Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Nixons Corner: Why It Occurs
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a thorough flush, carried out right where your vehicle sits in Nixons Corner, is usually what it needs if found before your engine runs. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads round Nixons Corner and Ardmore carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. Your exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the gas to clean it, from a separate tank.
Every tank comes with a filler of its own. Plenty of vehicles have a single flap for both, while others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. Rarely filled, AdBlue normally goes in from a bottle, tipped by someone who has to stop and think what filler it needs. That gap is where the error lives.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Nixons Corner: how it takes place
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out completely, your vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Crom Street before work, or in the car park outside the pub in the village on the way home.
New-to-you vehicles are second, too. Hire cars, new cars and company motors put their fillers in new places, and habit reaches for the cap used on the old one.
A spout-topped bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, once started, carries on. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Nixons Corner or out in Newbuildings.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Check these before pouring, at a forecourt around Nixons Corner or a driveway over in Bready. Seconds, no more.
- Where it sits misleads; the cap doesn't. AdBlue caps are often blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel ones usually do not.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many cars say there which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler sits if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at the nearest station.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever in County Londonderry, use this routine.
- Not in a rush on the side of Rock Street, not on a slope, not with the engine running: park and switch off properly.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you have found your filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the car on.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Shut the cap, and check again — making sure your diesel filler remained shut throughout. Only then, start your car.
Find at stage two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? So stop right there. Never go on to stage five.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, around Nixons Corner?
Brief order, then. First: the motor remains off. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch the vehicle on. Filling up with diesel will not thin it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of that tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
At a forecourt — the nearest petrol station, another forecourt nearby or another — the attendants will usually help push your car away, if you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway around Nixons Corner.
If your motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Come off the M77 — over 50 miles out of Nixons Corner — at the next junction. Mileage counts — a short hop across Nixons Corner is a smaller job than driving under 3 miles to Derry — so say roughly how far it went.
When our technicians arrive around Nixons Corner, what takes place?
Our van reaches the vehicle wherever it has come to rest — your own drive, beside the centre, or outside the local primary school. Those answers determine this work and our price, so our engineers ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. You get that price by phone, before anybody sets off.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, after your tank is drained. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. Your filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. Before we go, we fire it up and make sure that it is running smoothly.
Unrun cars mostly need a half-hour job after arrival. The kit is safe on a live filling station, and hushed enough for a residential street after dark. No money in advance; you settle up on the day. Afterwards, the VAT invoice and a report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. While we travel, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty carry cover for misfuelling.
About Nixons Corner and where it is
Nixons Corner is a locality situated inland in County Londonderry, near the city of Derry and close to the settlements of Newbuildings and Magheramason. Nixons Corner has a relatively low elevation of 56 metres and is characterized by detached housing. Nixons Corner is located approximately 2.9 miles from Derry, making it a part of the wider Derry urban area.
AdBlue drains about Nixons Corner, and County Londonderry beyond
Nixons Corner is a neighbourhood, and our vans that cover it also work the towns near it, Derry and Magheramason among them, across the BT postcode area. A postcode starting BT48 9 gets the van to you fastest.
Shifting your car isn't necessary. Wherever it stands — beside a street just off the centre, in a lay-by en route to the green space at the edge of the village, at home — that's where it is drained. Awkward to explain, like the back of the far end of the built-up part? Close to a border? Asking beats guessing, so ring.
The short version for Nixons Corner people
Always, the cap; after that, the tip. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave the car off and ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it sits, anywhere across County Londonderry.