AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Gipsy Hill: How It Occurs and How to Prevent It
Keep the motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before your engine runs, it is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is in Gipsy Hill. The rest of this page covers why it occurs and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you're reading before it has happened.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel vehicle need its own filler?
Many modern diesels on the roads about Gipsy Hill and Upper Norwood carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Separate tanks, different fillers. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. Seldom topped up, AdBlue usually goes in from a bottle, poured by someone who must stop and think what cap to use. It is in the gap that the slip lives.
Gipsy Hill: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
Haste follows from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a drive off Sainsbury Road, or on the way home in the car park outside The Colby Arms.
The old car's cap is where your hand goes — yet a rental car, a new vehicle or a company car keeps the fillers somewhere else. That's the second thing: a strange vehicle.
A spout-topped bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, after started, keeps on. Norwood New Town or the heart of Gipsy Hill: it takes the same few seconds in both.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Check these before pouring, at a forecourt in Gipsy Hill or a drive out in Dulwich. Seconds, that's all.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap normally is not. Read it rather than going by position.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- Look inside the fuel flap: plenty of cars carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook says which it lives if the filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at the nearest station.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
Wherever across Greater London the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Turn off after you park — level ground, engine off, and not in a rush beside Gipsy Hill at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew it. It seems silly. It works.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where both sit under a flap, make sure it is closed before lifting the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Shut the cap, then look again — confirm the diesel cap stayed closed throughout. Only then, start the car.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Never go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Gipsy Hill already?
Don't start the engine: that is how the short order of things starts. Do not switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Diluting it with extra diesel fails, because AdBlue settles to the base rather than mixing — and that is where your fuel is pulled from.
At a forecourt — Shell, Texaco or another — the attendants will usually help push your car away, if you ask. At home around Gipsy Hill? Then the car remains put.
Where your engine has run already, stop somewhere safe and switch the vehicle off. On the M4, under 10 miles from Gipsy Hill, that means the next exit. Roughly how far did it go? Crossing Gipsy Hill is smaller work than a trip of under 10 miles towards Westminster, so tell us.
Gipsy Hill: what happens when our technicians arrive
Wherever the vehicle came to rest, be it outside Paxton Primary School, near Annie Besant or on your own drive, the van comes to it. Those answers decide this work and our price, so our technicians ask what went in, about how much, and if it's run. On the call itself, you hear our price — ahead of dispatch.
After that: draining, then a thorough flush of the entire system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own — which is why that counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. Filter cleaned or, where needed, replaced; fresh diesel in; then a check of the vehicle. Next we fire it up and check it runs correctly before we go.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once our technicians get there, provided your motor has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet at night beside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in many insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Gipsy Hill itself
Gipsy Hill is a suburban area in south London, situated approximately 6 miles from the city centre and 5.6 miles from Westminster. Gipsy Hill sits at an elevation of around 96 metres, overlooking the surrounding urban landscape. Gipsy Hill is characterised by its predominantly flat-based housing stock, with nearby areas including Norwood New Town, Crystal Palace, and West Norwood.
AdBlue drains across Greater London, Gipsy Hill included
Over SE postcodes, our teams covering Gipsy Hill — a residential suburb — work the nearby locations too, West Norwood and Crystal Palace included. Give a postcode beginning SE19 1, and our van arrives quickest.
Your car doesn't need to move. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Becondale Road Open Space, a side street close to Christ Church: our engineers drain the vehicle where it is. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Berridge Road Community Church.
For Gipsy Hill drivers, the short version
Always, the cap; then, the tip. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it wherever it is, anywhere across Greater London: keep it off then phone 0333 366 0103.