How It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Eccles Road
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? In that case set this page down a moment, keep the ignition and engine off, then ring 0333 366 0103. Usually, if your motor hasn't turned, it's drained and fully cleaned where the vehicle is in Eccles Road. Here in advance? Then what follows explains why it comes about and how to stop it happening at all.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Diesel feeds your motor — yet plenty of current diesels driven round Eccles Road and Snetterton hold a second liquid as well. Its own tank holds it, and from there it is sent to your exhaust, and there a spray treats the fumes.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Plenty of cars share a single flap for both, whereas others put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Topping up the diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less often, normally from a bottle, and normally by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. The slip lives in that gap.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank happens around Eccles Road
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the car drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Saint Andrews Drive before work, or in the car park outside Old Railway Tavern on the way home.
Unfamiliar motors come next, too. Rentals, new cars and company motors put their fillers differently, and the hand reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, after begun, carries on. It's a few seconds, be it in Snetterton Heath or bang in the centre of Eccles Road.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
A few seconds is all these take — so check them before you pour anything, on a driveway in North End or a forecourt around Eccles Road.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are often blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally are not.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Lift the filler flap and look for a label — many cars mark what belongs in which filler right there.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by your diesel cap, it's in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver knows. Ask when you pick up a hire car or fleet car — at the nearest station's car park, say — rather than once the warning appears.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
For the day the light comes on — wherever you are around Norfolk — a simple routine to use.
- Not in a rush on the side of Station Road, not on a slope, not with the engine running: park and switch off properly.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave it on.
- Gently is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the car, shut the cap and check again that the diesel cap was never opened off.
Spot at step two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? Then stop right there. Never carry on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Eccles Road?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting the engine. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch the vehicle on. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where the fuel is pulled from.
At a forecourt — Esso, Sainsbury's or any other — the attendants will normally help push the car clear, if you ask. At home around Eccles Road? Then the car stays where it is.
Where your engine has run already, pull over somewhere safe then turn the car off. The next junction means the place to come off when you're on the M11, under 50 miles from Eccles Road. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Eccles Road is smaller a job than a run of under 25 miles towards Norwich, and so tell us.
Eccles Road: what occurs when our engineers get there
Outside East Harling Primary School and Nursery, near Garnier Hall or on your own drive: wherever your car has stopped, our engineers come to it. We ask what was put in, about how much, and if it's run, because the replies determine the work and the price. Nobody sets off until you have had our quote by phone.
The fuel system is then purged thoroughly, once that tank is cleared. Unlike petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and none of that clears out unaided. That is why it counts more. Once your filter is cleaned — or renewed, if required — clean diesel goes in, and finally the vehicle is tested. Before we leave, we fire it up and make sure that it's running smoothly.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once we arrive, as long as the engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a live forecourt and quiet at night outside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Before we get there, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Eccles Road and where it is
Eccles Road is a small village in Norfolk, situated inland at an elevation of 37 metres, and is located near the villages of Snetterton Heath, Wilby, and Quidenham. Eccles Road has a population of approximately 506 people, and is characterized by predominantly detached housing. Eccles Road is within commuting distance of Norwich, which is 17.3 miles away, and is also about 81.4 miles from London.
Eccles Road and Norfolk: AdBlue drains across the area
Eccles Road is a rural village, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Wilby and Quidenham among them, across the NR postcode area. A postcode starting NR16 2 gets our van to you fastest.
Shifting the car is not necessary. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street near Saint Mary the Virgin, a lay-by on the way to Eccles Wood, a drive. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Hargham All Saints, ring and ask rather than guessing.
Eccles Road drivers: the short version
Tip no AdBlue until you have read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Leave the vehicle switched off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, across Norfolk.