Chudleigh: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and the ignition off then call 0333 366 0103. A drain and a thorough flush, done just where the car sits in Chudleigh, is usually what it takes when found before your motor runs. Here before the event? In that case what follows covers how it happens and how to prevent it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Diesel goes to your motor — but many newer diesels seen around Chudleigh and Chudleigh Knighton hold another fluid too. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into your exhaust stream and cleans it.
Separate tanks, separate fillers. Plenty of cars have a single flap for the two, while others move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, your diesel side is topped up all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less often, normally from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. The slip lives in that gap.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Chudleigh: how it occurs
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from your car, and running dry means limp mode — so a hurried top-up, maybe before work off Fore Street, perhaps outside Harveys of Chudleigh on the way home that evening.
The old car's filler is where your hand reaches — yet a hire car, a new motor or a company car keeps the fillers somewhere else. That's 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, and so nothing stops the tip once it has started. It takes seconds, whether out in Gappah or bang in the centre of Chudleigh.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Be it a Chudleigh forecourt or a drive out in Ideford, take a couple of seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Trust the cap, not its position.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- A label inside the fuel flap often shows which fuel goes where, on many cars. Look for it.
- Cannot find it next to your diesel inlet? In that case look beneath the bonnet or inside your boot — the handbook will say where.
- The previous driver will know. Ask when you pick up a hire car or company car — at Newton Abbot's car park, perhaps — rather than when the warning appears.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
When the light comes on, anywhere across Devon, use this routine.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time to spare — not hurried on the side of Old Exeter Street.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you've found the filler and read the cap.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the car on.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
If at step two or three you find you have already poured into your diesel side, stop there. Skip step five entirely.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Chudleigh already?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your motor. Don't switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Topping up with diesel will not weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the base of that tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
Ask the staff to help roll the vehicle away from the pump if you're at a forecourt — the Texaco, the Esso or anywhere else. At home in Chudleigh? Then the car remains put.
Already started? Stop when it is sensible, then switch off. The next junction is where to come off if you are on the M5, under 10 miles from Chudleigh. About how far did it go? Hopping across Chudleigh is smaller a job than a trip of under 10 miles towards Exeter, so say.
Chudleigh: what happens when our technicians turn up
Our engineers come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Chudleigh Church of England Community Primary School, close to 1879 or on your own driveway. Both the work and the price depend on three answers — which liquid, which amount, and whether it has run — so our technicians ask. You hear that price by phone, before anybody sets off.
Next: draining, then a full flush of the whole system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither washes out unaided. Hence it matters more. The filter cleaned or, where needed, swapped; clean diesel in; and then a test of the vehicle. Before leaving, we start it and make sure that it's running properly.
Unrun cars mostly mean a half-hour job from the moment we arrive. The kit is fine on a live filling station, and quiet enough for a residential street after dark. Nothing upfront; you settle up on the day. At the end, the VAT invoice and the report from the engineer go to you for the insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Chudleigh
Chudleigh is a town situated in a riverside location in Devon, with a population of around 4746 people and an elevation of 72 metres. Chudleigh lies near the cities of Exeter and the surrounding villages of Gappah, Olchard, and Trusham. Chudleigh has a predominance of detached housing and is located approximately 163 miles from London. Chudleigh is set in the scenic South West region of England.
Chudleigh and Devon: AdBlue drains across the area
Olchard and Trusham are among the places around Chudleigh, a riverside town, that the same vans cover, over TQ postcodes. Give a postcode that starts TQ13 0, and the van arrives quickest.
The vehicle does not need to shift. Anywhere it stands — beside WWI, on a lay-by en route to Twin Oaks Community Garden, on a drive — that's where it is drained. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Chudleigh Town Hall, ring and ask instead of guessing.
In short, for Chudleigh people
Tip no AdBlue until you have read the cap. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will empty it wherever it is, anywhere across Devon: keep the vehicle off and ring 0333 366 0103.