AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Little Clacton: How It Happens and How to Stop It
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and the ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103. Caught before the engine runs, it is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in Little Clacton. Reading in advance? Then what follows covers why it comes about and how to prevent it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Not one fluid but two: that is what plenty of newer diesels near Little Clacton and Great Clacton run, with diesel feeding your engine. Your exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the gas to clean it, from its own tank.
Each tank has its own filler. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on a lot of cars. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in the boot instead. The diesel side is filled at the petrol pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. The mistake lives in that gap.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Little Clacton: how it occurs
Carelessness rarely causes it. Instead is three things coming up together.
On a driveway off Holland Road before work, or in the car park outside The Blacksmith's Arms on the way home: that's where the hurried top-up takes place. Why the rush? As AdBlue gets low the car warns you, and once it is gone, limp mode follows.
New-to-you cars come next, as well. Rentals, new cars and company vehicles place their fillers in new places, and habit reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
Nothing halts the tip 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 takes place in Row Heath or the middle of Little Clacton, it's the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Burrsville Park or a forecourt around Little Clacton.
- Position can mislead; the cap does not. AdBlue caps are often blue or carry the word "AdBlue" — diesel caps usually do not.
- On many vehicles, size tells: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- Open the filler flap and look for a label — plenty of motors show which belongs in which inlet just there.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler sits if it's not by your diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park at Thorpe-Le-Soken, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Essex that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of St Osyth Road East, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park and switch off properly.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- The diesel cap remains on. When the two share a flap, confirm it is closed before lifting the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the car, close the cap and look a second time that your diesel cap was never opened off.
Discover during the second or third step that AdBlue went in the diesel tank? That is where you stop. Do not go on to step five.
Little Clacton: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start your motor. The fuel pump starts on many diesels the moment your ignition is switched on — and so keep it off. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is drawn from — so don't top up with diesel to thin it.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it's the Morrisons or the Tesco Filling Station, ask the attendants to help roll the vehicle away from the petrol pump. Your own driveway in Little Clacton is where it should stay.
If your motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Leave the M2 — under 50 miles out of Little Clacton — at the first exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Little Clacton is less work than a trip of under 15 miles towards Colchester, so say.
What happens when our engineers get there in Little Clacton
The van comes to the car wherever it has come to rest — your own driveway, beside St James, or outside Engaines Primary School and Nursery. What liquid went in, the quantity, and if it ran: we ask because the answers decide both work and quote. You get that quote by phone, before anyone sets off.
The system is then purged thoroughly, after that tank is drained. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own. The filter cleaned or, if needed, swapped; clean diesel in; then a test of your vehicle. We do not go until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
If the engine has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. The insurer will ask for an engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and both are yours once the job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
About Little Clacton and where it is
Little Clacton is a small village on the Essex coast, situated near the towns of Clacton-on-Sea and Weeley, and approximately 11 miles from Colchester. Little Clacton has a population of around 1264 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Little Clacton sits at a low elevation of 22 metres above sea level, close to the nearby settlements of Row Heath and Weeley Heath. Little Clacton is also within commuting distance of London, being around 59 miles from the capital.
AdBlue drains around Little Clacton and across Essex
Pig Street and Weeley Heath are among the towns near Little Clacton, a coastal village, that the same teams cover, over CO postcodes. Quote a postcode that starts CO16 9, and the van gets there quickest.
The car doesn't need to move. Anywhere it sits — beside Little Clacton Village Hall, on a lay-by en route to Harold Lilley Playing Field, at home — that is where it is emptied. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Little Clacton Village Sign.
In short, for Little Clacton motorists
Read the cap before you pour. AdBlue in the diesel tank regardless? Leave the vehicle off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, across Essex.