Nailsea: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Leave the engine and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before the motor runs, it is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in Nailsea. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Plenty of modern diesels around Backwell Common, as well as Nailsea, run on two liquids; the engine gets just the diesel. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank comes with one filler of its own. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on many vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. At the petrol pump, the diesel side is topped up constantly. The AdBlue side is filled far less frequently, normally from a bottle, and usually by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. It's in the gap that the error lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place around Nailsea?
Carelessness rarely causes it. What does is three things coming up together.
Haste follows from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a drive off Station Road, or on the way home in the car park at Coates House.
Then, your hand goes for the cap it would have used on the old car — because a rental car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
Lastly, the bottle goes in: a diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it goes in as readily, and after the pour begins, no part stops it. It's seconds, whether out in East End or bang in the centre of Nailsea.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
A few seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Wraxall or a forecourt around Nailsea.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap usually isn't. Read it rather than going by position.
- The size. On plenty of motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by your diesel cap, it is 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 Nailsea & Backwell? Check with whoever drove it last before leaving, 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 across Somerset that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Mizzymead Road, not on a slope, not with the motor running: park then switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start your car, shut the cap and look a second time that your diesel cap never opened off.
Discover during the second or third stage that AdBlue went into the wrong tank? That's where you stop. Skip stage five altogether.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Nailsea?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the engine. Do not switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Topping up with diesel won't thin it: instead, AdBlue drops to the bottom of your tank, just where fuel is taken from.
At a forecourt — Tesco, Esso or another — the attendants will usually help roll the car clear, if you ask. On your own drive around Nailsea? So the car remains where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your engine has already run. Nailsea lies under 3 miles from the M5; on it, use the first exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Nailsea is smaller a job than a run of under 10 miles towards Bristol, and so tell us.
Our arrival around Nailsea, and what occurs next
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Golden Valley Primary School, near Operation Pied Piper or on your own driveway. Both the work and our price rest on three answers — what fluid, what amount, and whether it has run — so our technicians ask. You hear that quote by phone, before anybody heads out.
Your system is then flushed thoroughly, after your tank is emptied. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears out unaided. That is why it counts more. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the car is tested. The engine is fired up next and tested to make sure it runs smoothly, all before our engineers head off.
Unstarted cars mostly mean a half-hour job from the moment we arrive. The kit is fine on a busy filling station, and hushed enough for a driveway late at night. Your insurer usually wants the engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both once the job is done. Payment is on the day, with no money upfront. While we travel, take a look at your policy; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Nailsea itself
Nailsea is a town in North Somerset, situated approximately 6.9 miles west of Bristol and 113.3 miles west of London. Nailsea sits in a low-lying area at an elevation of around 32 metres, surrounded by nearby places such as East End, Stone-edge Batch, and West Hill. Nailsea has a population of around 15,383 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing.
Nailsea and Somerset: AdBlue drains across the area
Being a town, Nailsea shares its vans surrounding areas — Stone-edge Batch, West Hill — all the way through BS postcodes and the surrounding area around them. Quickest of all: give a BS48 1 postcode to our van.
The vehicle stays put. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Stockway North Nature Reserve, a side street close to Nailsea Glassworks Cauldron: our engineers drain the car where it sits. Guessing doesn't help at the back of Nailsea Library, on a boundary, or anywhere hard to describe; phone and check.
In short, for Nailsea people
Tip nothing until you have read the cap. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it wherever it is, anywhere in Somerset: keep it off and call 0333 366 0103.