Nobs Crook: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before your engine runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is in Nobs Crook. If you are reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Plenty of modern diesels on the roads round Nobs Crook and Colden Common carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. The exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the gas to clean them, from a separate tank.
Every tank comes with a filler of its own. Plenty of motors share a single flap for the two, while others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in on every filling station visit, again and again. Seldom topped up, AdBlue normally goes in from a bottle, poured by someone who has to stop and think what cap to use. That gap is where the error lives.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place in Nobs Crook
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out altogether, your vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Main Road before work, or in the car park at Fishers Pond on the way home.
Next, 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 places the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
A spout-topped bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, after started, keeps on. Whether it happens in Fishers Pond or the middle of Nobs Crook, it's the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Stoke Common or a forecourt in Nobs Crook, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally is not. Read it rather than going by where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- Open the filler flap and look for a label — many cars mark what belongs in each filler right there.
- Can't find it beside the diesel filler? Then check below the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook will say where.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park at Eastleigh, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
Anywhere across Hampshire the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Hensting Lane.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and reading it. Daft, perhaps, but it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave it on.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Do not go on to step five.
Nobs Crook: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch the vehicle on. Filling up with diesel will not dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of the tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it's the Esso or the Texaco, ask the attendants to help roll your car clear of the pump. Your own drive in Nobs Crook is where it stays.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. On the M3, under 3 miles from Nobs Crook, that means the next junction. Mileage counts — a short hop across Nobs Crook is a smaller job than heading under 10 miles towards Winchester — so say roughly how far it went.
Our arrival around Nobs Crook, and what takes place next
Wherever the car has stopped, whether outside Colden Common Primary School, near Holy Trinity Church Rooms or on your own drive, the van comes to it. We ask what went in, about how much, and whether it has run, since the replies decide the work and the quote. That quote comes over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
Then your tank is drained and your system flushed thoroughly. Much more than with petrol, it matters here: the crystals build up, certain metals corrode, and nothing washes away unaided, no matter how long it sits. Filter cleaned or, where needed, swapped; clean diesel in; and then a check of the vehicle. We do not go until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
If the engine has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. The insurer will ask for an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and both are yours once this job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no deposit. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Nobs Crook
Nobs Crook is a small hamlet situated on the riverside in Hampshire, with a low elevation of around 35 metres. Nobs Crook lies near the city of Winchester, approximately 5 miles away, and is also close to other nearby places such as Fishers Pond and Crowdhill. Nobs Crook has a population of around 584 people and predominantly features detached housing. Nobs Crook is located in the South East region of England, about 62 miles from London.
AdBlue drains round Nobs Crook, and Hampshire beyond
Being a rural hamlet, Nobs Crook has the same vans as surrounding areas — Crowdhill, Hensting — all the way across SO postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting SO50 7.
The vehicle stays where it is. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Holy Trinity Church, a lay-by on the way to Colden Common Wood, a driveway. Tricky to explain, like the back of Methodist Church? By a county line? Asking beats assuming, and so phone.
In short, for Nobs Crook people
Read the cap before you pour. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it wherever it stands, anywhere across Hampshire: switch it off and call 0333 366 0103.