Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Burleys Wood: Why It Occurs
Pause reading for a moment if the diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, then phone 0333 366 0103. Usually, if the engine has not turned, it is drained and fully flushed where your car is around Burleys Wood. If you are reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Many newer diesels in Three Bridges, like those in Burleys Wood, run on two fluids; your engine gets only your diesel. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into your exhaust stream to clean it.
Each tank has its own filler. Some vehicles put the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; plenty of others place the two side by side under one flap. Diesel gets filled on every forecourt visit, week in, week out. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. The error lives in that gap.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs around Burleys Wood
It is seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out completely, the vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Oakhill Chase before work, or in the car park outside The Hillside Inn on the way home.
Unfamiliar vehicles are second, as well. Rentals, new motors and company vehicles put their fillers differently, and the hand reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the pour after it has started. Pound Hill or the heart of Burleys Wood: it takes the same few seconds in both.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
A few seconds is all the checks take — so check them before you tip anything, on a drive in Maidenbower or a forecourt in Burleys Wood.
- Check the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually are not.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many cars, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by the 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 Three Bridges? Check with the person who drove the vehicle last before you set off, not once the light goes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever in West Sussex, use this routine.
- Not in a rush on the side of Felbridge Avenue, not on a slope, not with the engine running: park then switch off first.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap works — once you have found your filler and read the cap.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where the two sit under a flap, make sure it is shut before lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, and check again — making sure your diesel cap stayed shut throughout. After that, start the car.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Do not go on to stage five.
Burleys Wood: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so don't switch the car on. Filling up with diesel will not thin it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of your tank, right where the fuel is taken from.
Ask the staff to help roll your car away from the pump if you're on a forecourt — the Texaco, the Tesco or anywhere else. If you're on your own drive around Burleys Wood, leave the car where it is.
If the motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. On the M23, under a mile from Burleys Wood, that means the next junction. A short hop across Burleys Wood is a smaller job than a run towards Brighton and Hove, under 25 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
What happens when our engineers turn up around Burleys Wood
Our technicians come to the car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Pound Hill Infant Academy, near Moat or on your own driveway. Both the work and our quote rest on three answers — which liquid, what quantity, and if it has run — so we ask. During the phone call itself, you hear the quote — before dispatch.
Your system is then cleaned thoroughly, once the tank is drained. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own. Filter flushed or, where it must be, replaced; fresh diesel in; and then a test of the vehicle. We do not leave until it has been started and is running correctly.
Unrun cars usually need a half-hour visit after arrival. The kit is fine on a live filling station, and hushed enough for a residential street after dark. The insurer will ask for an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and both are yours once the job is done. Payment is on the day, with no money upfront. Before we get there, take a look at your policy; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Burleys Wood
Burleys Wood is a suburban area in West Sussex, situated inland at an elevation of around 85 metres, and is located near the communities of Pound Hill and Crabbet Park. Burleys Wood is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting the area's residential development. Burleys Wood sits within the wider South East region, approximately 26.8 miles from London and 20.5 miles from the city of Brighton and Hove.
Burleys Wood and West Sussex: AdBlue drains across the area
Burleys Wood is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Crabbet Park and Worth among them, across the RH postcode area. A postcode starting RH10 7 gets our van to you fastest.
Your car stays put. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street near St Edward the Confessor's, a lay-by on the way to the green space at the edge of the village, a drive. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Pound Hill Community Centre, ring and ask rather than assuming.
The short version for Burleys Wood drivers
Before you pour, read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless, leave it off then phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it waits, anywhere around West Sussex.