Crouch: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before your engine runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Crouch. The rest of this page covers why it takes place and how to ensure it doesn't — useful if you're reading ahead of time.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Plenty of newer diesels around Comp, like those in Crouch, run on two fluids; your motor gets just your diesel. Your exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the fumes to fresh it, from its own tank.
Every tank has one filler of its own. Many of cars have a single flap for both, while others move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the pump happens constantly. Seldom filled, AdBlue normally comes from a bottle, tipped by someone who has to stop and think what cap it needs. Mistakes happen in the gap between the two.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Crouch: how it occurs
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the car, and letting it run out means limp mode — hence a hurried top-up, maybe before work off Long Mill Lane, or at The Plough on the way home that evening.
The old car's cap is where your hand reaches — but a hire car, a new motor or a company car keeps the fillers somewhere else. That is a second factor: a strange vehicle.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, and so nothing stops the tip after it has started. It's seconds, whether in Claygate Cross or right in the centre of Crouch.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Borough Green or a forecourt around Crouch, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Trust the cap, not its position.
- Plenty of cars give AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Look inside the fuel flap: plenty of cars have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by your diesel cap, it's in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park at Borough Green & Wrotham? Check with the person who drove it last before you set off, rather than when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
When the light goes on, wherever in Kent, follow this routine.
- Switch off once parked — level ground, motor stopped, and never rushed beside Crouch Lane on the verge.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, yes, but it works.
- Both under a single flap? Then confirm the cap on your diesel side stays closed ahead of 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 look once more — confirm your diesel cap remained shut the whole time. After that, start the vehicle.
Discover during the second or third stage that the bottle went in the diesel filler? That's where you stop. Never go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Crouch already?
Don't start the engine: that is where the short order of things begins. The fuel pump starts on plenty of diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — so leave it off. Diluting it with extra diesel won't work, because AdBlue settles to the base instead of blending — and that is where your fuel is sucked from.
On a forecourt — Esso, Shell or another — the staff will normally help push your car away, if you ask. If you are on your own driveway around Crouch, leave the vehicle where it sits.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Crouch lies under 3 miles from the M26; there, take the first exit. About how far did it go? Hopping across Crouch is less work than a run of under 25 miles to London, so say.
Our arrival in Crouch, and what happens next
Our van comes to the vehicle wherever it has come to rest — your own drive, near Old Soar Manor, or by Platt Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School. What fluid went in, the quantity, and if it ran: our engineers ask because the answers decide the work and price. You hear that quote on the phone, before anybody sets off.
Emptying that tank comes next, then a full flush of the system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own — which is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. The fuel filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour after our technicians get there, as long as your motor hasn't run — and the pumps our technicians use are fine on a live forecourt and quiet after dark beside a house. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you receive the documents an insurer asks for: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Before we get there, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty carry cover for misfuelling.
About Crouch itself
Crouch is a small village in Kent, situated inland at an elevation of around 123 metres. Crouch lies approximately 25 miles from London, within commuting distance of the capital. Crouch is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock and rural setting, near to places like Claygate Cross and Basted. Crouch remains a quiet, residential community with a population of around 545 people.
Crouch and Kent: AdBlue drains across the area
Over TN postcodes, the vans that cover Crouch — a rural village — work the nearby spots too, Platt and Basted among them. A postcode starting TN15 8 gets our van to you fastest.
Moving the car is not necessary. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Shipbourne Forest, a side street close to St. Mary's: our technicians drain it where it stands. Ring and ask instead of assuming if you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Parish Hall.
For Crouch drivers, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, anywhere across Kent, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless — and so leave the vehicle off then ring 0333 366 0103.