AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Eight Ash Green: How It Happens and How to Avoid It
Keep the motor and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Usually, if your motor hasn't run, it's drained and fully cleaned where the vehicle is around Eight Ash Green. Nothing happened yet? Further down, the page explains the reasons it takes place and the ways to avoid it altogether.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Diesel feeds your motor — but many modern diesels seen round Eight Ash Green and Chitts Hills carry another liquid as well. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust stream to clean it.
Every tank has one filler of its own. On a lot of motors the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. At the pump, the diesel side gets filled all the time. The AdBlue side is fuelled far less frequently, normally from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. It's in the gap that the mistake happens.
Eight Ash Green: how AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs
Carelessness rarely causes it. Instead is three things lining up together.
On a drive off Halstead Road before work, or in the car park outside The Cricketers on the way home: that's where the rushed top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the car warns you, and once it's empty, limp mode kicks in.
Then, your hand goes for the cap it knew on the old motor — since a hire car, a new car or a company car places the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
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 pour once it has started. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Eight Ash Green or out in Seven Star Green.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so check them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Gallows Green or a forecourt around Eight Ash Green.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- Plenty of motors fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Open the filler flap and check for a label — many vehicles mark what belongs in which filler just there.
- Cannot find it beside the diesel inlet? Then check below the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Marks Tey.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
When the light goes on, wherever across Essex, follow this routine.
- Turn off after you park — flat ground, motor stopped, and not rushed beside Spring Lane on the verge.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- Both under a single flap? Then make sure the lid on your diesel filler stays shut ahead of raising the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Only then, start your car: close the cap, check again, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Find at step two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? Then stop just there. Never go on to step five.
Eight Ash Green: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the motor. Do not switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel will not thin it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the bottom of your tank, just where the fuel is taken from.
Ask the attendants to help roll your car clear of the petrol pump if you're at a forecourt — the Esso, the Sainsbury's or anywhere else. If you're on your own driveway around Eight Ash Green, leave the vehicle where it is.
When your engine has run already, pull over safely and switch the car off. Come off the M11 — under 50 miles out of Eight Ash Green — at the first exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Eight Ash Green is smaller a job than a run of under 5 miles towards Colchester, and so tell us.
When our technicians get there around Eight Ash Green, what happens?
Outside Holy Trinity CofE Primary School, Eight Ash Green and Aldham, close to All Saints, Eight Ash Green or on your own drive: wherever the car has stopped, our technicians come to it. The answers decide this work and our price, and so we ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it's run. That quote comes over the phone, before any van leaves.
The system is then purged thoroughly, once the tank is emptied. 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 matters more here than with petrol. Your filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. We do not leave until it has been fired up and is running smoothly.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once our engineers arrive, as long as the motor hasn't run — and the pumps our technicians use are fine on a live forecourt yet 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. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Eight Ash Green, for a moment
Eight Ash Green is a small village in Essex, situated approximately 3.3 miles from Colchester and 48.8 miles from London. Eight Ash Green sits in a relatively low-lying area at an elevation of around 45 metres, surrounded by other nearby places such as Seven Star Green and Fordham Heath. Eight Ash Green has a population of around 747 people and predominantly consists of detached housing.
Eight Ash Green and Essex: AdBlue drains across the area
Being a rural village, Eight Ash Green shares its vans nearby areas — Fordham Heath, Beacon End — right across CO postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. Give a postcode beginning CO6 3, and our van gets there fastest.
No need to move the vehicle. Anywhere it stands — beside Eight Ash Green Village Hall, on a lay-by en route to Fordham Heath, at home — that's where it is drained. Assuming doesn't help behind Marks & Spencer, close to a boundary, or somewhere awkward to pin down; ring and ask.
Eight Ash Green drivers: the short version
Read the cap before you tip. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Keep the car switched off then ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, throughout Essex.