Why It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Loose Hill
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off then ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before your engine runs, it is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Loose Hill. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Diesel goes to your engine — yet many current diesels driven about Loose Hill and Boughton Monchelsea hold a second liquid too. The exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the gas to fresh them, from its own tank.
Each tank has its own filler. On a lot of motors the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at each filling station visit, again and again. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less regularly. That gap is where the error lives.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Loose Hill: how it occurs
It is hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
On a drive off Busbridge Road before work, or in the car park at The Chequers on the way home: that's where the hurried top-up takes place. Why the rush? As AdBlue runs low the vehicle warns you, and if it's gone, limp mode kicks in.
New-to-you motors come next, too. Hire cars, new motors and company vehicles put their fillers in new places, and habit reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no resistance at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, after started, carries on. It takes a few seconds, be it out in Loose or bang in the heart of Loose Hill.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Coxheath or a forecourt around Loose Hill, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Trust the cap, not its position.
- The size. On many vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Lift the flap and check for a label — plenty of cars show what belongs in each filler just there.
- The handbook shows where it lives if your filler is not next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park outside East Farleigh? Ask whoever drove the car last before you set off, rather than once the light goes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
On the day the light comes on — wherever it is across Kent — a routine to follow.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Penfold Way.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew it. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- Both under one flap? Then confirm the lid on your diesel filler is still shut ahead of raising the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the car, close the cap and check a second time that the diesel cap never came off.
Spot at stage two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? Then stop just there. Step five is out.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Loose Hill?
What follows is a short order of things, starting with not starting the motor. Keep your ignition off as well, because on many diesels it alone starts the fuel pump. Diluting it with extra diesel won't work, since AdBlue settles to the bottom rather than blending — and that is where the fuel is pulled from.
At a forecourt — Shell, Morrisons or any other — the attendants will usually help roll your car away, when you ask. On your own drive in Loose Hill? So your car stays where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your motor has already run. Loose Hill lies under 5 miles from the M20; there, use the first junction. A short hop across Loose Hill is a smaller job than a run towards Southend-on-Sea, under 25 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
When our technicians turn up around Loose Hill, what occurs?
Our van comes to the car anywhere it stopped — your own drive, beside All Saints, or by Loose Primary School. Which liquid went in, the quantity, and whether it ran: our technicians ask since the replies decide both work and price. During the call itself, you are told our quote — before dispatch.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, once your tank is cleared. 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. Testing is at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and the filter is flushed or changed if necessary. Before leaving, our technicians start the engine and make sure that it's running correctly.
If your motor has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It is worth checking your policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Loose Hill and where it is
Loose Hill is a locality situated on the banks of a river in Kent, with an elevation of around 50 metres. Loose Hill lies near the village of Loose and other nearby places such as Dean Street and Boughton Green. Loose Hill is characterized by its semi-detached housing and is located approximately 33 miles from London. Loose Hill is a small community with a population of around 593 residents.
Loose Hill and Kent: AdBlue drains across the area
Loose Hill is a small village, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Dean Street and Boughton Green among them, across the ME postcode area. Give a postcode that starts ME15 0, and the van gets there fastest.
Your car does not need to move. Wherever it sits — near Quarry Wood Iron age Earthworks, on a layby en route to Hamlet Wood, at home — that is where it is drained. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Coxheath Village Hall.
Loose Hill people: the short version
Pour nothing until you've read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere across Kent, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway — and so leave it off then phone 0333 366 0103.