Horton: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off then call 0333 366 0103. Usually, if your engine has not run, it's drained and fully cleaned where your car sits around Horton. Reading in advance? Then what follows covers why it happens and what to prevent it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
No single fluid but two: that's what plenty of modern diesels around Horton and Whitney Bottom carry, with diesel for your engine. The exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the gas to clean them, from a separate tank.
Each tank has one filler of its own. Other vehicles put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot more have the two together under one flap. Topping up the diesel side at the petrol pump goes on constantly. Far less regularly, the AdBlue side is topped up — normally from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. It's in that gap that the error lives.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Horton: how it takes place
Carelessness rarely causes it. Instead is three things lining up together.
Hurry comes from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a drive off Goose Lane, or on the way home in the car park at Five Dials Inn.
Then the vehicle is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and your hand gets to for the cap it would have 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, and so nothing stops the pour once it has started. It takes seconds, be it in Broadway or bang in the centre of Horton.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Be it a Horton forecourt or a drive over in Crock Street, take a couple of seconds on these before any goes in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is often blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap normally is not. Read it instead of going by position.
- The size. On plenty of motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Open the flap and look for a label — many motors show what belongs in each filler just there.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by the diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Taunton? Ask the person who drove it last before leaving, not when the light goes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
Wherever across Somerset the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Stop on level, engine off, with time in hand — never hurried on the side of Broadway Hill.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — after you have found your 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.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the vehicle, close the cap and look again that the diesel cap was never came off.
Find at step two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? So stop just there. Don't go on to step five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Horton already?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the engine. Keep the ignition off too, because on many diesels it alone runs the pump. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is sucked from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
If you're at a forecourt, whether it is the Shell or the Texaco, ask the staff to help push the car clear of the pump. On your own drive around Horton? So the vehicle stays put.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your motor has already run. Leave the M5 — under 10 miles out of Horton — at the first exit. A short hop across Horton is a smaller job than a run towards Wells, under 25 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
Our arrival around Horton, and what happens next
We come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Neroche Primary School, close to Broadway Hill Methodist Church or on your own drive. Those replies settle this work and our price, and so our technicians ask what got in, about how much, and if it has run. During the phone call itself, you are told our quote — ahead of anything else.
Then that tank is drained and the fuel system cleaned thoroughly. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own — which is why the flush matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. Once the fuel filter has been cleaned — or replaced, if required — fresh diesel goes in, and finally your vehicle is tested. After that our technicians fire it up and confirm it runs properly before we go.
If your motor has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are fine 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. Wrong-fuel cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — so use the wait to look at yours.
About Horton and where it is
Horton is a small village in Somerset, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 74 metres. Horton sits near the villages of Broadway, Puddlebridge, and Broadway Pound, and is located approximately 23.8 miles from the city of Wells. Horton has a population of around 541 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Horton is also relatively distant from London, at 129.2 miles away.
AdBlue drains across Somerset, Horton included
Horton is a village, and the vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Puddlebridge and Broadway Pound among them, across the TA postcode area. A postcode starting TA19 9 gets the van to you fastest.
Moving the vehicle isn't needed. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Bluebell Woods, a side street near St. Peter's: our engineers drain it where it sits. Awkward to pin down, like the back of Broadway Village Hall? Close to a county line? Asking beats guessing, so phone.
For Horton people, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it is, wherever in Somerset: keep the vehicle off and phone 0333 366 0103.