AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in West Stoke: How It Occurs and How to Stop It
Keep your motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait if AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Caught before your engine runs, it is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in West Stoke. Reading before the event? Then what follows explains how it happens and how to prevent it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
No single liquid but two: that is what many newer diesels around West Stoke and East Stoke carry, with diesel feeding the motor. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust stream and cleans it.
Every tank comes with a filler of its own. Other vehicles put the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; plenty of others have both together behind one flap. At the petrol pump, your diesel side gets filled all the time. The AdBlue side is fuelled far less regularly, normally from a bottle, and usually by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. It is in the gap that the mistake happens.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around West Stoke: how it takes place
It's rarely carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the car, and letting it run dry means limp mode — so a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Brocks Mount, perhaps outside Fleur de Lis on the way home that evening.
New-to-you motors are second, too. Hire cars, new vehicles and company vehicles place their fillers in new places, and the hand goes for the cap used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no resistance at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. So the tip, once begun, keeps on. Stoke sub Hamdon or the heart of West Stoke: it takes the same few seconds either way.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you pour anything, on a drive in Norton sub Hamdon or a forecourt around West Stoke.
- Position misleads; the cap does not. AdBlue ones tend to be blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps usually don't.
- The size. On many motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Lift the filler flap and check for a label — many cars show what goes in which filler right there.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where the filler sits if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Crewkerne? Check with the person who drove it last before you set off, rather than once the light goes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Somerset that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Cole Lane, not on a slope, not with the engine running: park then switch off first.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Discover at the second or third stage that AdBlue went in the diesel filler? That's where you stop. Leave out step five altogether.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in West Stoke already?
Brief list, then. Top of that: your engine remains off. Leave your ignition off as well, since on plenty of diesels it by itself runs your fuel pump. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is pulled from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
On a forecourt — BP, Texaco or any other — the staff will usually help roll the car away, when you ask. Your own driveway around West Stoke is where it stays.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your engine has already run. On the M5, under 15 miles from West Stoke, that means the next junction. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across West Stoke is smaller a job than a trip of under 25 miles to Wells, and so say.
When we arrive around West Stoke, what occurs?
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Castle Primary School, near United Reform Church or on your own driveway. We ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has run, since the replies determine the work and our price. During the phone call itself, you are told our quote — ahead of anything else.
After that: a drain, then a thorough flush of the whole system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why the flush matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. After the filter is flushed — or renewed, where needed — clean diesel goes in, and then your car gets tested. Before we leave, our technicians fire it up and check that it is running properly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour once our technicians arrive, as long as the motor has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a busy forecourt yet quiet after dark outside a house. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Wrong-fuel cover is part of many insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About West Stoke
West Stoke is a suburban area in inland Somerset, situated approximately 50 metres above sea level. West Stoke lies near the towns of Wells and Stoke sub Hamdon, and is part of the wider South West region of England. West Stoke has a mix of housing types, with terraced houses being particularly prevalent in the area. West Stoke is also relatively close to several nearby places, including Highway and West End.
AdBlue drains round West Stoke, and Somerset beyond
Highway and West End are among the places near West Stoke, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, over TA postcodes. Give a postcode beginning TA14 6, and the van gets there quickest.
Shifting your car isn't needed. Draining happens right there, be it a driveway, a road near Stoke sub Hamdon Memorial Hall, or a layby towards Ham Hill Hillfort. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Hamdon Hill War Memorial, ring and ask instead of assuming.
In short, for West Stoke motorists
Read the cap before you pour. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Leave the car switched off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, across Somerset.