Why It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Greatpark
AdBlue already in the diesel tank? Then set this page down for now, leave the ignition and motor off, and ring 0333 366 0103. Normally, if the motor has not run, it is emptied and fully rinsed where your car is around Greatpark. If you're reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it does not.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Not one fluid but two: that is what plenty of modern diesels near Greatpark and Hamsey Green run, with diesel feeding the engine. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into your exhaust stream to clean it.
Every tank has one filler of its own. Plenty of motors have a single flap for both, whereas some move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Filling the diesel side at the petrol pump goes on all the time. Rarely filled, AdBlue normally comes out of a bottle, poured by someone who has to stop and think which filler to use. It's in that gap that the error lives.
Greatpark: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out completely, your vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Chelsham Road before work, or in the car park outside The Bull Inn on the way home.
New-to-you cars come second, too. Hire cars, new cars and company vehicles place their fillers in new places, and the hand goes for the cap used on the old one.
Nothing stops the tip once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Greatpark or out in Chelsham.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Greatpark forecourt or a driveway out in Fickleshole, spend a couple of seconds over these before anything goes in.
- Read the cap instead of going by where it sits: AdBlue ones are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally aren't.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of cars say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows which it is if the filler isn't next to the diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside Woldingham? Check with the person who drove the vehicle last before you set off, not once the light goes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
Wherever around Surrey the light comes on, here is a routine for that day.
- Switch off once parked — flat ground, engine off, and never in a rush beside East Parkside on the verge.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after finding the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, perhaps, but it works.
- Both behind a single flap? So confirm the cap on the diesel filler is still shut ahead of raising the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, then check once more — confirm your diesel filler remained closed throughout. After that, start your car.
Find during the second or third stage that the bottle went in the wrong tank? That is where you stop. Never go on to step five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Greatpark?
Brief order, then. Top of it: your engine stays off. Don't switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with more diesel won't work, since AdBlue settles to the base rather than mixing — and that is where the fuel is sucked from.
At a forecourt — Warlingham Service Station, Shell or another — the staff will normally help roll the vehicle away, when you ask. If you're on your own drive in Greatpark, leave it where it stands.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your engine has already run. Greatpark sits under 5 miles from the M25; on it, take the first exit. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Westminster, under 15 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Greatpark.
Our arrival in Greatpark, and what happens next
Outside Warlingham Village Primary School, close to St Mary the Virgin or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, our technicians come to it. Our technicians ask what went in, about how much, and if it has run, since the answers decide this work and the price. On the phone call itself, you are told our price — before anything else.
After that: a drain, then a full flush of the whole system. Much more than with petrol, it counts here: crystals form, some metals are attacked, and none of that washes out on its own, no matter how long it sits. After the filter is cleaned — or replaced, where required — fresh diesel is added, and finally the car gets tested. We do not go until it has been started and is running smoothly.
With pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the motor hasn't run need roughly half an hour after our technicians are there. No money upfront; you settle up on the day. Afterwards, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Greatpark, briefly
Greatpark is a suburban area in Surrey, situated inland at an elevation of 184 metres, and is located approximately 13.8 miles from London. Greatpark has a population of around 535 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Greatpark is near several other places, including Chelsham, Farleigh Court, and Farleigh, and is close to the city of Westminster, which is about 13.4 miles away.
AdBlue drains around Greatpark and across Surrey
Greatpark is a residential suburb, and the vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Farleigh Court and Farleigh among them, across the CR postcode area. A postcode starting CR6 9 gets our van to you fastest.
No need to move the car. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Chelsham Common, a side street near St. Christopher's Church: we drain it where it stands. Awkward to pin down, like the back of St Leonard's Church? Close to a county line? Asking beats assuming, so phone.
Greatpark people: the short version
First, the cap; then, the tip. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless, leave the vehicle off then phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it waits, anywhere in Surrey.