Elstree Park: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. In Elstree Park, finding it before your engine turns normally means draining and a thorough flush on the spot. If you're reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Plenty of current diesels on the roads around Elstree Park and Arkley carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas to clean it.
Separate tanks, separate fillers. Plenty of vehicles share a single flap for the two, while others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, your diesel side is topped up constantly. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less often. Mistakes happen in that gap between the two.
Elstree Park: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
Hurry follows from the warning. The car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a drive off Elstree Park, or heading home in the car park outside The Gate.
Then the vehicle is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, once started, carries on. It takes seconds, whether out in Barnet Gate or bang in the heart of Elstree Park.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A couple of seconds is all these take — so check them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Edgware Bury or a forecourt around Elstree Park.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally is not. Read it instead of going by where it sits.
- The size. On plenty of motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- Cannot find it beside the diesel inlet? In that case check beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the owner's manual will say which.
- The previous driver will know. Ask as you collect a hire car or company car — from Elstree & Borehamwood's car park, say — not once the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Greater London that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Stirling Corner, not on a slope, not with the engine running: park then switch off first.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish once the tank fills or the bottle is empty; before that, tip slowly through its own spout.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Never go on to step five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Elstree Park?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. The fuel pump starts on plenty of diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — so leave it off. Thinning it with extra diesel won't work, because AdBlue sinks to the base instead of blending — and that's where your fuel is sucked from.
On a forecourt — Shell, Morrisons or any other — the attendants will normally help push the vehicle away, if you ask. If you're on your own driveway in Elstree Park, leave the vehicle where it stands.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the engine has already run. On the M1, under a mile from Elstree Park, that means the next junction. A short hop across Elstree Park is a smaller job than a run towards St Albans, under 10 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
Our arrival in Elstree Park, and what happens next
Our engineers come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Saffron Green Primary School, near St Paul's Lutheran Church or on your own drive. We ask what got in, about how much, and whether it has run, since those replies determine this work and our price. No one sets off until you have had our price over the phone.
Next: draining, then a full flush of the entire 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. Once the fuel filter is cleaned — or renewed, where required — clean diesel goes in, and finally the car is tested. The motor is fired up next and tested to confirm it runs properly, all before our technicians head off.
Unstarted cars usually mean a half-hour visit from the moment we arrive. The kit is safe on a live filling station, and hushed enough for a driveway late at night. The insurer usually wants the engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and you get both once this job is done. Payment is on the day, with no deposit. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Elstree Park, briefly
Elstree Park is a suburban area in Greater London, situated approximately 10.9 miles from central London and 8.4 miles from St Albans. Elstree Park sits at an elevation of around 113 metres, near the communities of Barnet Gate, Deacons Hill, and Rowley Green. Elstree Park is characterized by its predominantly terraced housing stock, which reflects the typical residential architecture of the region. Elstree Park has a population of around 2066 residents, according to approximate estimates.
AdBlue drains round Elstree Park, and Greater London beyond
Elstree Park is a residential suburb, and our teams that cover it also work the towns near it, Deacons Hill and Rowley Green among them, across the WD postcode area. Quote a postcode beginning WD6 2, and our van arrives fastest.
There's no need to move the car. We drain it where it is — a side street near Kingdom Hall of Jehovah Witness, a lay-by on the way to Froghall Wood, a driveway. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Three Ways Community Centre.
For Elstree Park drivers, the short version
Read the cap before you tip. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same, leave the car off then call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, anywhere in Greater London.