Billingshurst: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Keep your engine and ignition off and call 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Normally, if the engine has not run, it's emptied and thoroughly purged where the vehicle sits in Billingshurst. The remainder of this page covers why it takes place and how to ensure it does not — useful if you're reading ahead of time.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Many modern diesels in Newpound Common, as well as Billingshurst, carry on two fluids; the engine takes just your diesel. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust stream to clean it.
Every tank has one filler of its own. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on a lot of vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits under the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. Much less often, the AdBlue side is topped up — normally from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. The mistake lives in that gap.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur in Billingshurst?
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
Hurry comes from the warning. Your car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a drive off High Street, or on the way home in the car park at The Six Bells.
Next, the hand goes for the cap it would have used on the old car — because a hire car, a new car or a company car places the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
No part stops the tip once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it takes place in Parbrook or the middle of Billingshurst, it is the same few seconds.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Check these first, on a forecourt in Billingshurst or a driveway over in Balls Green. A few seconds, no more.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not its position.
- On plenty of cars, size tells: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Open the flap and look for a label — many motors show what belongs in each inlet right there.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by your diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park outside the nearest station? Check with whoever drove the car last before you set off, rather than when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
On the day the light comes on — anywhere it is in West Sussex — a simple routine to follow.
- Switch off after you park — flat ground, engine off, and never rushed beside St Mary's Close at the roadside.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" out loud while unscrewing it. It seems daft. It works.
- The two under one flap? So confirm the cap on the diesel filler stays closed before raising the bottle.
- Stop when that tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; until then, tip gently through its own spout.
- Shut the cap, and check once more — making sure your diesel cap remained shut the whole time. Only then, start the vehicle.
Find at stage two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? So stop just there. Don't carry on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Billingshurst?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. The fuel pump runs on plenty of diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — so keep it off. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from — so do not top up with diesel to thin it.
On a forecourt — EG On the Move, Shell or another — the staff will usually help roll the car clear, when you ask. Leave it where it is if you are on your own drive around Billingshurst.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Billingshurst sits under 15 miles from the M23; there, take the next junction. Distance matters — a short hop across Billingshurst makes a smaller job than driving under 25 miles towards Chichester — so tell us roughly how far it went.
Billingshurst: what happens when our technicians arrive
By Billingshurst Primary Academy, near St Mary's Church or on your own driveway: wherever your car has stopped, our engineers come to it. We ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has run, because those replies decide the work and our price. No one heads out before you have had the quote over the phone.
Then the tank is drained and your system flushed thoroughly. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and none of that clears out by itself. That is why it counts more. The filter flushed or, where needed, replaced; fresh diesel in; then a check of the vehicle. We do not leave until it has been started and is running smoothly.
If your engine hasn't run, the majority of 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 at night. No money upfront; you settle up on the day. At the end, the VAT invoice and a report from the engineer are handed to you for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in many insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About Billingshurst itself
Billingshurst is a village in West Sussex, situated inland at an elevation of 28 metres, and is located approximately 36 miles south of London. Billingshurst has a mix of housing types, but semi-detached homes are predominant, and the village is surrounded by nearby places such as Parbrook and Coneyhurst. Billingshurst is close to the city of Chichester, which is 19 miles away, and has a population of around 3371 residents. Billingshurst remains a rural community with a strong sense of identity.
Billingshurst and West Sussex: AdBlue drains across the area
Being a rural village, Billingshurst shares its vans surrounding places — Andrews Hill, Coneyhurst — right through RH postcodes and the surrounding area around them. Quickest of all: quote a RH14 9 postcode for the van.
Shifting your car is not necessary. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Jubilee Fields, a side street near Billingshurst Library: we drain the car where it stands. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Billingshurst Women's Hall, ring and ask instead of assuming.
Billingshurst people: the short version
First, the cap; after that, the pour. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will drain it wherever it stands, wherever across West Sussex: switch the car off and phone 0333 366 0103.