How It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Beaconsfield
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? Then set this page aside for now, leave your ignition and motor off, then call 0333 366 0103. Around Beaconsfield, finding it before the engine turns usually means draining and a thorough flush on the spot. Reading before the event? In that case the rest covers how it happens and what to stop it happening at all.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Diesel feeds your motor — yet plenty of newer diesels driven about Beaconsfield and Wilton Park carry a second liquid too. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas and cleans it.
Each tank has its own filler. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the petrol pump happens all the time. Rarely topped up, AdBlue normally comes from a bottle, tipped by someone who must stop and think which cap it needs. That gap is where the error lives.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Beaconsfield: how it happens
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
Haste follows from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a driveway off Station Road, or heading home in the car park at Royal Saracens Head.
Then, your hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old vehicle — because a hire car, a new car or a company car places the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
A spout-topped bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. So the tip, after begun, keeps on. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Beaconsfield or out in Knotty Green.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A couple of seconds is all these take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Wooburn Moor or a forecourt around Beaconsfield.
- Check the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue ones are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally aren't.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside the fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on many motors. Check for it.
- The handbook shows which it is if your filler is not next to the diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- Whoever had it before will know. Check when you pick up a rental or company car — at the nearest station's car park, say — rather than once the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
The day the light goes on, anywhere across Buckinghamshire, use this routine.
- Turn off after you park — flat ground, motor stopped, and not in a rush by Gregories Road at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it does the trick.
- The two behind one flap? Then make sure the cap on your diesel side is still shut before raising the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, then check again — making sure your diesel filler stayed closed the whole time. After that, start the car.
Discover at the second or third stage that the bottle went in the wrong tank? That's where you stop. Do not go on to stage five.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, around Beaconsfield?
Short order, then. Top of that: your engine stays unstarted. The fuel pump runs on many diesels the moment the ignition goes on — so keep it off. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is pulled from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
Ask the staff to help roll the vehicle away from the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the Esso, the Shell or somewhere else. Leave it where it is if you are on your own drive in Beaconsfield.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your motor has already run. On the M40, under a mile from Beaconsfield, that means the next junction. About how far did it go? Hopping across Beaconsfield is less work than a run of under 25 miles towards St Albans, so say.
Beaconsfield: what occurs when our engineers arrive
Anywhere the car came to rest, be it by St Mary and All Saints CofE Primary School, near The Arcade or at home, our van comes to it. Which liquid got in, the quantity, and whether it ran: our technicians ask since the answers set both work and price. You hear that quote by phone, before anyone sets off.
Next: draining, then a thorough flush of the entire system. Much more than with petrol, it counts here: crystals form, some metals corrode, and nothing clears away on its own, no matter how long it sits. Filter cleaned or, where needed, swapped; fresh diesel in; then a check of the car. Before we go, we fire it up and confirm that it is running smoothly.
If the motor has not 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. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in many insurance policies — so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Beaconsfield
Beaconsfield is a town in south Buckinghamshire, situated approximately 23 miles west of London and 16 miles southwest of St Albans. Beaconsfield sits in a valley at an elevation of around 107 metres, surrounded by the Chiltern Hills and nearby villages such as Knotty Green and Forty Green. Beaconsfield is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock and a population of around 11,400 residents. Beaconsfield benefits from its proximity to the M40 motorway and mainline railway to London.
AdBlue drains around Beaconsfield, and Buckinghamshire beyond
As a town, Beaconsfield has the same vans as surrounding places — Forty Green, Holtspur — right across HP postcodes and the wider area around them. A postcode starting HP9 1 gets the van to you fastest.
The car doesn't need to shift. The drain takes place right there, whether a drive, a street by Town Hall, or a layby on the way to Beaconsfield Town Hall Green. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Wenlock? By a border? Checking is better than assuming, so ring.
In short, for Beaconsfield people
Tip no AdBlue till you have read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere across Buckinghamshire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same — and so leave the vehicle off and ring 0333 366 0103.