Flansham: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Leave the motor and ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. A drain plus a full flush, done right where the car stands around Flansham, is usually all it needs if caught before the engine runs. 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: two tanks, two fillers
Not one liquid but two: that is how many modern diesels around Flansham and Ancton carry, with diesel for the motor. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust gas and cleans it.
Each tank has its own filler. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the layout on many vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits under the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less frequently. The mistake lives in that gap.
Flansham: how AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs
It's rarely carelessness. Three things tend to 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 Hoe Lane before work, or in the car park outside The Southdowns on the way home.
Then, the hand reaches for the cap it knew on the old car — since a hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
A spouted bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, after begun, carries on. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Flansham or out in Felpham.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A couple of seconds is all these take — so run through them before you pour anything, on a driveway in South Bersted or a forecourt around Flansham.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally isn't. Read it rather than going by where it sits.
- The size. On many motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- A label inside your fuel flap often shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of motors. Check for it.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by your diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Barnham.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
On the day the warning comes on — wherever it is around West Sussex — a routine to follow.
- Pull in somewhere level, engine off, with time in hand — never rushing on the side of Charles Purley Way.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" out loud as unscrewing it. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Before starting the vehicle, close the cap and look a second time that the diesel cap never opened off.
Discover at the second or third step that AdBlue went into the wrong filler? That's where you stop. Don't carry on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Flansham already?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. The fuel pump runs on many diesels as soon as your ignition goes on — so keep it off. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue sinks to the bottom rather than mixing — and that's where the fuel is drawn from.
The attendants at Esso, Sainsbury's or another forecourt will usually help pushing your car away if you ask. If you're on your own drive around Flansham, leave the vehicle where it is.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Leave the Waterlooville Bypass — under 25 miles out of Flansham — at the next junction. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Chichester, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Flansham.
What happens when our technicians arrive around Flansham
Wherever your car came to rest, be it by Bishop Tufnell CofE Primary School, Felpham, beside Jehovah’s Witnesses or on your own drive, our van travels to it. Our engineers ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has run, because the answers decide the work and the price. That quote comes over the phone, before any van leaves.
Then your tank is cleared and your system rinsed thoroughly. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. A test comes last: before that, fresh diesel goes in, and the filter is cleaned or changed as needed. We don't leave until it has been started and is running properly.
With pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where the engine has not run take roughly half an hour after our technicians arrive. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Wrong-fuel cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Flansham itself
Flansham is a small coastal village in West Sussex, situated near the cities of Chichester and Bognor Regis. Flansham lies on the coast, with its elevation barely above sea level at around 2 metres, and is close to neighbouring villages such as Felpham and Middleton-on-Sea. Flansham has a population of approximately 534 people, with a predominance of detached housing stock. Flansham is within commuting distance of London, being around 53.5 miles away.
AdBlue drains round Flansham, and West Sussex beyond
Being a coastal village, Flansham shares its vans surrounding areas — Bilsham, Middleton-on-Sea — all the way across PO postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. Give a postcode that starts PO22 8, and the van gets there quickest.
No need to shift the vehicle. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Worms Wood, a side street close to Bognor Regis Golf Club: our technicians drain the vehicle where it is. If you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Brethren's meeting room, ring and ask rather than guessing.
For Flansham motorists, the short version
Always, the cap; after that, the tip. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Leave it off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, throughout West Sussex.