Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Shipston-on-Stour: Why It Happens
Stop reading a minute when your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, and ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before the engine runs, it is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is in Shipston-on-Stour. Here in advance? In that case the rest explains why it comes about and how to prevent it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel car, and its separate tank
Diesel goes to the motor — but many newer diesels seen round Shipston-on-Stour and Tidmington carry a second liquid as well. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to the exhaust, and there a spray treats the fumes.
Each tank has its own filler. Under one flap, next to each other: that's the arrangement on many vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in the boot instead. Diesel gets filled on each forecourt visit, again and again. Rarely topped up, AdBlue normally comes from a bottle, poured by someone who must stop and think what filler it needs. That gap is where the error lives.
Shipston-on-Stour: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out completely, the car drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off West Street before work, or in the car park outside The White Bear on the way home.
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.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, once begun, keeps on. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Shipston-on-Stour or out in Barcheston.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
A few seconds is all these take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Burmington or a forecourt around Shipston-on-Stour.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- Many motors fit AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Lift the flap and look for a label — plenty of vehicles mark which belongs in which inlet just there.
- The handbook shows where it lives when the filler isn't next to the diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- The previous driver will know. Check as you pick up a rental or company car — from Moreton-In-Marsh's car park, perhaps — rather than when the warning appears.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Warwickshire that is.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of High Street.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, perhaps, but it works.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Only after that, start the car: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Spot at step two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? Then stop just there. Stage five stays out.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Shipston-on-Stour?
The short order of things, beginning with no starting your engine. Don't switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Diluting it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue settles to the base instead of blending — and that is where your fuel is drawn from.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it's the Shell or the Gulf, ask the attendants to help push your car clear of the pump. At home around Shipston-on-Stour? Then the car stays put.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if the motor has already run. Come off the M40 — under 15 miles out of Shipston-on-Stour — at the first junction. A short hop across Shipston-on-Stour is a smaller job than a run towards Coventry, under 25 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
Shipston-on-Stour: what happens when we get there
Our van comes to the vehicle wherever it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Libary, or outside Shipston-on-Stour Primary School. The answers settle the work and the price, and so our technicians ask what went in, about how much, and if it has run. You get that price on the phone, before anyone heads out.
Your system is then cleaned thoroughly, after the tank is emptied. More than with petrol, it matters with AdBlue: crystals form, certain metals are attacked, and none of that clears out on its own, no matter how long it sits. Filter cleaned or, if it must be, swapped; clean diesel in; then a test of your vehicle. Before we go, we fire it up and make sure that it is running correctly.
If the engine hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a working 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, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Shipston-on-Stour and where it is
Shipston-on-Stour is a town situated in the south of Warwickshire, on the banks of the River Stour. Shipston-on-Stour has a population of around 5852 people and is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock. Shipston-on-Stour sits at an elevation of 69 metres, near the villages of Barcheston, Willington, and Honington, and is located approximately 24 miles from Coventry. Shipston-on-Stour is also within commuting distance of London, being around 74 miles away.
AdBlue drains about Shipston-on-Stour, and Warwickshire beyond
Shipston-on-Stour is a riverside town, and the vans that cover it also work the places around it, Willington and Honington among them, across the CV postcode area. Give a postcode that starts CV36 4, and the van gets there fastest.
No need to shift your car. Anywhere it sits — beside Shipston Museum, on a lay-by en route to Gyratory Garden, on a drive — that's where it gets cleared. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Shipston on Stour Town Council.
In short, for Shipston-on-Stour drivers
Before you pour, read the cap. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will empty it wherever it is, wherever around Warwickshire: switch the vehicle off and ring 0333 366 0103.