Darshill: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Pause reading a minute when your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and phone 0333 366 0103. Usually, when the motor has not turned, it is emptied and thoroughly rinsed where your vehicle is in Darshill. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
No single fluid but two: that is what many newer diesels around Darshill and Field run, with diesel feeding the engine. Your exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the gas to fresh it, from a separate tank.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Other cars put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot of others place the two side by side behind one flap. Topping up the diesel side at the petrol pump happens all the time. Far less commonly, the AdBlue side gets topped up — normally from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. It's in the gap that the error happens.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank happens around Darshill
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from the vehicle, and running out means limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Back Lane, or outside Horseshoe Inn on the way home after work.
Then the car is strange. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Lastly, the bottle goes in: diesel filler or AdBlue one, it goes in just as easily, and once the pour begins, nothing halts it. Bowlish or the heart of Darshill: it takes the same few seconds in both.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Be it a Darshill forecourt or a driveway out in Downside, take a couple of seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap normally isn't. Read it instead of going by position.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler sits if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Castle Cary.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
Wherever around Somerset the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Switch off once parked — flat ground, motor off, and not rushed beside Ham Lane East on the verge.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap works — after you've located the filler and read it.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Stop when your tank fills or the bottle runs dry; until then, pour gently through the own spout.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
Spot at stage two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? So stop right there. Never carry on to stage five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Darshill?
The short order of things, starting with not starting the engine. Do not switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel will not weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the base of that tank, right where the fuel is drawn from.
On a forecourt — Tesco, Murco or any other — the staff will normally help roll your car clear, when you ask. Your own drive in Darshill is the place it should stay.
Already run? Stop when it's sensible, then switch off. Leave the M5 — under 25 miles out of Darshill — at the first exit. A short hop across Darshill is a smaller job than a run towards Wells, under 5 miles away, so tell us about how far it went.
Darshill: what takes place when we arrive
By Bowlish Infant School, near Shepton Mallet Baptist Church or on your own drive: wherever the car has stopped, our technicians come to it. Both the work and the price depend on three answers — what fluid, what amount, and if it's run — so our technicians ask. No one heads out until you've heard our price by phone.
Then the tank is cleared and the system purged thoroughly. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own. Filter flushed or, if it must be, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a check of the car. Before we leave, our technicians fire it up and check that it's running smoothly.
Using pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs in which your motor hasn't run need about half an hour once our engineers arrive. Your insurer usually wants the engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and you get both at the end. Payment is on the day, with no deposit. Wrong-fuel cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Darshill
Darshill is a suburban area situated on the riverside in Somerset, with a mix of semi-detached housing and other residential properties. Darshill sits near the city of Wells, approximately 3.9 miles away, and is close to other nearby places such as Bowlish, West Shepton, and Shepton Mallet. Darshill has a population of around 3147 people and is located at an elevation of 126 metres. Darshill is also within commuting distance to larger cities, with London being around 107.2 miles away.
AdBlue drains about Darshill, and Somerset beyond
West Shepton and Shepton Mallet are among the towns near Darshill, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, over BA postcodes. A postcode starting BA4 5 gets the van to you fastest.
Moving the car isn't necessary. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Titwell Wood, a side street close to Market Cross: our engineers drain it where it is. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of St Peter and St Paul, ring and ask instead of assuming.
In short, for Darshill drivers
Read the cap before you pour. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Keep the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, across Somerset.