Balcombe Green: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. Usually, when your motor has not turned, it's emptied and thoroughly purged where the vehicle is in Balcombe Green. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of current diesels on the roads round Balcombe Green and Kent Street carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
There is a filler on every tank. Other cars keep the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; plenty more place both side by side under one flap. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less frequently. It's in that gap that the mistake lives.
Balcombe Green: how AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
On a driveway off Gorselands before work, or in the car park outside The Queen's Head Inn on the way home: that is where the hurried top-up happens. Why the rush? As AdBlue runs low your car warns you, and once it's gone, limp mode follows.
Then the car is strange. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Third, the bottle goes in: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it slides in just as easily, and once the pour begins, nothing halts it. It's a few seconds, be it out in Sedlescombe or right in the centre of Balcombe Green.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Swailes Green or a forecourt around Balcombe Green, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- On plenty of vehicles, the size tells: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- A label inside your fuel flap often shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Check for it.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler sits if it's not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Battle? Check with the person who drove the vehicle last before leaving, rather than once the light goes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
For the day the warning appears — anywhere you are around East Sussex — a simple routine to follow.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Brede Lane.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the vehicle on.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Find during the second or third step that AdBlue went into the wrong tank? That is where you stop. Skip step five altogether.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Balcombe Green?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your motor. The fuel pump starts on plenty of diesels as soon as the ignition is switched on — so keep it off. Thinning it with extra diesel won't work, since AdBlue settles to the bottom rather than blending — and that's where your fuel is sucked from.
The staff at Gulf, Esso or another forecourt will normally lend a hand to push the vehicle clear when you ask. On your own drive around Balcombe Green? Then the vehicle stays put.
Already started? Stop once it's sensible, then switch off. Leave the M20 — under 25 miles out of Balcombe Green — at the first exit. Mileage counts — a short hop across Balcombe Green makes a smaller job than heading under 50 miles to Brighton and Hove — so tell us about how far it went.
What takes place when we get there in Balcombe Green
Our van reaches the car wherever it stopped — your own drive, near Sedlescombe Village Hall, or outside Sedlescombe Church of England Primary School. Both the work and the quote depend on three answers — what liquid, which amount, and if it's run — so our technicians ask. Nobody heads out until you have had the price over the phone.
Emptying that tank comes next, then a full flush of your system. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither washes away by itself. Hence it matters more. After your filter has been flushed — or replaced, where needed — clean diesel goes in, and then the car gets tested. We do not go until it has been fired up and is running smoothly.
If your engine has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. Your insurer will ask for an engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and you get both once the job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no deposit. Wrong-fuel cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — so use the wait to look at yours.
About Balcombe Green
Balcombe Green is a suburban area situated in a riverside setting in East Sussex, with an elevation of around 40 metres. Balcombe Green lies near the towns of Sedlescombe and Whatlington, and is also close to the Pestalozzi International Village. Balcombe Green has a population of approximately 1250 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Balcombe Green is located near the city of Brighton and Hove, which is around 30.7 miles away, and is also within commuting distance of London, which is around 48.9 miles away.
Balcombe Green and East Sussex: AdBlue drains across the area
Balcombe Green is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Pestalozzi International Village and Whatlington among them, across the TN postcode area. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting TN33 0.
No need to move your car. Draining takes place on the spot, be it a driveway, a street by Chapel-on-the-Hill, or a layby on the way to Catt's Shaw. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of St John the Baptist.
For Balcombe Green drivers, the short version
Tip nothing until you've read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere across East Sussex, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless — so leave the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103.