How It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Needham Market
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and the ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. Normally, if the motor has not run, it's drained and fully cleaned where your car sits in Needham Market. Here before the event? In that case what follows explains why it comes about and what to prevent it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of newer diesels around Darmsden, like those in Needham Market, carry on two fluids; the engine takes just your diesel. The exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the gas to clean them, from its own tank.
There is a filler for each tank. Other motors put the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; plenty more place the two together under one flap. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. The mistake grows in that gap between the two.
Needham Market: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things coincide.
On a driveway off High Street before work, or in the car park at The Three Tuns heading home: that's where the rushed top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the vehicle warns you, and once it's empty, limp mode follows.
Unfamiliar cars come second, as well. Rentals, new vehicles and company motors place their fillers in new places, and the hand goes for the cap it 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. It's seconds, whether in Grinstead Hill or bang in the centre of Needham Market.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
A couple of seconds is all these take — so run through them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Barking or a forecourt in Needham Market.
- Check the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue ones are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually are not.
- On plenty of vehicles, size tells: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- Open the filler flap and check for a label — many vehicles show which goes in which inlet right there.
- Cannot see it next to your diesel filler? Then check beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook says which.
- The previous driver knows. Check as you collect a hire car or company car — from the nearest station's car park, say — rather than when the warning comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
Wherever across Suffolk the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time in hand — never rushing on the side of Barrett's Lane.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after finding the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Stop once the tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; before that, tip slowly through the own spout.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Don't carry on to step five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Needham Market already?
Do not start your engine: that's where the short order of things starts. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch the vehicle on. Do not top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from.
At a forecourt — Shell, Tesco or any other — the staff will usually help push your car away, if you ask. On your own drive around Needham Market? So the vehicle stays where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the motor has already run. On the M11, under 50 miles from Needham Market, that means the next exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Needham Market is less work than a trip of under 25 miles to Colchester, so tell us.
What occurs when we turn up in Needham Market
Outside Bosmere Community Primary School, close to Needham Market Village Sign or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, we come to it. The replies settle this work and our price, so our engineers ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it's run. You hear that price by phone, before anybody sets off.
Then your tank is emptied and the system cleaned thoroughly. Unlike petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and none of it washes out by itself. Hence it counts more. After the filter is flushed — or replaced, where needed — clean diesel is added, and finally the car gets tested. Before we go, our engineers start the engine and make sure that it is running smoothly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour after we arrive, as long as the engine has not run — and the pumps we use are safe on a live forecourt yet quiet at night beside a house. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork your insurer asks for: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Before we get there, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Needham Market itself
Needham Market is a town situated in the valley of the River Gipping in Suffolk, with a riverside setting and an elevation of around 28 metres. Needham Market lies near several notable landmarks, including Grinstead Hill and the Creeting Hills, and is close to the village of Creeting St Mary. Needham Market has a population of approximately 5055 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing. Needham Market is located around 19.5 miles from Colchester and about 67.3 miles from London.
AdBlue drains across Suffolk, Needham Market included
Needham Market is a riverside town, and the vans that cover it also work the towns near it, Creeting Hills and Creeting St Mary among them, across the IP postcode area. Quote a postcode beginning IP6 8, and the van arrives fastest.
No need to move the car. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Needham Lake, a side street near George Ewart Evans: our engineers drain it where it stands. If you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of St John the Baptist, ring and ask instead of guessing.
The short version for Needham Market motorists
First, the cap; after that, the pour. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it is, wherever in Suffolk: switch the car off and ring 0333 366 0103.