Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Undy: Why It Happens
Pause reading a minute if your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and call 0333 366 0103. Caught before your engine runs, it is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in Undy. If you're reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Not one fluid but two: that is how plenty of modern diesels around Undy and Knollbury carry, with diesel feeding the engine. The exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to clean them, from a separate tank.
Each tank has its own filler. Plenty of motors have a single flap for the two, while others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Topping up the diesel side at the pump goes on constantly. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less regularly. Mistakes happen in that gap between the two.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Undy: how it occurs
Carelessness seldom causes it. Instead is three things lining up together.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, the vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Main Road before work, or in the car park outside Wheatsheaf on the way home.
Then your car is new. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, and so nothing stops the pour once it has started. It's a few seconds, be it out in Vinegar Hill or right in the heart of Undy.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Whether a Undy forecourt or a driveway over in Llanfihangel near Rogiet, take a few seconds over these before anything is poured in.
- Where it sits misleads; the cap doesn't. AdBlue ones tend to be blue or bear the word "AdBlue" — diesel ones usually do not.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- Open the filler flap and check for a label — many cars mark what belongs in which inlet right there.
- Cannot find it next to the diesel inlet? Then look below the bonnet or inside your 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 Severn Tunnel Junction, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
For the day the warning comes on — wherever it is across Monmouthshire — a simple routine to use.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with your motor running, and not in a rush on the side of West End Gardens.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — after you've found the filler and read the cap.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the vehicle, shut the cap and check again that the diesel cap was never opened off.
Find during the second or third step that the bottle went in the diesel tank? That's where you stop. Skip step five altogether.
Undy: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. The fuel pump runs on many diesels as soon as your ignition goes on — and so keep it off. Topping up with diesel will not weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of the tank, right where fuel is taken from.
At a forecourt — BP, Gulf or any other — the attendants will usually help roll the vehicle away, if you ask. Your own driveway around Undy is the place it stays.
When your engine has been run by now, pull over somewhere safe and switch the car off. On the M4, under a mile from Undy, that means the next exit. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Newport, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Undy.
Our arrival in Undy, and what takes place next
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside the local primary school, close to Magor and Undy Hub or on your own drive. The replies determine this work and our quote, and so our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it's run. The quote is given on the call, ahead of any van leaving.
Then that tank is cleared and the fuel system cleaned thoroughly. 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. Your filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. Next we fire it up and make sure it runs smoothly before we go.
If your motor hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the documents your insurer asks for: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Undy
Undy is a coastal village in Monmouthshire, situated near the mouth of the Severn Estuary at an elevation of around 12 metres. Undy lies close to the cities of Newport and Cardiff, and is surrounded by nearby places such as Vinegar Hill and Whitewall Common. Undy has a population of approximately 1996 people, living in predominantly detached housing. Undy is located about 7.7 miles from Newport and 115.7 miles from London.
AdBlue drains in Undy and across Monmouthshire
Being a coastal village, Undy has the same vans as nearby places — Whitewall Common, Magor — all the way across NP postcodes and the surrounding area around them. Our van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting NP26 3.
The vehicle remains put. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Three Fields, a side street near St Mary's Church: we drain the car where it sits. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of St.Mary's Church in Wales.
For Undy people, the short version
Read the cap before you tip. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere across Monmouthshire, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — so leave it off then phone 0333 366 0103.