High Roding: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep the engine and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Normally, when your motor hasn't turned, it's drained and fully purged where the car sits around High Roding. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
Plenty of current diesels on the roads around High Roding and Baconend Green carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to the exhaust, and there a spray cleans the gas.
Each tank has its own filler. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on many vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler is under the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. Rarely topped up, AdBlue normally comes from a bottle, tipped by a driver who must stop and think which filler to use. The mistake grows in that gap between the two.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank happen around High Roding?
It is seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
On a driveway off Rands Road before work, or in the car park at The Black Lion heading home: that's where the rushed top-up happens. Why the rush? As AdBlue runs low the car warns you, and if it is empty, limp mode follows.
The old car's filler is where your hand goes — yet a hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers elsewhere. That is the second factor: a strange car.
Lastly, the bottle fits: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it slides in as easily, and after the tip starts, nothing halts it. Whether it occurs in Bacon End or the middle of High Roding, it is the same few seconds.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
A couple of seconds is all these take — so check them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Bishops Green or a forecourt in High Roding.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually are not.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Check inside the fuel flap: plenty of motors carry a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows where it is when your filler is not next to your diesel cap: your 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 Stansted Airport.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever in Essex, follow this routine.
- Turn off after you park — flat ground, engine stopped, and not in a rush by Dunmow Road at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish once your tank fills or the bottle is empty; before that, tip gently through its built-in spout.
- Only then, start the vehicle: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Do not go on to step five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in High Roding?
Don't start the engine: that's where the short order of things begins. The fuel pump starts on plenty of diesels the moment the ignition goes on — and so leave it off. Thinning it with more diesel fails, because AdBlue sinks to the bottom instead of blending — and that is where your fuel is drawn from.
On a forecourt — Gulf, Tesco or any other — the attendants will usually help push the car away, when you ask. On your own drive around High Roding? Then your car stays where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your engine has already run. Leave the M11 — under 10 miles out of High Roding — at the first junction. Mileage matters — a quick hop across High Roding is a smaller job than driving under 10 miles towards Chelmsford — so say about how far it went.
High Roding: what occurs when our technicians turn up
Anywhere the vehicle has stopped, whether outside Rodings Primary School, beside St Mary, Great Canfield or on your own drive, the van travels to it. Our engineers ask what went in, about how much, and if it's run, since the answers settle this work and our price. The price is given on the call, before any van leaves.
Then your tank is emptied and your system flushed thoroughly. Unlike petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and neither washes away by itself. That is why it matters more. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. Next we fire it up and check it runs correctly before we go.
Unstarted vehicles usually need a half-hour job from the moment we arrive. The kit is safe on a busy forecourt, and quiet enough for a residential street after dark. No money upfront; you settle up that day. At the end, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer go to you for the insurer. It's worth looking at your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with many policies.
About High Roding itself
High Roding is a small village in Essex, situated inland at an elevation of around 89 metres, approximately 9 miles from Chelmsford and 30 miles from London. High Roding has a population of around 581 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. High Roding is surrounded by other small villages and hamlets, including Bacon End, Great Canfield, and Philpot End, in the rolling countryside of eastern Essex.
High Roding and Essex: AdBlue drains across the area
High Roding is a rural village, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Great Canfield and Philpot End among them, across the CM postcode area. Fastest of all: quote a CM6 1 postcode to the van.
There's no need to move the vehicle. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street near All Saints, High Roding, a lay-by on the way to High Roding Cricket Club, a driveway. Tricky to explain, like the back of The Peace Oak? Close to a border? Checking beats guessing, and so ring.
High Roding people: the short version
Read the cap before you tip. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere around Essex, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless — and so leave it off and ring 0333 366 0103.