AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in High Harrogate: How It Occurs and How to Stop It
Stop reading a minute when your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, then phone 0333 366 0103. Normally, when the motor hasn't turned, it's drained and thoroughly flushed where your vehicle is in High Harrogate. The rest of this page explains why it occurs and how to make sure it does not — useful if you are reading before it has happened.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
No single fluid but two: that's how plenty of modern diesels around High Harrogate and Woodlands run, with diesel for the engine. Your exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to fresh them, from its own tank.
There's a filler on every tank. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on a lot of vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits under the bonnet or in your boot instead. Filling your diesel side at the pump goes on constantly. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. The mistake grows in the gap between them.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank happens in High Harrogate
Carelessness seldom explains it. Instead is three things coming up at once.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the vehicle, and letting it run out means limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Church Square, or at The Empress on the way home after work.
Unfamiliar motors are next, too. Hire cars, new vehicles and company cars put their fillers differently, and habit goes for the cap used on the old one.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the tip after it has started. West Park or the middle of High Harrogate: it takes the same few seconds either way.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A few seconds is all these take — so check them before you tip anything, on a drive in Bilton or a forecourt around High Harrogate.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- Lift the filler flap and look for a label — plenty of cars show which belongs in which inlet just there.
- Can't find it beside the diesel filler? Then look below the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook will say where.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside Harrogate? Check with whoever drove it last before you set off, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
Wherever across North Yorkshire the light comes on, here is a routine for that day.
- Switch off once parked — level ground, motor off, and never rushed by Coach Road at the roadside.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Daft, yes, yet it does the trick.
- The two behind a single flap? Then confirm the cap on your diesel side is still shut before raising the bottle.
- Finish when that tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; before that, pour slowly through the built-in spout.
- Before starting your car, shut the cap and check a second time that your diesel cap never opened off.
Find at stage two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? So stop right there. Leave out step five entirely.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around High Harrogate already?
Short list, then. Top of that: your engine remains off. Don't switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel will not dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of the tank, right where the fuel is taken from.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it is the Asda or the Esso, ask the attendants to help roll your car clear of the pump. On your own drive around High Harrogate? Then the car remains put.
If your motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Come off the A1(M) — under 10 miles out of High Harrogate — at the first junction. A short hop across High Harrogate is a smaller job than a run towards Ripon, under 10 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
High Harrogate: what happens when we turn up
The van reaches the vehicle anywhere it has come to rest — your own drive, near Christ Church, or outside St Robert's Catholic Primary School, A Voluntary Academy. Those replies settle this work and the quote, and so our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether it's run. You hear that price by phone, before anybody heads out.
The system is then flushed thoroughly, after the tank is emptied. More than with petrol, it matters with AdBlue: crystals form, certain metals corrode, and none of it clears away unaided, no matter how long it sits. Testing comes at the end: before that, fresh diesel goes in, and the fuel filter is cleaned or changed if necessary. Next our engineers start the car and check it runs properly before leaving.
Unrun cars mostly mean a half-hour job from the moment we arrive. The kit is fine on a busy forecourt, and hushed enough for a residential street late at night. 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 policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About High Harrogate itself
High Harrogate is a suburban area located in North Yorkshire, situated near the city of Ripon and the larger town of Harrogate. High Harrogate sits at an elevation of 124 metres, within the gently rolling landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. High Harrogate is characterized by its predominantly flat-type housing and a population of around 6260 residents. High Harrogate is also close to nearby places such as West Park and Low Harrogate.
AdBlue drains across North Yorkshire, High Harrogate included
As a residential suburb, High Harrogate has the same vans as nearby areas — Harrogate, Low Harrogate — all the way through HG postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. A postcode starting HG1 5 gets our van to you fastest.
Moving the vehicle is not needed. We drain it where it is — a side street near Mowbray Community Church, a lay-by on the way to The Stray or Two Hundred Acre, a driveway. Guessing doesn't help behind Harrogate Quaker Meeting House, close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to pin down; phone and check.
The short version for High Harrogate drivers
Read the cap before you tip. Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, anywhere around North Yorkshire, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — and so leave the vehicle off then ring 0333 366 0103.