Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Griggs Green
Keep the engine and ignition off then call 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before the motor runs, it is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is around Griggs Green. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Many newer diesels on the roads around Griggs Green and Conford carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas to clean it.
Each tank has its own filler. Plenty of cars share a single flap for the two, whereas some move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the pump happens all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less frequently, normally from a bottle, and usually by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. That gap is where the error lives.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs in Griggs Green
It is rarely carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Haste comes from the warning. The car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends it into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a drive off Longmoor Road, or on the way home in the car park at The Deers Hut.
Then the vehicle is new. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and your 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, so nothing stops the tip once it has started. It's seconds, whether out in Weavers Down or right in the centre of Griggs Green.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
A couple of seconds is all these take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Cold Ash Hill or a forecourt around Griggs Green.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap usually is not. Read it instead of going by where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many cars, the AdBlue one.
- Open the flap and check for a label — many motors mark which goes in each filler right there.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by the diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver knows. Ask as you pick up a hire car or fleet car — at Liphook's car park, say — rather than when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Hampshire that is.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with your motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Lowsley Farm Drive.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" out loud as 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.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, then look once more — confirm the diesel filler remained closed throughout. Only then, start the vehicle.
Spot at stage two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? So stop right there. Leave out step five altogether.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Griggs Green?
Brief list, then. First: the motor remains off. Keep the ignition off as well, since on many diesels it by itself runs the pump. Diluting it with more diesel won't work, since AdBlue sinks to the base rather than mixing — and that's where the fuel is pulled from.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it's the Shell or the Sainsbury's, ask the attendants to help push the vehicle away from the petrol pump. Leave it where it is if you are on your own driveway around Griggs Green.
Already run? Stop when it is safe, then turn off. Griggs Green lies under 15 miles from the Waterlooville Bypass; there, take the first junction. A short hop across Griggs Green is a smaller job than a run towards Chichester, under 25 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
Our arrival around Griggs Green, and what occurs next
Anywhere the car came to rest, be it outside Liphook Infant School, beside St Mary's Church Centre or on your own drive, our van travels to it. What fluid got in, the quantity, and whether it ran: our technicians ask since the answers set the work and quote. Nobody heads out until you've heard our quote by phone.
Draining your tank comes next, followed by a thorough flush of your system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. Once your filter is cleaned — or renewed, if required — fresh diesel is added, and then your car gets tested. Then we fire it up and confirm it runs correctly before we leave.
If the motor has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. 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 — so use the wait to look at yours.
About Griggs Green and where it is
Griggs Green is a locality in Hampshire, situated near the riverside and surrounded by rolling countryside. Griggs Green has a population of around 763 people and is characterised by detached housing. Griggs Green is located near Weavers Down, Liphook, and Newtown, and is approximately 16.7 miles from Chichester. Griggs Green sits at an elevation of 91 metres, within the South East region of England.
AdBlue drains round Griggs Green, and Hampshire beyond
Griggs Green is a small village, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Liphook and Newtown among them, across the GU postcode area. A postcode starting GU30 7 gets our van to you fastest.
Moving your car isn't needed. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Stag Wood, a side street near The Living Room Cinema: our engineers drain it where it is. Awkward to pin down, like the back of Immaculate Conception? By a border? Asking beats guessing, so phone.
Griggs Green drivers: the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless, leave the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it stands, anywhere in Hampshire.