Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Ifold: Why It Occurs
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. Usually, if your motor hasn't turned, it is drained and fully rinsed where your car is in Ifold. The rest of this page covers why it happens and how to ensure it does not — useful if you are reading before it has happened.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads round Ifold and Upper Ifold carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas to clean it.
Each tank has its own filler. Many of motors share a single flap for the two, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. Rarely filled, AdBlue normally goes in out of a bottle, poured by someone who must stop and think which filler to use. It's in that gap that the slip happens.
Ifold: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Carelessness seldom explains it. Instead is three things lining up together.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from your car, and letting it run out leads to limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off The Ride, perhaps at the pub in the village on the way home after work.
Then the vehicle is strange. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the 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. Loxwood or the middle of Ifold: it is the same few seconds in both.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Be it a Ifold forecourt or a driveway out in Mackerels Common, spend a couple of seconds on these before anything goes in.
- Position can mislead; the cap does not. AdBlue ones tend to be blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps usually do not.
- On plenty of vehicles, size tells: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Check inside your fuel flap: plenty of vehicles have a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by the diesel cap, it's in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park outside Billingshurst, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever across West Sussex, follow this routine.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Chalk Road.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Daft, yes, yet it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the car on.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the car, shut the cap and check again that the diesel cap never opened off.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Never carry on to stage five.
Ifold: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
What follows is a short order of things, starting with not starting your engine. Leave the ignition off as well, since on many diesels it alone starts the fuel pump. Do not top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where your fuel is sucked from.
The attendants at BP, Scammell's Garage or any forecourt will usually help to push your car away if you ask. If you're on your own drive around Ifold, leave the vehicle where it sits.
Already run? Pull over when it is safe, then turn off. On the M23, under 15 miles from Ifold, that means the next junction. A short hop across Ifold is a smaller job than a run towards Chichester, under 25 miles away, so tell us about how far it went.
When our technicians turn up around Ifold, what happens?
Outside Plaistow and Kirdford Primary School, near Kelsey Hall or on your own drive: wherever the car has stopped, our technicians come to it. Those answers determine the work and our price, so we ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. No one heads out before you have had our quote over the phone.
After that: draining, then a full flush of the entire system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears away unaided. Hence it matters more. Filter cleaned or, where it must be, replaced; fresh diesel in; and then a test of your car. Next we fire it up and confirm it runs properly before leaving.
Using pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor hasn't run need roughly half an hour after we arrive. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. While we travel, have a look at your policy; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Ifold and where it is
Ifold is a small village in West Sussex, situated inland at an elevation of around 35 metres. Ifold lies near the Surrey border, close to the villages of Loxwood and Plaistow, and is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock. Ifold is also within commuting distance of London, being approximately 35 miles from the capital. Ifold remains a quiet, rural community with a population of around 824 residents.
AdBlue drains across West Sussex, Ifold included
Being a rural village, Ifold shares its vans surrounding places — Plaistow, Alfold Bars — all the way across RH postcodes and the surrounding area around them. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting RH14 0.
The vehicle doesn't need to shift. Anywhere it stands — near Winterton Hall, in a layby heading to Corner Copse, on a drive — that is where it gets cleared. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Holy Trinity Church, ring and ask instead of assuming.
The short version for Ifold people
Read the cap before you tip. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Keep the vehicle off and phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, throughout West Sussex.