How It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Ford
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before the motor runs, it's usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Ford. Not happened yet? Further down, the rest of the page explains the reasons it happens and the how to avoid it altogether.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
No single fluid but two: that is how many newer diesels near Ford and Camels Head run, with diesel for the engine. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to your exhaust, where a spray cleans the gas.
Each tank comes with one filler of its own. Plenty of vehicles share a single flap for the two, while some move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is filled at the pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less commonly. It is in that gap that the mistake lives.
Ford: how AdBlue in your diesel tank happens
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Cambridge Road before work, or in the car park at The Ford on the way home.
Then, your hand reaches for the cap it knew on the old motor — since a rental car, a new vehicle or a company car places the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
No part stops the tip once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. North Prospect or the middle of Ford: it is the same few seconds in both.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you pour anything, whether on a drive in Ham or a forecourt in Ford, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Read the cap instead of going by where it sits: AdBlue ones are often blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually aren't.
- On plenty of motors, the size tells: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of cars say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows where it lives when your filler is not next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Ask 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 outside Dockyard.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
The day the light goes on, anywhere around Devon, use this routine.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Melville Road.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud while unscrewing it. It sounds daft. It works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Gently is best, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Do not go on to step five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Ford already?
Do not start the engine: that is how the short order of things starts. Do not switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Don't top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where your fuel is pulled from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it is the Esso or the Gulf, ask the attendants to help push your car away from the petrol pump. Your own drive in Ford is where it stays.
Where the engine has run already, stop somewhere safe and switch the vehicle off. Ford sits under 50 miles from the M5; there, take the next exit. About how far did it go? Crossing Ford is less work than a trip of under 3 miles towards Plymouth, so say.
When our engineers arrive in Ford, what happens?
Our van reaches your car anywhere it stopped — your own drive, near Wolseley Road Gospel Hall, or outside Ford Primary School. The replies settle this work and the quote, so we ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. During the phone call itself, you are told the quote — ahead of anything else.
Draining that tank comes next, followed by a full flush of your system. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears out unaided. Hence it counts more. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. Then our technicians fire it up and make sure it runs properly before we go.
Using pumps safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where your engine hasn't run need about half an hour once our engineers are there. Nothing in advance; you settle up that day. At the end, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer go to you for the insurer. It is worth checking your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About Ford and where it is
Ford is a suburban area in Devon, situated near the coast and approximately 1.6 miles from Plymouth. Ford sits at an elevation of 31 metres, with terraced housing being the predominant type of accommodation in the area. Ford is close to other nearby places such as North Prospect, Milehouse, and Keyham, and is home to around 12,106 people.
AdBlue drains in Ford and across Devon
Ford is a residential suburb, and the teams that cover it also work the places near it, Milehouse and Keyham among them, across the PL postcode area. Fastest of all: quote a PL2 1 postcode for our van.
Moving the vehicle isn't needed. The drain happens right there, whether a drive, a road by Stoke Youth Community Centre, or a lay-by on the way to Blockhouse Park. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of St Thomas the Apostle.
In short, for Ford motorists
Before you pour, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, anywhere around Devon, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway — so leave it off then call 0333 366 0103.