Pendeen: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Keep the engine and ignition off then call 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Normally, if the motor hasn't run, it's drained and thoroughly flushed where your vehicle is around Pendeen. Not happened yet? Further down, the page covers the reasons it occurs and the ways to prevent it for good.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Diesel goes to the engine — yet many newer diesels driven around Pendeen and Trewellard carry a second fluid as well. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas to clean it.
Separate tanks, separate fillers. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the petrol pump goes on all the time. The AdBlue side is topped up far less often, normally from a bottle, and normally by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. That gap is where the mistake lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place around Pendeen?
It is rarely carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Hurry comes from the warning. The car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a drive off St John's Terrace, or on the way home in the car park outside The North Inn.
Next, the hand goes for the cap it would have used on the old vehicle — because a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car places the fillers where your last one didn't.
Third, the bottle fits: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it slides in as readily, and after the tip begins, nothing halts it. Whether it takes place in Higher Boscaswell or the middle of Pendeen, it's the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Before you tip anything, whether on a driveway in Higher Bojewyan or a forecourt in Pendeen, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap usually isn't. Read it rather than going by where it sits.
- On many vehicles, size gives it away: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where the filler sits if it's not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Penzance.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Cornwall that is.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of B3306.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Daft, yes, but it does the trick.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where the two share a flap, confirm it is shut before the bottle comes up.
- Stop once your tank fills or the bottle is empty; before that, tip gently using the own spout.
- Before you start the car, close the cap and look again that the diesel cap was never opened off.
Discover at the second or third stage that the bottle went in the diesel tank? That is where you stop. Never go on to stage five.
Pendeen: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. Don't switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Diluting it with more diesel won't work, since AdBlue sinks to the base rather than blending — and that's where your fuel is drawn from.
Ask the staff to help push your car away from the pump if you're on a forecourt — the Trewellard Garage, the another forecourt nearby or somewhere else. On your own drive around Pendeen? So the car remains put.
When the motor has been run by now, stop somewhere safe and switch the car off. On the M5, over 50 miles from Pendeen, that means the next exit. Mileage counts — a quick hop across Pendeen is a smaller job than heading under 50 miles towards Truro — so say about how far it went.
When our engineers arrive in Pendeen, what takes place?
Outside Pendeen School, close to St John the Baptist or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our engineers come to it. Our engineers ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it's run, since those answers decide the work and our quote. You hear that quote by phone, before anyone sets off.
Next: a drain, then a full flush of the whole system. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and your car is tested. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
If your engine hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. While we travel, have a look at your insurance documents; plenty carry cover for misfuelling.
About Pendeen itself
Pendeen is a small coastal village in Cornwall, situated on the Atlantic coast at an elevation of 131 metres. Pendeen sits near the villages of Higher Boscaswell and Lower Boscaswell, and is close to the coastal spot of Portherras. Pendeen has a population of around 1020 people, predominantly living in terraced housing, and is located approximately 28 miles from the city of Truro.
AdBlue drains around Pendeen, and Cornwall beyond
Being a coastal village, Pendeen shares its vans surrounding places — Lower Boscaswell, Portherras — all the way across TR postcodes and the wider area beyond. Give a postcode beginning TR19 7, and our van arrives fastest.
Shifting your car is not needed. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Silver Jubilee Park, a side street close to Pendeen Parish Hall and Theatre: our engineers drain the vehicle where it stands. If you are near a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Engine House, ring and ask instead of guessing.
For Pendeen drivers, the short version
First, the cap; then, the pour. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will empty it where it is, wherever in Cornwall: switch it off and ring 0333 366 0103.