I’ve got a little point that I would like to ask you about AdBlue in relation to our Peugeot 307 (I know what readers may be thinking! Patience good folk! Doc.) My wife’s 53-plate Peugeot 307 came up for its annual MOT and service, with everything going alright, but two days later the amber engine symbol started to show as soon as the engine got warmed up. So it was back to the garage, plug her into the diagnostic computer and, lo and behold, it reported that the AdBlue tank (Patience again! Doc) was empty. I didn’t know that it even had one. There is nothing in the driver manual about it (Are you sure? Doc), so I went online to see what other owners might say. There was a comment about a bill for something around £300 if your Peugeot dealer does the job, or £100 plus if your ìman round the cornerî does it, but that was written a while back.

Well, it appears that our 307 fell foul of the 12-year product time life, as the car has only done 40,000 miles out of the supposed around 100,000 miles life of the additive tank. But that depends on who is telling you, as I can’t find it written down anywhere. My garage, which I’m generally very pleased with, had never done this job before on a 307, so they just followed Peugeot’s advice. The AdBlue tank required four litres of additive at £44.32 per litre or £177.28 plus VAT, and it’s a fiddly job that has to be done from underneath, so unless you have a pit, it’s a problem, with the tank being up alongside the Diesel tank. My question is, must you use your car manufacturer’s product, or can you use a ìpattern partî as one might say, allowing the garage to have a 45 gallon bulk drum that they can use on all cars. After all, when most cars will come to need it, they will be inevitably out of warranty. Strange thing was, I was told that the following day, an ’04í plate 307 came in with exactly the same job to do!
W.S.

What went into your car is not AdBlue Sir – that’s a chemical (based on urea) for NO_x removal, and is used only on some of the most recent diesels, although it has been used in HGV engines for some years. The stuff used to top up the tank in your Peugeot 307 is called “Eolys” (well it is by Peugeot and several other manufacturers) which is another catalyst solution containing a cerium compound, used for periodically regenerating (de-sooting) the diesel particulate filter box. Refilling the tank is a fiddly job, and the stuff is quite nasty if you get it on your skin, so it is not a DIY job. Usually a tankful does around 75,000 miles, but it depends on the type of motoring the car does. There are branded equivalents to Eolys, such as Patfluid and Infineum, but there are also a number of different grades, so you would need to know the right one to buy to be sure it’s equivalent to what’s used in your 307 – but as I say, I would strongly advise leaving this to the professionals! But then, with your wife’s annual mileage, it will be a long time before you need think of this again!
Doctor D