How It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Goldings
Pause reading for a moment when your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, and phone 0333 366 0103. In Goldings, catching it before your engine turns usually means a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. Reading before the event? Then the rest explains why it happens and what to stop it ever happening.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
Many modern diesels on the roads around Goldings and Thorplands carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust gas and cleans it.
Each tank has one filler of its own. Many of vehicles have a single flap for the two, while others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is filled at the petrol pump all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less frequently, normally from a bottle, and normally by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. The mistake grows in the gap between them.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place in Goldings
Rarely is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from the vehicle, and running dry means limp mode — hence a hurried top-up, perhaps before work off Osmond Drive, perhaps at The Gallery on the way home that evening.
The old car's filler is where your hand reaches — but a hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers somewhere else. That's a second thing: a strange vehicle.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the pour after it has started. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Goldings or out in Overstone Lodge.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Before you pour anything, whether on a drive in Lings or a forecourt around Goldings, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Trust the cap, not its position.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Check for it.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by the diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Northampton? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before you set off, rather than when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
The day the light goes on, anywhere across Northamptonshire, follow this routine.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with your motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Crestline Court.
- Daft as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you've found your filler and read the cap.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Tip 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 your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Step five stays out.
Goldings: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Do not start the engine: that is how the short order of things begins. Don't switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue sinks to the bottom instead of blending — and that's where the fuel is drawn from.
The attendants at Tesco, Shell or any forecourt will usually help pushing the car away if asked. Leave it where it is if you are on your own driveway in Goldings.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Come off the M1 — under 10 miles out of Goldings — at the next exit. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Milton Keynes, under 25 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Goldings.
What occurs when our technicians arrive around Goldings
We come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Woodvale Primary Academy, near Community Room or on your own driveway. What liquid got in, the amount, and whether it ran: we ask since those answers decide both work and quote. That price comes on the call, before any van leaves.
Draining that tank comes next, then a full flush of the system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears away by itself. Hence it matters more. After the fuel filter is flushed — or renewed, if required — fresh diesel is added, and finally the vehicle is tested. After that our technicians fire it up and confirm it runs properly before we go.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour once our technicians get there, provided the engine hasn't run — and the pumps our technicians use are safe on a busy forecourt yet quiet after dark beside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It is worth looking at your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Goldings itself
Goldings is a suburban area in Northamptonshire, situated inland at an elevation of 107 metres, with a mix of terraced housing and local amenities. Goldings lies approximately 16 miles from Milton Keynes and 60 miles from London, placing it within commuting distance of major urban centres. Goldings is surrounded by nearby places such as Overstone Lodge, Southfields, and Blackthorn, and has a population of around 7962 residents.
Goldings and Northamptonshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Goldings is a residential suburb, and our teams that cover it also work the towns near it, Southfields and Blackthorn among them, across the NN postcode area. Quickest of all: quote a NN3 8 postcode for our van.
Your car remains put. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street near Lodge Farm Community Centre, a lay-by on the way to Goldlings Reservoir Tree Belt, a driveway. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Kingdom Hall of Jehovahs Witnesses.
For Goldings people, the short version
Always, the cap; then, the pour. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same, leave it off then ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it waits, anywhere in Northamptonshire.