AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Clare: How It Happens and How to Prevent It
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. A drain and a full flush, carried out just where the vehicle sits around Clare, is usually what it takes if caught before the motor runs. The remainder of this page covers why it takes place and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you're reading ahead of time.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Many newer diesels around Chilton Street, as well as Clare, run on two fluids; your engine takes just your diesel. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Under one flap, next to each other: that's the layout on a lot of motors. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Diesel gets filled at every filling station visit, week in, week out. Far less frequently, the AdBlue side gets filled — normally from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. The error lives in that gap.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank take place around Clare?
It is hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Haste comes from the warning. Your car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up happens in a rush, before work on a driveway off Market Hill, or on the way home in the car park outside The Bell.
Next, your hand reaches for the cap it knew on the old vehicle — since a hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
No part stops the pour once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Poslingford Corner or the heart of Clare: it takes the same few seconds in both.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Poslingford or a forecourt in Clare, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Go by the cap, not its position.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside the fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Look for it.
- The handbook shows which it lives when your filler is not next to the diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- The previous driver knows. Ask when you pick up a rental or fleet car — at Sudbury Suffolk's car park, say — rather than once the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
The day the light goes on, anywhere across Suffolk, use this routine.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Church Street.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud as unscrewing it. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- Both under one flap? So make sure the cap on your diesel side stays closed ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Gently is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Find at step two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? Then stop just there. Don't go on to step five.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, in Clare?
Short list, then. Top of that: your motor remains unstarted. The fuel pump starts on many diesels the moment your ignition goes on — and so keep it off. Diluting it with extra diesel fails, because AdBlue sinks to the base instead of mixing — and that is where your fuel is pulled from.
The attendants at the nearest petrol station, another forecourt nearby or another forecourt will usually lend a hand pushing the vehicle away when you ask. Your own drive around Clare is the place it stays.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your engine has already run. The next junction means the place to come off when you're on the M11, under 25 miles from Clare. A short hop across Clare is a smaller job than a run towards Colchester, under 25 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
Our arrival around Clare, and what occurs next
Outside Clare Community Primary School, close to The Ancient House Museum or on your own drive: wherever your car has stopped, our engineers come to it. Those replies determine this work and the price, and so our engineers ask what got in, about how much, and if it's run. That quote comes on the call, ahead of any van leaving.
Then that tank is cleared and the fuel system flushed thoroughly. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that counts more here than with petrol. Your filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
If the motor has not 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 at night. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It is worth checking your insurance while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About Clare, for a moment
Clare is a small town situated on the banks of the River Stour in Suffolk, with a population of around 2278 people. Clare sits at an elevation of 52 metres, surrounded by rolling countryside and nearby villages such as Poslingford Corner and Wentford. Clare is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its history of growth and development. Clare is located near the larger town of Colchester, approximately 18.8 miles away, and is about 49.7 miles from London.
AdBlue drains around Clare and across Suffolk
Clare is a riverside town, and our vans that cover it also work the places near it, Wentford and Hickford Hill among them, across the CO postcode area. Give a postcode that starts CO10 8, and the van gets there quickest.
The vehicle stays put. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Clare Castle Country Park, a side street close to Clare Village Sign: our engineers drain the car where it sits. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Telephone Kiosk.
For Clare drivers, the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will drain it where it is, wherever in Suffolk: keep the car off then ring 0333 366 0103.