Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Sonning Common: Why It Happens
Pause here a minute when your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, and phone 0333 366 0103. Around Sonning Common, finding it before your engine turns usually leaves draining and a full flush on the spot. Nothing happened yet? Below, the rest of the page covers the reasons it occurs and the how to prevent it altogether.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Diesel feeds your motor — but many current diesels driven about Sonning Common and Peppard Hill hold a second fluid as well. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, where a spray treats the gas.
Each tank comes with one filler of its own. Plenty of motors share a single flap for both, while some move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. At the pump, the diesel side gets filled constantly. Far less regularly, the AdBlue side is filled — normally from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. That gap is where the mistake lives.
Sonning Common: how AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car 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 Woodlands Road before work, or in the car park outside The Hare and Hounds on the way home.
New-to-you vehicles come next, as well. Rentals, new motors and company vehicles put their fillers differently, and the hand reaches for the cap used on the old one.
No part halts the pour after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Sonning Common or out in Shiplake Bottom.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
A few seconds is all these take — so check them before you tip anything, on a drive in Gallowstree Common or a forecourt in Sonning Common.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap usually is not. Read it rather than going by position.
- The size. On plenty of cars the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently shows which fuel goes where, on many vehicles. Check for it.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by your diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Henley-On-Thames.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
On the day the warning comes on — anywhere you are in Oxfordshire — a simple routine to follow.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Wood Lane.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, perhaps, but it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the car on.
- Gently is best, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Only then, start your car: close the cap, check once more, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Spot at stage two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? So stop just there. Stage five stays off limits.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Sonning Common?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start your engine. Leave your ignition off too, since on plenty of diesels switching it on by itself runs the fuel pump. Do not top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is pulled from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the car clear of the pump if you are on a forecourt — the the nearest petrol station, the Esso or somewhere else. At home around Sonning Common? Then the vehicle remains put.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. On the M4, under 10 miles from Sonning Common, that means the next exit. Mileage counts — a short hop across Sonning Common is a smaller job than heading under 25 miles towards Oxford — so tell us about how far it went.
When our technicians arrive around Sonning Common, what happens?
Anywhere the car came to rest, be it by Sonning Common Primary School, beside Sonning Common Village Hall or at home, the van comes to it. The answers decide the work and our quote, so our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. The quote comes on the call, ahead of any van leaving.
After that: a drain, then a full flush of the entire system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. The filter flushed or, if it must be, swapped; fresh diesel in; and then a test of your car. The engine is started next and tested to make sure it runs properly, all before our engineers go.
With pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the engine has not run need about half an hour once we are there. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It's worth looking at your policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Sonning Common, briefly
Sonning Common is a village in south Oxfordshire, situated in a rural area near the Chiltern Hills. Sonning Common has a population of around 2890 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Sonning Common sits at an elevation of 94 metres, inland from the nearest city, Oxford, which is approximately 20 miles away. Sonning Common is also within commuting distance of London, being around 37 miles from the capital.
AdBlue drains around Sonning Common and across Oxfordshire
Kidmore End and Rotherfield Peppard are among the places around Sonning Common, a rural village, that the same teams cover, over RG postcodes. Fastest of all: give a RG4 9 postcode to the van.
Your car stays where it is. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Spring Wood, a side street close to Sonning Common Library: our technicians drain it where it is. Guessing doesn't help at the back of The Church of Christ the King, on a border, or somewhere hard to describe; phone and check.
In short, for Sonning Common drivers
Read the cap before you pour. Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, anywhere around Oxfordshire, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless — and so leave the car off and ring 0333 366 0103.