How It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Green End
Stop reading a minute if the diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, and call 0333 366 0103. Around Green End, catching it before your motor turns usually means draining and a thorough flush on the spot. 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 car, and its separate tank
Not one fluid but two: that is how plenty of newer diesels near Green End and Dassels run, with diesel feeding your engine. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust stream to clean it.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Under one flap, next to each other: that's the layout on a lot of motors. On others, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Diesel gets filled at every forecourt call-out, again and again. The AdBlue side is fuelled far less often, usually from a bottle, and usually by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. The mistake lives in that gap.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Green End: how it occurs
Carelessness rarely explains it. What does is three things coming up at once.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a warning from the car, and running dry means limp mode — so a hurried top-up, perhaps before work off Green End, perhaps outside Golden Fleece on the way home that evening.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor 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.
No part halts the pour after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Green End or out in Hay Street.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Bozen Green or a forecourt in Green End.
- Check the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue ones are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally are not.
- The size. On many cars the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler is if it's not by your diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Bishops Stortford? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before leaving, rather than once the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
On the day the light comes on — anywhere it is across Hertfordshire — a routine to follow.
- Switch off after you park — flat ground, motor stopped, and never in a rush by Gravelly Dell on the verge.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew it. It sounds silly. It does the trick.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when 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 the vehicle.
Find at the second or third stage that AdBlue went into the diesel filler? That is where you stop. Don't go on to stage five.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, in Green End?
Short order, then. Top of it: your motor stays unstarted. On plenty of diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch the vehicle on. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is pulled from — so do not top up with diesel to thin it.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it is the Amco or the BP, ask the staff to help roll the car clear of the pump. Your own drive around Green End is the place it stays.
Already run? Pull over when it is safe, then switch off. Green End sits under 10 miles from the M11; on it, use the next exit. A short hop across Green End is a smaller job than a run towards St Albans, under 25 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
When our engineers get there around Green End, what takes place?
Anywhere the car has stopped, be it outside Jenyns First School and Nursery, beside St. Mary the Virgin or at home, the van comes to it. The replies determine the work and our price, and so our engineers ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. You get that quote on the phone, before anyone heads out.
Emptying that tank comes next, then a full flush of your system. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own. The filter flushed or, where it must be, swapped; fresh diesel in; and then a test of the car. We do not go until it has been started and is running properly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour once our technicians get there, provided your engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a live forecourt and quiet after dark outside a house. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the documents an insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Wrong-fuel cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Green End and where it is
Green End is a suburban area situated on the riverside in Hertfordshire, with an elevation of around 89 metres. Green End lies approximately 28.7 miles from London and 19.1 miles from the nearest city, St Albans. Green End is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock and is located near other local places such as Hay Street, Church End, and Braughing.
AdBlue drains across Hertfordshire, Green End included
Over SG postcodes, the vans that cover Green End — a residential suburb — work the nearby places too, Braughing and Church End included. Quickest of all: quote a SG11 2 postcode for the van.
There's no need to shift the vehicle. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Green Hill, a side street near Braughing Community Centre: our technicians drain the vehicle where it is. If you are near a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, ring and ask instead of assuming.
For Green End people, the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere around Hertfordshire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same — so leave the vehicle off and phone 0333 366 0103.