central, in a lay-by heading to Curtis's Wood, at home — that's where it gets drained. If you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Saint Michael's, ring and ask instead of assuming.
Calcot Row drivers: the short version
Tip no AdBlue until you have read the cap. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it stands, wherever across Berkshire: switch it off then ring 0333 366 0103.