Kirby Cane: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Leave the motor and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Usually, when the motor hasn't turned, it's emptied and thoroughly rinsed where your vehicle sits around Kirby Cane. The remainder of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it does not — handy if you are reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Diesel feeds your motor — but plenty of current diesels seen about Kirby Cane and Kirby Green carry another liquid too. Your exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the gas to clean it, from its own tank.
There is a filler on each tank. Many of cars share a single flap for the two, while some move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the petrol pump goes on constantly. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less commonly. It's in that gap that the slip happens.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs around Kirby Cane
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, the vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Mill Road before work, or in the car park at the pub in the village on the way home.
Next, the hand goes for the cap it knew on the old car — since a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not.
No part halts the pour once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it occurs in Ellingham or the middle of Kirby Cane, it's the same few seconds.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A couple of seconds is all these take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Dockeney or a forecourt around Kirby Cane.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- Check inside the fuel flap: plenty of vehicles carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by the diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver will know. Check as you collect a hire car or company car — at Beccles's car park, say — rather than when the light appears.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Norfolk that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Crisp Road, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park then switch off first.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after finding the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, perhaps, but it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the car on.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Only after that, start the car: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Leave out stage five entirely.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Kirby Cane already?
The short order of things, beginning with no starting the motor. Leave the ignition off too, because on many diesels switching it on alone starts your fuel pump. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is pulled from.
The staff at Shell, The Co-operative or another forecourt will usually help to push the car away when asked. On your own drive in Kirby Cane? Then the car stays where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your motor has already run. Kirby Cane lies over 50 miles from the M11; there, use the next junction. A short hop across Kirby Cane is a smaller job than a run towards Norwich, under 15 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
Kirby Cane: what takes place when we turn up
Anywhere the car came to rest, whether outside Ellingham VC Primary School, near Kirby Cane Village Sign or on your own drive, the van comes to it. Those answers determine the work and the quote, so we ask what went in, about how much, and if it's run. The price is given over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
Next: draining, then a thorough flush of the whole system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own — which is why the flush counts more here than with petrol. The fuel filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. Your engine is fired up next and tested to be sure it runs correctly, all before our technicians leave.
With pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor has not run take about half an hour once our technicians arrive. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer wants: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Wrong-fuel cover is part of many insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Kirby Cane itself
Kirby Cane is a small village in south Norfolk, situated near the River Waveney and close to the villages of Ellingham and Kirby Row. Kirby Cane has a low elevation of around 7 metres above sea level, and its landscape is characteristic of the Norfolk countryside. Kirby Cane remains a quiet, rural community with a mix of old and new housing, predominantly detached homes.
Kirby Cane and Norfolk: AdBlue drains across the area
Kirby Cane is a rural village, and our vans that cover it also work the towns near it, Kirby Row and West End among them, across the NR postcode area. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting NR35 2.
There's no need to shift the vehicle. We drain it where it is — a side street near Ellingham Village Sign, a lay-by on the way to Henry's Plantation, a drive. Awkward to explain, like the back of Saint Mary's Church? Close to a border? Asking beats guessing, so ring.
In short, for Kirby Cane people
Before you pour, read the cap. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will drain it wherever it is, wherever around Norfolk: switch the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103.