Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Garth: Why It Occurs
Keep the motor and ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before your engine runs, it's usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Garth. The rest of this page covers why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't — useful if you are reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Diesel feeds your engine — yet many newer diesels driven about Garth and Y Parc hold a second liquid too. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust stream and cleans it.
There is a filler for every tank. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less often. It is in that gap that the error happens.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Garth: how it takes place
Carelessness rarely explains it. What does is three things lining up together.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the vehicle, and letting it run out means limp mode — so a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Queen Mary's Lane, perhaps at The Garth Inn on the way home that evening.
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 the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part halts the pour after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It takes seconds, whether out in Cwmfelin or bang in the centre of Garth.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Before you tip anything, whether on a driveway in Llangynwyd or a forecourt around Garth, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Check the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- On many vehicles, size gives it away: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by your diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before knows. Ask when you pick up a hire car or company car — at Garth (Mid Glamorgan)'s car park, perhaps — not once the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around Bridgend that is.
- Pull in somewhere level, engine off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Pit Street.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, and look once more — confirm your diesel filler remained closed the whole time. After that, start the car.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Never carry on to step five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Garth?
Short order, then. First: the motor stays unstarted. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch the vehicle on. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where the fuel is pulled from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
Ask the attendants to help roll the vehicle away from the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the the nearest petrol station, the Oils for Wales or somewhere else. On your own drive in Garth? Then your car remains put.
Already run? Stop once it's sensible, then switch off. Garth sits under 5 miles from the M4; there, use the next exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Garth is less work than a trip of under 15 miles towards Swansea, so tell us.
Garth: what takes place when our engineers turn up
We come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside the local primary school, close to St Mary the Virgin or on your own drive. Which fluid was put in, the amount, and whether it ran: we ask because the answers decide both work and price. You hear that quote on the phone, before anybody sets off.
Next: draining, then a thorough flush of the entire system. 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. A test comes at the end: before that, fresh diesel goes in, and the fuel filter is cleaned or changed as needed. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running properly.
If your engine hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About Garth
Garth is a suburban area in Bridgend, situated on the riverside with an elevation of 108 metres, and is located near the communities of Cwmfelin and Llwydarth. Garth has a mix of housing types, but semi-detached homes are predominant, and is close to the nearby city of Swansea. Garth is part of the wider Bridgend area, with Pont Rhyd-y-cyff also nearby, and is around 12.9 miles from Swansea city centre.
AdBlue drains around Garth and across Bridgend
Over CF postcodes, our teams that cover Garth — a residential suburb — work the nearby places too, Pont Rhyd-y-cyff and Llwydarth among them. Fastest of all: quote a CF34 0 postcode for our van.
The car does not need to move. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street close to House Platform, a lay-by on the way to Coed, a drive. Assuming doesn't help at the back of Garth Hill Platform House, on a border, or anywhere hard to pin down; ring and check.
The short version for Garth people
Tip no AdBlue till you have read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank regardless? Keep it switched off then call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, across Bridgend.