Farnham Park: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Leave your engine and ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Around Farnham Park, catching it before your motor runs normally leaves 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 occurs and how to make sure it doesn't.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Plenty of newer diesels in Stoke Poges, as well as Farnham Park, run on two liquids; your motor takes only the diesel. AdBlue's own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to your exhaust, and there spraying treats the fumes.
Different tanks, different fillers. Other cars keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty more have the two side by side under one flap. Filling your diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less commonly. That gap is where the slip lives.
Farnham Park: how AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, your vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Park Road before work, or in the car park at The Duke's Head on the way home.
Unfamiliar motors come next, as well. Hire cars, new vehicles and company motors put their fillers in new places, and the hand goes for the cap it used on the old one.
Nothing stops the pour after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it happens in Farnham Royal or the middle of Farnham Park, it's the same few seconds.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Egypt or a forecourt in Farnham Park, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Go by the cap, not its position.
- On plenty of cars, size gives it away: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- Look inside the fuel flap: many cars have a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- Cannot see it beside your diesel inlet? In that case check below the bonnet or in your boot — the handbook says which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park at Burnham? Ask the person who drove it last before leaving, not when the light goes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
For the day the warning appears — anywhere you are in Buckinghamshire — a routine to use.
- Turn off once parked — level ground, motor off, and not rushed by Kemsley Chase at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew it. It sounds silly. It works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the vehicle on.
- Finish when that tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; until then, tip gently using the built-in spout.
- Only after that, start your car: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
If at step two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Never go on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Farnham Park?
Don't start the engine: that is where the short order of things begins. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch the vehicle on. Diluting it with extra diesel fails, because AdBlue sinks to the bottom rather than blending — and that's where your fuel is pulled from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it's the Texaco or the BP, ask the staff to help roll the vehicle away from the pump. Your own driveway in Farnham Park is where it should stay.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. The next exit means where to come off if you're on the Huntercombe Spur, under 3 miles from Farnham Park. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards St Albans, under 25 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Farnham Park.
Our arrival around Farnham Park, and what occurs next
Our engineers come to the car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside St Mary's Farnham Royal CofE Primary School, close to Farnham Park Playing Fields or on your own driveway. Both the work and our quote depend on three replies — what fluid, which amount, and whether it has run — so we ask. Nobody sets off before you have had our quote by phone.
After that: a drain, then a full flush of the entire system. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. We don't go until it has been started and is running correctly.
Using pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which your motor has not run need roughly half an hour once we are there. No money upfront; you settle up that day. Afterwards, a VAT invoice and the report from the engineer go to you for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is included in many insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Farnham Park and where it is
Farnham Park is a small locality in Buckinghamshire, situated inland at an elevation of 53 metres, and is located near the villages of Farnham Royal and Farnham Common. Farnham Park has a population of around 549 residents and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Farnham Park is positioned approximately 20.9 miles from London and 18.6 miles from the city of St Albans, placing it within the wider South East region.
Farnham Park and Buckinghamshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Farnham Park is a small village, and the teams that cover it also work the places around it, East Burnham and Farnham Common among them, across the SL postcode area. Give a postcode that starts SL2 3, and our van arrives quickest.
Shifting the vehicle is not necessary. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Farnham Royal Cricket Club, a lay-by on the way to The South Buckinghamshire Golf Course, a driveway. Awkward to explain, like the back of The Old Pump? By a county line? Checking beats assuming, and so phone.
Farnham Park motorists: the short version
Always, the cap; then, the pour. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Leave the vehicle switched off and phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, across Buckinghamshire.