Farndon: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? Then put this page aside a moment, leave the ignition and engine off, and ring 0333 366 0103. A drain and a full flush, carried out right where the car stands in Farndon, is normally all it takes if found before your engine runs. Here before the event? Then what follows covers how it comes about and what to prevent it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Many newer diesels on the roads around Farndon and East Stoke carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Your exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the gas to fresh it, from its own tank.
Each tank has a filler of its own. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on a lot of cars. On others, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Diesel goes in at each filling station call-out, week in, week out. Seldom filled, AdBlue usually comes from a bottle, tipped by a driver who must stop and think which cap it needs. That gap is where the error lives.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur around Farndon?
Carelessness seldom explains it. Instead is three things lining up together.
On a drive off Main Street before work, or in the car park outside The Rose and Crown heading home: that is where the hurried top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low your car warns you, and once it's empty, limp mode follows.
Then the car is strange. A hire car, a new motor 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.
Nothing stops the pour once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Thorpe or the heart of Farndon: it takes the same few seconds either way.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Rolleston or a forecourt in Farndon, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally are not.
- Plenty of vehicles fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Open the flap and check for a label — many cars show which goes in which inlet just there.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler is if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Rolleston.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
For the day the warning appears — wherever you are around Nottinghamshire — a routine to follow.
- Switch off after you park — flat ground, engine stopped, and never rushed beside Cross Lane on the verge.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" aloud as unscrewing it. It seems 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.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Step five is off limits.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Farndon already?
Do not start the motor: that is where the short order of things starts. Do not switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with more diesel fails, because AdBlue settles to the bottom instead of mixing — and that's where your fuel is drawn from.
The attendants at JET, BP or another forecourt will normally lend a hand to push the vehicle clear if you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own drive around Farndon.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Farndon sits under 25 miles from the M1; on it, take the next junction. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Nottingham, under 15 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Farndon.
What happens when our technicians get there in Farndon
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside St Peter's Crosskeys CofE Academy, close to St Peter or on your own drive. Both the work and the price rest on three answers — what liquid, which quantity, and whether it has run — so our engineers ask. You hear that price by phone, before anyone sets off.
Emptying that tank comes next, followed by a thorough flush of the fuel system. Unlike petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and neither clears away by itself. Hence it counts more. A test comes last: before that, fresh diesel is added, and your filter is flushed or replaced if necessary. Next we fire it up and make sure it runs correctly before leaving.
If the motor has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. Nothing in advance; you settle up that day. At the end, the VAT invoice and the report from the engineer are handed to you for your insurer. It's worth looking at your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Farndon itself
Farndon is a village situated on the banks of the River Trent in Nottinghamshire, with a low elevation of around 15 metres. Farndon lies near the villages of Thorpe, Hawton, and Staythorpe, and is approximately 14 miles from Nottingham. Farndon has a population of around 1289 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Farndon is located in the East Midlands region, about 111 miles north of London.
AdBlue drains around Farndon, and Nottinghamshire beyond
Being a village, Farndon shares its vans surrounding areas — Hawton, Staythorpe — right across NG postcodes and the wider area beyond. A postcode starting NG24 3 gets the van to you fastest.
No need to shift your car. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street close to Civil War redoubt, a lay-by on the way to Farndon Willow Holt NR, a drive. Assuming doesn't help at the back of St Laurence, on a boundary, or anywhere awkward to pin down; ring and check.
In short, for Farndon motorists
First, the cap; after that, the pour. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere in Nottinghamshire, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless — and so leave the vehicle off then ring 0333 366 0103.