Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Pontlottyn
Stop reading a minute if your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, then phone 0333 366 0103. Usually, when the engine hasn't turned, it is drained and fully purged where your car is around Pontlottyn. Nothing happened yet? Further down, the page explains the reasons it occurs and the how to avoid it altogether.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Diesel goes to your engine — but many newer diesels driven around Pontlottyn and Troedrhiwfuwch hold a second fluid as well. 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 a filler of its own. Under one flap, next to each other: that's the arrangement on a lot of vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler is under the bonnet or in your boot instead. Diesel goes in on each filling station visit, week in, week out. Far less regularly, the AdBlue side gets filled — normally from a bottle, by a person thinking about where it goes. The mistake grows in that gap between the two.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur in Pontlottyn?
It's hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
On a driveway off Merchant Street before work, or in the car park at Pontlottyn Empire Club on the way home: that's where the hurried top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it's empty, limp mode kicks in.
Then your car is strange. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Nothing stops the pour after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Fochriw or the heart of Pontlottyn: it takes the same few seconds in both.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Be it a Pontlottyn forecourt or a driveway over in Pen-y-bank, spend a couple of seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on many vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on plenty of vehicles. Check for it.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by the diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park at the nearest station, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever across Caerphilly, follow this routine.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time in hand — never rushing on the side of King Street.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Daft, perhaps, but it works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Only after that, start your car: close the cap, check once more, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Skip step five entirely.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Pontlottyn?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. Don't switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Do not top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is sucked from.
On a forecourt — Gulf, Texaco or any other — the attendants will usually help roll the car away, when you ask. If you are on your own drive in Pontlottyn, leave it where it sits.
Where the motor has been run by now, stop safely and turn the car off. Pontlottyn sits under 15 miles from the M4; on it, use the next junction. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Newport, under 25 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Pontlottyn.
Our arrival around Pontlottyn, and what takes place next
The van comes to your car wherever it stopped — your own driveway, near Mining Wheel, or by the local primary school. What fluid went in, the amount, and if it ran: we ask because those answers set the work and quote. On the phone call itself, you are told our quote — ahead of anything else.
After that: draining, then a full flush of the whole system. Much more than with petrol, it matters here: crystals form, some metals are attacked, and none of that clears away unaided, however long it sits. Filter cleaned or, where needed, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a test of your car. The motor is fired up next and checked to confirm it runs smoothly, all before our engineers go.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour after our engineers arrive, as long as the motor hasn't run — and the pumps our technicians use are fine on a live forecourt and quiet after dark beside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
About Pontlottyn, for a moment
Pontlottyn is a village in Caerphilly, situated on the banks of the Rhymney River at an elevation of 249 metres. Pontlottyn has a mix of terraced housing and is located near the villages of Fochriw, Abertysswg, and Rhymney. Pontlottyn is approximately 16 miles from Newport and 136 miles from London, making it a rural community with some access to urban centres.
AdBlue drains round Pontlottyn, and Caerphilly beyond
Abertysswg and Rhymney are among the towns around Pontlottyn, a village, that the same teams cover, throughout CF postcodes. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting CF81 9.
Your car remains where it is. A drive, a lay-by on the way to The Rec, a side street near Elim Community Church: our technicians drain it where it is. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Lower Rhymney Community Centre, ring and ask instead of assuming.
For Pontlottyn motorists, the short version
Read the cap before you tip. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Keep the vehicle switched off and phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, throughout Caerphilly.