Becontree: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Pause here for a moment when your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and phone 0333 366 0103. Caught before your motor runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is around Becontree. Not happened yet? Below, the rest of the page explains the reasons it occurs and the ways to avoid it for good.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Diesel goes to the engine — yet plenty of current diesels seen around Becontree and Dagenham carry another liquid as well. The exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the gas to clean them, from its own tank.
Each tank has one filler of its own. Many of vehicles share a single flap for the two, while some put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, your diesel side gets filled all the time. The AdBlue side is topped up far less frequently, normally from a bottle, and normally by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. It is in that gap that the slip happens.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place in Becontree?
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
Hurry comes from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a drive off Maxey Road, or heading home in the car park at The Cherry Tree.
Next, the hand reaches for the cap it knew on the old vehicle — since a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not.
Nothing stops the tip after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It takes seconds, be it out in Castle Green or bang in the centre of Becontree.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Before you pour anything, whether on a drive in Chadwell Heath or a forecourt around Becontree, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- Plenty of motors give AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Check inside the fuel flap: plenty of vehicles have a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler is if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Chadwell Heath? Ask whoever drove the car last before leaving, rather than when the light goes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Greater London that is.
- Stop somewhere level, engine off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Parsloes Avenue.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check the 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 then, start the vehicle: close the cap, check once more, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Spot at step two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? Then stop just there. Don't carry on to step five.
Becontree: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Short order, then. Top of it: the motor remains off. Keep the ignition off as well, since on many diesels switching it on alone runs the pump. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is drawn from — so do not top up with diesel to dilute it.
On a forecourt — Texaco, Shell or another — the staff will normally help push the vehicle clear, if you ask. Your own drive around Becontree is the place it should stay.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your engine has already run. Come off the M11 — under 5 miles out of Becontree — at the first exit. Distance counts — a short hop across Becontree makes a smaller job than driving under 15 miles towards London — so say roughly how far it went.
When our engineers arrive around Becontree, what takes place?
The van comes to the vehicle anywhere it stopped — your own drive, near Kingsley Hall, or by Southwood Primary School. Both the work and our quote rest on three answers — what liquid, which quantity, and whether it's run — so we ask. On the call itself, you hear the quote — before dispatch.
Then the tank is drained and your system rinsed thoroughly. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own. A test comes at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and the fuel filter is flushed or replaced as needed. Before leaving, we fire it up and check that it's running correctly.
If the motor hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. 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 — and so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Becontree itself
Becontree is a suburban area in Greater London, situated near the River Thames at an elevation of around 9 metres. Becontree lies on the outskirts of London, approximately 11.6 miles from the city centre, and is close to nearby places such as Castle Green and Becontree Heath. Becontree is characterized by its predominantly terraced housing stock, which reflects its development as a residential area. Becontree has a population of around 10,618 people, according to recent estimates.
AdBlue drains around Becontree, and Greater London beyond
Throughout RM postcodes, our vans that cover Becontree — a residential suburb — work the nearby places too, Goodmayes and Becontree Heath included. Quote a postcode beginning RM9 5, and our van arrives quickest.
Moving the vehicle is not needed. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Parsloes Park Squatts, a side street near Wood Lane Baptist Church (Halley Memorial Hall): our engineers drain the vehicle where it sits. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you're near a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of St Elisabeth's, Becontree.
Becontree drivers: the short version
Read the cap before you tip. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the vehicle off and phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, across Greater London.