Limbury: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep your motor and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before the engine runs, it's usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Limbury. Reading before the event? Then the rest explains how it happens and how to prevent it happening at all.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Diesel feeds your motor — but many current diesels driven around Limbury and Bramingham Park carry a second liquid as well. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust stream and cleans it.
There is a filler on every tank. Under one flap, next to each other: that's the layout on a lot of vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is under the bonnet or in the boot instead. Diesel gets filled at each forecourt call-out, week in, week out. Much less regularly, the AdBlue side gets filled — normally from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. It's in that gap that the slip lives.
Limbury: how AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the car, and letting it run dry leads to limp mode — so a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off Neville Road, perhaps at Black Swan on the way home after work.
Then your car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Lastly, the bottle fits: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it goes in as readily, and once the tip begins, nothing halts it. Whether it happens in Marsh Farm or the middle of Limbury, it is the same few seconds.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so check them before you pour anything, on a drive in Biscot or a forecourt around Limbury.
- Position can mislead; the cap does not. AdBlue ones tend to be blue or carry the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps normally do not.
- The size. On many motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Check inside your fuel flap: plenty of motors carry a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler is if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Leagrave? Ask the person who drove it last before you set off, rather than once the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
Anywhere around Bedfordshire the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Turn off once parked — flat ground, engine stopped, and never in a rush by Icknield Way at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it does the trick.
- 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, pour slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Find at step two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? So stop right there. Don't carry on to stage five.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, in Limbury?
The short order of things, beginning with no starting the engine. On plenty of diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so do not switch the car on. Don't top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is pulled from.
Ask the attendants to help push the car clear of the petrol pump if you're at a forecourt — the Gulf, the BP or somewhere else. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway around Limbury.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your engine has already run. The next junction means the place to leave when you're on the M1, under 3 miles from Limbury. Distance matters — a short hop across Limbury makes a smaller job than driving under 15 miles towards St Albans — so say about how far it went.
When our engineers arrive in Limbury, what takes place?
Outside The Meads Primary School, close to Limbury Baptist Church or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our technicians come to it. The replies decide this work and our quote, and so we ask what went in, about how much, and whether it's run. No one sets off before you have heard the price by phone.
Next: draining, then a full flush of the whole 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. Once the fuel filter is cleaned — or replaced, where required — fresh diesel goes in, and then the car is tested. Next our technicians start the car and check it runs correctly before we go.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour after our engineers get there, provided the engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a live forecourt yet quiet after dark beside a house. Your insurer will ask for an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both once this job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. Wrong-fuel cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About Limbury, for a moment
Limbury is a suburban area in Bedfordshire, situated on the banks of the River Lea at an elevation of around 114 metres. Limbury lies approximately 30 miles north of London and 12 miles southeast of St Albans, with nearby neighbourhoods including Marsh Farm and Leagrave. Limbury has a population of around 8754 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing. Limbury is characterized by its riverside setting and residential community.
AdBlue drains in Limbury and across Bedfordshire
Warden Hill and Leagrave are among the places near Limbury, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, throughout LU postcodes. Give a postcode that starts LU3 2, and our van arrives fastest.
Your car does not need to move. Draining happens right there, whether a drive, a street near St Augustine of Canterbury, or a layby towards Icknield Recreation Ground. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Church Of The Holy Family.
For Limbury drivers, the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless, leave the car off and phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it sits, anywhere around Bedfordshire.