AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Taplow: How It Occurs and How to Avoid It
Pause reading a minute when your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, then phone 0333 366 0103. Around Taplow, finding it before the motor turns usually means draining and a full flush on the spot. Reading before the event? In that case the rest covers why it comes about and how to prevent it ever happening.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
Diesel feeds your engine — yet many current diesels seen around Taplow and Lent Rise hold another liquid too. 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. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. At the pump, the diesel side is topped up constantly. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less often. Mistakes happen in the gap between the two.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Taplow: how it takes place
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car 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 drive off Rectory Road before work, or in the car park at Oak and Saw on the way home.
The old car's cap is where the hand reaches — but a rental car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers somewhere else. That is the second factor: a strange motor.
Nothing stops the pour once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Hitchambury or the middle of Taplow: it is the same few seconds in both.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Check these first, on a forecourt around Taplow or a driveway out in Rose Hill. Seconds, no more.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Go by the cap, not its position.
- Plenty of vehicles give AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of cars say there which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler sits if it's not by your diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at the nearest station? Ask whoever drove it last before leaving, not once the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
The day the light comes on, anywhere across Buckinghamshire, use this routine.
- Switch off after you park — level ground, engine off, and not rushed by Saxon Gardens at the roadside.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap works — once you've located the filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the car on.
- Finish when the tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; before that, pour gently through the own spout.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
Find at step two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? So stop just there. Don't go on to step five.
Taplow: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
What follows is a short order of things, starting with not starting your engine. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch the vehicle on. Do not top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is drawn from.
At a forecourt — Shell, Texaco or another — the attendants will normally help push the vehicle clear, when you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Taplow.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your motor has already run. Leave the M4 — under 3 miles out of Taplow — at the next junction. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards St Albans, under 25 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Taplow.
Our arrival around Taplow, and what happens next
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside St Nicolas' Church of England Combined School, near Taplow Village Hall or on your own driveway. The answers decide this work and our quote, and so we ask what was put in, about how much, and if it has run. No one heads out until you've heard the price by phone.
Your system is then rinsed thoroughly, after your tank is emptied. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and neither clears out unaided. Hence it matters more. A test is at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and the filter is flushed or changed as needed. We don't go until it has been started and is running smoothly.
With pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the engine hasn't run need about half an hour once our technicians arrive. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Taplow and where it is
Taplow is a small village in Buckinghamshire, situated on the banks of the River Thames at an elevation of around 60 metres. Taplow has a mix of housing types, but terraced houses are predominant, and it is located near to several other small settlements, including Hitchambury and Lent. Taplow is within commuting distance of London, approximately 24 miles away, and is also close to the city of St Albans. Taplow remains a quiet riverside community with a population of around 785 people.
Taplow and Buckinghamshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Taplow is a village, and the vans that cover it also work the places around it, Maidenhead Court and Lent among them, across the SL postcode area. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting SL6 0.
The vehicle remains put. A drive, a lay-by on the way to School Playing Field, a side street close to George III: our technicians drain it where it is. Tricky to explain, like the back of Taplow Court? Close to a county line? Checking is better than guessing, so phone.
Taplow drivers: the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it stands, wherever across Buckinghamshire: keep the car off then phone 0333 366 0103.