Why It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Summercourt
Keep the motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before your engine runs, it's usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is in Summercourt. The rest of this page covers why it takes place and how to ensure it does not — handy if you're reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
No single liquid but two: that is what plenty of newer diesels near Summercourt and Tredinnick run, with diesel feeding the engine. Your exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the gas to clean it, from a separate tank.
Each tank comes with one filler of its own. Under one flap, side by side: that is the layout on many vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Topping up your diesel side at the pump happens all the time. Seldom topped up, AdBlue normally comes out of a bottle, poured by someone who has to stop and think which cap it needs. Mistakes happen in that gap between the two.
Summercourt: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Carelessness rarely explains it. Instead is three things coming up at once.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out altogether, your vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Sycamore Gardens before work, or in the car park at London Inn on the way home.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Third, the bottle fits: diesel filler or AdBlue one, it slides in just as easily, and after the tip starts, nothing halts it. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Summercourt or out in Chapel Town.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Check these before pouring, at a forecourt around Summercourt or a drive out in Gummows Shop. Seconds, no more.
- Blue and lettering: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not its position.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- Lift the filler flap and check for a label — many motors show which goes in which filler right there.
- Can't find it next to the diesel filler? Then look below the bonnet or in the boot — the handbook will say where.
- The person who drove the car last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park at St Columb Road, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
On the day the light appears — anywhere you are in Cornwall — a routine to follow.
- Stop on level, engine off, with time in hand — not rushing on the side of Beacon Road.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- The two under a single flap? So make sure the lid on the diesel side is still closed before lifting the bottle.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before you start your car, shut the cap and look a second time that the diesel cap was never came off.
Find at step two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? So stop just there. Step five is off limits.
Summercourt: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Short list, then. Top of it: your motor stays unstarted. Do not switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with more diesel fails, because AdBlue sinks to the base instead of mixing — and that is where the fuel is drawn from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the car clear of the pump if you are at a forecourt — the Shell, the Esso or anywhere else. Your own drive around Summercourt is where it stays.
Where your motor has run by now, stop safely and turn it off. The next junction is the place to leave if you are on the M5, over 50 miles from Summercourt. About how far did it go? Crossing Summercourt is less work than a run of under 10 miles towards Truro, and so say.
When our engineers turn up in Summercourt, what happens?
Outside Summercourt Academy, close to camp or on your own drive: wherever your car has stopped, our technicians come to it. Both the work and our quote depend on three answers — which liquid, what amount, and whether it's run — so our engineers ask. On the phone call itself, you are told the price — ahead of anything else.
After that: draining, then a thorough 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 counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. Filter flushed or, where it must be, replaced; fresh diesel in; then a test of the vehicle. The engine is fired up next and checked to be sure it runs properly, all before our engineers go.
Using pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where the engine has not run need about half an hour after our technicians arrive. Paying is on the day, not upfront, and you receive the documents your insurer asks for: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. It is worth checking your insurance while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About Summercourt, briefly
Summercourt is a small village in Cornwall, situated inland at an elevation of 107 metres, approximately 7.9 miles from Truro. Summercourt has a population of around 501 people, with predominantly detached housing. Summercourt is close to other nearby places such as Chapel Town, St Enoder, and Troan, and is located in the South West region of England, about 225.2 miles from London.
AdBlue drains about Summercourt, and Cornwall beyond
Summercourt is a rural village, and our teams that cover it also work the places around it, St Enoder and Troan among them, across the TR postcode area. Quickest of all: quote a TR8 5 postcode for our van.
Your car stays put. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Summercourt Fairfield, a side street close to St Enoder: our engineers drain the vehicle where it sits. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Round, ring and ask rather than guessing.
Summercourt people: the short version
Read the cap before you tip. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it wherever it stands, anywhere across Cornwall: keep the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103.