AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Old Wolverton: Why It Happens and How to Prevent It
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and your ignition off then call 0333 366 0103. Caught before your engine runs, it's normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Old Wolverton. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Many current diesels on the roads around Old Wolverton and Greenleys carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust stream to clean it.
Each tank has its own filler. Under one flap, side by side: that's the layout on a lot of vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Diesel gets filled at every filling station call-out, week in, week out. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less regularly. It's in that gap that the mistake lives.
Old Wolverton: how AdBlue in your diesel tank happens
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
On a drive off Deans Road before work, or in the car park outside The Craufurd Arms on the way home: that's where the hurried top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low your car warns you, and if it is empty, limp mode kicks in.
Unfamiliar vehicles come next, too. Rentals, new vehicles and company vehicles place their fillers differently, and the hand goes for the cap it used on the old one.
Third, the spout goes in: diesel filler or AdBlue one, it slides in as easily, and once the pour starts, no part halts it. Whether it happens in Wolverton or the middle of Old Wolverton, it's the same few seconds.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Look at these before pouring, on a forecourt in Old Wolverton or a drive over in Wolverton Mill. A few seconds, no more.
- Where it sits can mislead; the cap does not. AdBlue ones tend to be blue or bear the word "AdBlue" — diesel ones usually do not.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- Lift the filler flap and look for a label — many vehicles show what belongs in each filler right there.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by your diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver will know. Check when you pick up a rental or company car — at Wolverton's car park, perhaps — rather than once the warning comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
For the day the warning appears — wherever it is across Buckinghamshire — a routine to follow.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Old Wolverton Road.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud as unscrewing it. It seems daft. It works.
- The two behind a single flap? Then make sure the cap on the diesel side stays closed ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, then check again — making sure your diesel cap remained closed the whole time. After that, start your car.
Find at stage two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? So stop just there. Skip step five entirely.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Old Wolverton already?
Short list, then. First: the motor stays off. The fuel pump runs on plenty of diesels as soon as your ignition goes on — and so keep it off. Diluting it with more diesel won't work, because AdBlue sinks to the base instead of blending — and that is where your fuel is sucked from.
Ask the attendants to help push the vehicle away from the pump if you are on a forecourt — the Essar, the Tesco or somewhere else. If you are on your own driveway around Old Wolverton, leave the vehicle where it stands.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the engine has already run. Old Wolverton sits under 5 miles from the M1; on it, use the first exit. About how far did it go? Hopping across Old Wolverton is smaller a job than a run of under 5 miles towards Milton Keynes, so say.
What occurs when we get there around Old Wolverton
By Wyvern School, near Faith Dimensions Ministries or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, our engineers come to it. Both the work and our quote rest on three answers — what fluid, what quantity, and whether it has run — so we ask. That price comes over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
Then the tank is cleared and your system cleaned thoroughly. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own. The filter flushed or, where it must be, swapped; clean diesel in; and then a test of your car. After that our technicians fire it up and check it runs smoothly before we go.
Using pumps safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the motor has not run need roughly half an hour after we arrive. Paying is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer wants: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. It is worth looking at your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About Old Wolverton itself
Old Wolverton is a suburban area situated on the banks of the River Great Ouse in Buckinghamshire, with a mix of terraced housing and local amenities. Old Wolverton lies close to the city of Milton Keynes, which is approximately 3 miles away, and is around 77 metres above sea level. Old Wolverton is part of the larger Wolverton area, which includes nearby places such as Wolverton and Wolverton Mill East. Old Wolverton has a population of around 2348 people, living in a variety of predominantly terraced homes.
AdBlue drains round Old Wolverton, and Buckinghamshire beyond
Old Wolverton is a residential suburb, and our teams that cover it also work the towns near it, Wolverton Mill East and Stonebridge among them, across the MK postcode area. Our van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting MK12 5.
The car stays put. Draining happens right there, be it a drive, a road near Viaduct Hide, or a layby on the way to Ouse Valley Park. Awkward to pin down, like the back of Farm Hide? By a border? Checking is better than guessing, and so phone.
In short, for Old Wolverton drivers
Before you pour, read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the car switched off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, across Buckinghamshire.