How It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Fiddlers Hill
Pause reading a minute when the diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, then ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before the motor runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is around Fiddlers Hill. Reading before the event? Then what follows explains how it comes about and how to prevent it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Many current diesels on the roads around Fiddlers Hill and East Hyde carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank has its own filler. Other motors keep the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; a lot more place both together under one flap. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less commonly, normally from a bottle, and usually by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. That gap is where the slip lives.
Fiddlers Hill: how AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place
Carelessness rarely causes it. Instead is three things lining up at once.
On a drive off The Common before work, or in the car park outside The Fox heading home: that is where the hurried top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it's empty, limp mode kicks in.
Unfamiliar cars come second, as well. Rentals, new vehicles and company motors put their fillers in new places, and habit reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
A spouted bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, after started, carries on. Whether it occurs in Thrales End or the middle of Fiddlers Hill, it is the same few seconds.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so check them before you pour anything, on a driveway in New Mill End or a forecourt in Fiddlers Hill.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap usually is not. Read it rather than going by position.
- The size. On many vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Check inside your fuel flap: many vehicles have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler is if it's not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside Harpenden? Ask whoever drove the car last before leaving, rather than once the light goes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Hertfordshire that is.
- Switch off once parked — level ground, engine stopped, and never rushed by Kinsbourne Close on the verge.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap works — after you've located your filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave it on.
- Stop when that tank fills or the bottle is empty; until then, tip slowly using the own spout.
- Before you start the car, close the cap and check a second time that your diesel cap 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 Fiddlers Hill?
Don't start the motor: that is how the short order of things begins. Don't switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Diluting it with more diesel won't work, since AdBlue sinks to the base instead of mixing — and that's where your fuel is drawn from.
The attendants at BP, another forecourt nearby or any forecourt will normally help to push the vehicle away if asked. Your own driveway in Fiddlers Hill is where it stays.
If the motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Leave the M1 — under 3 miles out of Fiddlers Hill — at the first junction. About how far did it go? Crossing Fiddlers Hill is less work than a trip of under 10 miles to St Albans, and so tell us.
Fiddlers Hill: what occurs when our technicians turn up
Wherever the vehicle has stopped, be it by Wood End School, beside Saint Mary the Virgin or on your own drive, the van comes to it. We ask what went in, about how much, and whether it's run, because the replies decide this work and the quote. That quote comes over the phone, before any van leaves.
The system is then cleaned thoroughly, once that tank is emptied. With AdBlue that matters 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 fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. Before we leave, we fire it up and confirm that it's running smoothly.
If your engine hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. While we travel, have a look at your insurance documents; many include cover for misfuelling.
About Fiddlers Hill itself
Fiddlers Hill is a suburban area in Hertfordshire, situated approximately 25 miles northwest of London and 5.8 miles southeast of St Albans. Fiddlers Hill sits at an elevation of around 121 metres, amidst the rolling countryside of the Eastern region. Fiddlers Hill is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock, with nearby places including Thrales End, West Hyde, and Kinsbourne Green.
AdBlue drains around Fiddlers Hill, and Hertfordshire beyond
West Hyde and Kinsbourne Green are among the places around Fiddlers Hill, a residential suburb, that the same teams cover, over AL postcodes. A postcode starting AL5 3 gets our van to you fastest.
Moving the car is not necessary. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street near St Charalambos, a lay-by on the way to Kinsbourne Green Common, a driveway. If you are near a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of East Hyde Village Hall, ring and ask instead of assuming.
Fiddlers Hill drivers: the short version
Read the cap before you pour. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway, leave the car off and call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it waits, anywhere across Hertfordshire.