How It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Detling
Pause reading for a moment if the diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and call 0333 366 0103. A drain and a full flush, done just where your car sits around Detling, is normally what it needs when found before your engine runs. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel vehicle need its own filler?
Many current diesels on the roads about Detling and Boxley carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Your exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the fumes to fresh them, from a separate tank.
Different tanks, separate fillers. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is filled at the petrol pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less frequently. It is in the gap that the mistake happens.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank happen in Detling?
Carelessness seldom causes it. What does is three things coming up together.
Hurry follows from the warning. Your car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends it into limp mode — so the top-up happens in a rush, before work on a driveway off The Street, or heading home in the car park at The Cock Horse Inn.
The old car's cap is where your hand goes — but a hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere else. That is the second factor: an unfamiliar motor.
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 once it has started. It's seconds, whether in Thurnham or right in the heart of Detling.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Harbourland or a forecourt in Detling.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- Plenty of motors give AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Check inside your fuel flap: plenty of vehicles carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows where it lives if your filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park at Bearsted, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Kent that is.
- Stop somewhere level, engine off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Hockers Lane.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew it. It seems daft. It works.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the car, close the cap and look a second time that the diesel cap was never opened off.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Skip step five altogether.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, in Detling?
Don't start the engine: that's how the short order of things starts. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so do not switch the vehicle on. Filling up with diesel will not weaken it: instead, AdBlue drops to the base of your tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
Ask the staff to help push the car away from the pump if you're on a forecourt — the the nearest petrol station, the Shell or somewhere else. If you're on your own driveway in Detling, leave the car where it sits.
If the motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Detling sits under a mile from the M20; there, use the first junction. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Detling is smaller a job than a run of under 25 miles to Southend-on-Sea, so tell us.
Our arrival in Detling, and what happens next
Wherever the vehicle came to rest, whether outside Leigh Academy Bearsted, beside St Martin of Tours, Detling or on your own drive, the van travels to it. Our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has run, because those answers decide the work and our price. Nobody heads out until you've had our price over the phone.
The fuel system is then cleaned thoroughly, once your tank is emptied. Much more than with petrol, it counts here: crystals build up, some metals corrode, and none of it washes out unaided, no matter how long it sits. After the fuel filter has been cleaned — or renewed, where needed — clean diesel goes in, and then your vehicle gets tested. Your engine is started next and tested to make sure it runs smoothly, all before we leave.
Using pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the motor has not run take about half an hour once we arrive. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork your insurer wants: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. While we travel, have a look at your policy; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Detling
Detling is a small village in Kent, situated inland at an elevation of around 102 metres, and is located approximately 33.5 miles from London. Detling has a population of around 737 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Detling is close to nearby places such as Thurnham, Weavering Street, and Ware Street, and is also near the city of Southend-on-Sea, which is 18.1 miles away. Detling sits in a rural area of the county, with the North Downs nearby.
AdBlue drains about Detling, and Kent beyond
As a rural village, Detling shares its vans surrounding areas — Weavering Street, Ware Street — right across ME postcodes and the surrounding area around them. Fastest of all: give a ME14 3 postcode for our van.
Your car does not need to move. Wherever it sits — beside Detling Village Hall, on a lay-by en route to Belulah Wood, at home — that's where it is cleared. Assuming doesn't help behind St Mary the Virgin, on a boundary, or somewhere awkward to describe; phone and check.
In short, for Detling motorists
Pour no AdBlue till you have read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the car switched off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, across Kent.