Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Chilmington Green
Leave the engine and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait if AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. A drain plus a thorough flush, done just where your vehicle stands in Chilmington Green, is usually all it takes if found before your engine runs. The remainder of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it does not — useful if you are reading before it has happened.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Diesel feeds your motor — yet many current diesels driven round Chilmington Green and Daniels Water hold another liquid as well. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into your exhaust stream to clean it.
There is a filler for each tank. Some motors put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot more have both together under one flap. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less frequently, normally from a bottle, and normally by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between the two.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank happens in Chilmington Green
Carelessness seldom explains it. What does is three things coming up at once.
On a driveway off Woodland Rise before work, or in the car park outside Swan and Dog heading home: that is where the rushed top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and once it's gone, limp mode kicks in.
Then the vehicle is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part stops the pour once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Singleton or the heart of Chilmington Green: it takes the same few seconds either way.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Before you tip anything, whether on a driveway in Yardhurst or a forecourt around Chilmington Green, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Check the cap instead of going by where it sits: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually aren't.
- Plenty of cars fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- A label inside the fuel flap often shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of motors. Check for it.
- The handbook shows which it is if the filler isn't next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Ashford International.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
Wherever in Kent the light comes on, this is a routine for that day.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Highwood Drive.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, perhaps, yet it does the trick.
- The two behind one flap? Then make sure the cap on your diesel filler stays closed ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Before you start the car, shut the cap and look a second time that your diesel cap never opened off.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Step five is off limits.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Chilmington Green already?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. Keep your ignition off as well, because on plenty of diesels it by itself runs your pump. Filling up with diesel will not weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of that tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
On a forecourt — BP, Tesco or any other — the attendants will normally help roll the car clear, when you ask. Your own driveway around Chilmington Green is where it stays.
If your motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. On the M20, under 3 miles from Chilmington Green, that means the next junction. About how far did it go? Crossing Chilmington Green is less work than a run of under 15 miles to Canterbury, and so say.
Our arrival in Chilmington Green, and what occurs next
By Chilmington Green Primary School, near St. Mary's Church or on your own driveway: wherever your car has stopped, we come to it. Both the work and our quote rest on three answers — what liquid, which amount, and whether it has run — so our engineers ask. You get that quote by phone, before anyone sets off.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, after the tank is emptied. With AdBlue that counts 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. Testing is last: before that, clean diesel is added, and the fuel filter is flushed or replaced as needed. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running properly.
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 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 part of many insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Chilmington Green, briefly
Chilmington Green is a village in Kent, situated near the River Great Stour and surrounded by countryside. Chilmington Green has a mix of old and new housing, with detached homes being the predominant type, and is located near other small villages such as Singleton and Great Chart. Chilmington Green sits at an elevation of 43 metres, close to the larger city of Canterbury, which is 14.9 miles away. Chilmington Green is also within commuting distance of London, being approximately 48.4 miles from the capital.
AdBlue drains around Chilmington Green, and Kent beyond
Being a village, Chilmington Green has the same vans as nearby places — Great Chart, Fleeden — right through TN postcodes and the wider area around them. Quote a postcode that starts TN23 3, and our van gets there quickest.
The vehicle remains where it is. Wherever it stands — beside Singleton Environment Centre, on a lay-by en route to Lizard Wood, on a drive — that is where it gets drained. Awkward to explain, like the back of Singleton Village Hall? Close to a border? Checking beats guessing, so ring.
Chilmington Green motorists: the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, anywhere around Kent, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — and so leave it off and call 0333 366 0103.