Hunstanton: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep the motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Usually, when the engine hasn't run, it is emptied and thoroughly cleaned where the vehicle sits around Hunstanton. Here before the event? Then what follows explains how it comes about and what to stop it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Plenty of newer diesels around Holme next the Sea, as well as Hunstanton, carry on two fluids; the motor gets just the diesel. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust gas to clean it.
There's a filler for each tank. Plenty of cars have a single flap for the two, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Topping up the diesel side at the pump happens all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less often, normally from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. That gap is where the slip lives.
Hunstanton: how AdBlue in your diesel tank happens
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from your car, and running dry leads to limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Saint Edmund's Terrace, perhaps outside The Wash & Tope on the way home that evening.
Then the vehicle is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Nothing halts the tip after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Old Hunstanton or the heart of Hunstanton: it is the same few seconds in both.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Sedgeford or a forecourt in Hunstanton, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- The size. On plenty of motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many cars say there which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler sits if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- The previous driver knows. Ask as you pick up a hire car or company car — from the nearest station's car park, perhaps — not when the light appears.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around Norfolk that is.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with your engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Sandringham Road.
- Daft as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you have located your filler and read it.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, and look once more — confirm the diesel cap stayed closed the whole time. Only then, start your car.
Find at step two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? So stop just there. Never go on to stage five.
Hunstanton: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the engine. Do not switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Topping up with diesel won't thin it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the base of that tank, right where the fuel is drawn from.
If you're at a forecourt, whether it's the Tesco Fuel or the Lavender Hill Service Station, ask the staff to help roll your car clear of the pump. Your own drive in Hunstanton is the place it stays.
Already run? Pull over once it is safe, then switch off. The next junction is the place to come off if you're on the A1(M), under 50 miles from Hunstanton. A short hop across Hunstanton is a smaller job than a run towards Ely, under 50 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
Hunstanton: what takes place when we get there
By Hunstanton Primary School, near The Princess Theatre or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, we come to it. Those replies decide the work and the price, so our technicians ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether it's run. You hear that quote on the phone, before anybody sets off.
Draining your tank comes next, then a thorough flush of your system. Unlike petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and neither washes away by itself. That is why it counts more. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and your car is tested. The motor is started next and tested to confirm it runs smoothly, all before our technicians go.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour after we get there, as long as your engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a live forecourt and quiet at night outside a house. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Before we get there, have a look at your insurance documents; many include cover for misfuelling.
About Hunstanton
Hunstanton is a coastal town in north-west Norfolk, situated on the eastern coast of England, with a population of around 4565 people. Hunstanton has a mix of housing types, but is predominantly characterised by detached homes. Hunstanton sits at a relatively low elevation of 24 metres, looking out over the Wash, a large estuary that separates Norfolk from Lincolnshire. Hunstanton is located near several smaller settlements, including Old Hunstanton, Ringstead, and Heacham.
Hunstanton and Norfolk: AdBlue drains across the area
Hunstanton is a coastal town, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Ringstead and Heacham among them, across the PE postcode area. A postcode starting PE36 5 gets our van to you fastest.
No need to shift your car. Draining happens right there, whether a drive, a street by Union Church, or a layby on the way to The Spinney. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Hunstanton Town Sign.
In short, for Hunstanton people
Pour nothing until you have read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank anyway, leave the car off and ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere in Norfolk.