Norwoodside: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and the ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a thorough flush, carried out just where the car stands around Norwoodside, is usually what it takes if found before the engine runs. Reading before the event? In that case what follows explains how it comes about and how to stop it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel vehicle need its own filler?
Diesel goes to the motor — yet many newer diesels seen around Norwoodside and Westry hold another liquid too. The exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the gas to fresh them, from a separate tank.
Each tank has its own filler. Some cars keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot more place the two side by side behind one flap. Topping up the diesel side at the petrol pump goes on constantly. Rarely topped up, AdBlue normally goes in out of a bottle, poured by someone who has to stop and think what filler it needs. Mistakes happen in the gap between the two.
Norwoodside: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
It's rarely carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Haste follows from the warning. The car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a driveway off Norwood Road, or on the way home in the car park outside The Hippodrome.
Unfamiliar cars are second, too. Rentals, new motors and company motors put their fillers differently, and the hand reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the tip after it has started. Peas Hill or the heart of Norwoodside: it is the same few seconds in both.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A few seconds is all these take — so check them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Badgeney or a forecourt in Norwoodside.
- Check the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue ones are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- Plenty of vehicles give AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Look inside your fuel flap: plenty of cars have a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook says which it is if your filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside March? Ask whoever drove the car last before you set off, rather than when the light goes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
Wherever around Cambridgeshire the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Stop on level, motor off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Gold Street.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once you find the AdBlue filler and reading it. Daft, yes, but it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave it on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Discover during the second or third step that the bottle went into the wrong filler? That is where you stop. Do not go on to stage five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Norwoodside?
The short order of things, starting with not starting the engine. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch the vehicle on. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
Ask the staff to help push your car clear of the pump if you're at a forecourt — the Station Road Garage, the Tesco or somewhere else. Your own driveway in Norwoodside is where it stays.
Where the engine has run already, stop safely and switch the vehicle off. Leave the A1(M) — under 25 miles out of Norwoodside — at the next exit. Mileage counts — a quick hop across Norwoodside makes a smaller job than heading under 15 miles towards Ely — so tell us about how far it went.
Our arrival around Norwoodside, and what occurs next
By All Saints Interchurch Academy, close to St John the Evangelist or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our technicians come to it. Our engineers ask what went in, about how much, and whether it's run, because the answers settle this work and our price. That quote is given on the call, ahead of any van leaving.
Draining the tank comes next, then a full flush of the system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that matters more here than with petrol. After the filter is flushed — or renewed, if required — fresh diesel goes in, and then your car is tested. Then our technicians fire it up and confirm it runs properly before we go.
Using pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which your motor has not run need roughly half an hour after our technicians are there. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it's worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
About Norwoodside itself
Norwoodside is a suburban area in Cambridgeshire, situated inland at a low elevation of around 5 metres. Norwoodside lies near the city of Ely, approximately 13.5 miles away, and is also close to other nearby places such as Peas Hill and Little London. Norwoodside has a population of around 3098 people and is characterised by predominantly detached housing.
AdBlue drains in Norwoodside and across Cambridgeshire
Throughout PE postcodes, our vans that cover Norwoodside — a residential suburb — work the nearby places too, March and Little London included. A postcode starting PE15 8 gets the van to you fastest.
Your car doesn't need to shift. Anywhere it stands — near Peas Hill Green Village Sign, in a lay-by en route to All Saints Park, on a drive — that is where it is cleared. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Whale Bone, ring and ask rather than assuming.
Norwoodside drivers: the short version
Read the cap before you tip. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Leave it off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, throughout Cambridgeshire.