Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Wildridings: Why It Occurs
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and the ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Around Wildridings, finding it before your engine turns usually leaves a drain and a full flush where it stands. Reading before the event? Then the rest explains how it happens and how to prevent it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
No single fluid but two: that is what many modern diesels near Wildridings and Harmans Water carry, with diesel for your motor. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas and cleans it.
There's a filler for each tank. Many of vehicles share a single flap for the two, while some put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in on every filling station call-out, week in, week out. Seldom filled, AdBlue normally comes out of a bottle, poured by someone who has to stop and think which cap to use. Mistakes happen in that gap between them.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place in Wildridings
It is hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Hurry comes from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens in a rush, before work on a drive off Netherton, or on the way home in the car park at The Green Man.
The old car's cap is where the hand goes — but a rental car, a new vehicle or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That is the second factor: a new vehicle.
Nothing halts the pour after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Easthampstead or the heart of Wildridings: it is the same few seconds in both.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Be it a Wildridings forecourt or a driveway over in Crown Wood, take a couple of seconds on these before any is poured in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap usually is not. Read it instead of going by where it sits.
- Many vehicles fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- Cannot find it next to your diesel inlet? Then check beneath the bonnet or in your boot — the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before knows. Ask as you collect a hire car or company car — from Bracknell's car park, say — rather than once the warning comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever around Berkshire, follow this routine.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with your engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Aldworth Close.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave it on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Only after that, start your car: close the cap, check again, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Don't go on to step five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Wildridings already?
The short order of things, starting with not starting the engine. The fuel pump starts on plenty of diesels the moment the ignition is switched on — so leave it off. Diluting it with more diesel won't work, since AdBlue settles to the bottom instead of mixing — and that's where your fuel is sucked from.
Ask the staff to help roll the car away from the petrol pump if you are at a forecourt — the Shell, the Esso or somewhere else. On your own drive in Wildridings? So your car remains put.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. The next exit is the place to come off when you are on the A329(M), under 3 miles from Wildridings. About how far did it go? Crossing Wildridings is smaller a job than a run of under 50 miles to Westminster, and so tell us.
Wildridings: what occurs when our engineers turn up
Our van comes to the car wherever it stopped — your own drive, near Bracknell Gospel Hall, or outside Wildridings Primary School. Those answers determine this work and the price, and so we ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it's run. During the phone call itself, you are told our price — ahead of anything else.
Then that tank is emptied and your system cleaned thoroughly. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks certain fuel-system metals, and neither washes out unaided. Hence it matters more. Testing is at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and the filter is cleaned or changed as needed. Before we leave, our technicians start it and check that it's running properly.
If your motor has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. Nothing in advance; you settle up on the day. At the end, the VAT invoice and a report from the engineer go to you for the insurer. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Wildridings
Wildridings is a suburban area in Berkshire, situated approximately 28 miles west of London and near the town of Bracknell. Wildridings lies at an elevation of around 80 metres, in a gently undulating landscape of inland southern England. Wildridings is characterised by its predominantly terraced housing stock, with nearby neighbourhoods including Easthampstead and Skimpedhill.
AdBlue drains round Wildridings, and Berkshire beyond
Skimpedhill and Bracknell are among the places around Wildridings, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, throughout RG postcodes. Quickest of all: give a RG12 7 postcode for our van.
Your car does not need to move. Anywhere it sits — beside Easthampstead and Wildridings Community Centre, on a lay-by en route to Wildridings Recreation Ground, on a drive — that is where it is cleared. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Bill Hill, ring and ask rather than guessing.
The short version for Wildridings drivers
First, the cap; then, the pour. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it stands, wherever around Berkshire: keep it off then phone 0333 366 0103.