AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Frimley Green: How It Occurs and How to Stop It
Leave the engine and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. In Frimley Green, catching it before the motor turns usually leaves a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. 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.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
Diesel goes to your engine — yet many newer diesels driven about Frimley Green and Farnborough Park carry another liquid too. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to your exhaust, where spraying cleans the fumes.
Each tank has its own filler. Some vehicles keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot more have both side by side under one flap. The diesel side is filled at the pump all the time. The AdBlue side is topped up far less commonly, normally from a bottle, and usually by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. Mistakes happen in that gap between the two.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Frimley Green: how it happens
Carelessness rarely causes it. What does is three things coming up at once.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Cross Lane before work, or in the car park outside The Wheatsheaf on the way home.
Then the vehicle is strange. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, and so nothing stops the pour once it has started. Whether it occurs in Farnborough Green or the middle of Frimley Green, it's the same few seconds.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Mytchett or a forecourt around Frimley Green, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many cars say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows which it lives if the filler isn't next to your diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Farnborough North, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Surrey that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Elmcroft Close, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park then switch off first.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you've found the filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the vehicle on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Never carry on to stage five.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Frimley Green?
Do not start the motor: that is how the short order of things begins. The fuel pump starts on many diesels the moment your ignition is switched on — and so leave it off. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where your fuel is drawn from.
Ask the staff to help roll the vehicle away from the petrol pump if you're at a forecourt — the JET, the Shell or somewhere else. On your own drive around Frimley Green? Then your car remains where it is.
Already started? Stop when it is sensible, then turn off. Leave the M3 — under 3 miles out of Frimley Green — at the first exit. A short hop across Frimley Green is a smaller job than a run towards Westminster, under 50 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
Our arrival in Frimley Green, and what happens next
Outside Cross Farm Infant Academy, close to Frimley Green Library or on your own driveway: wherever your car has stopped, we come to it. Our technicians ask what got in, about how much, and whether it has run, because those replies settle this work and our quote. You get that quote on the phone, before anybody heads out.
The system is then cleaned thoroughly, after that tank is cleared. Unlike petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and neither clears out by itself. Hence it matters more. Filter cleaned or, where needed, replaced; fresh diesel in; and then a test of the car. Before we leave, our engineers fire it up and make sure that it's running correctly.
With pumps safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor has not run take roughly half an hour once our engineers arrive. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. While we travel, have a look at your policy; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Frimley Green itself
Frimley Green is a suburban area in Surrey, situated on the banks of the River Blackwater at an elevation of around 70 metres. Frimley Green lies approximately 29 miles southwest of central London, near the towns of Farnborough and Frimley. Frimley Green is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock and a population of around 4880 residents. Frimley Green forms part of the larger Frimley urban area, which includes nearby neighbourhoods like Farnborough Green and Frimley.
Frimley Green and Surrey: AdBlue drains across the area
Frimley and Farnborough Street are among the places near Frimley Green, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, over GU postcodes. Give a postcode that starts GU16 6, and our van arrives fastest.
Shifting the vehicle isn't necessary. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Frimley Green Recreation Ground, a side street near Frimley Green Youth Centre: our engineers drain the car where it stands. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Frimley Village Hall.
The short version for Frimley Green motorists
First, the cap; after that, the tip. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Keep it switched off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, throughout Surrey.