Why It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Nutley
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before the engine runs, it is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in Nutley. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel car, and its separate tank
Not one fluid but two: that's how plenty of modern diesels around Nutley and Mark Street carry, with diesel for the motor. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas and cleans it.
Each tank comes with one filler of its own. Under one flap, side by side: that's the arrangement on many vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is filled at the petrol pump all the time. Seldom filled, AdBlue normally comes out of a bottle, poured by someone who has to stop and think which filler to use. That gap is where the slip lives.
Nutley: how AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out completely, your vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Nursery Lane before work, or in the car park at Giggles on the way home.
The old car's filler is where your hand reaches — yet a hire car, a new car or a company car keeps the fillers somewhere else. That's a second factor: a new motor.
No part stops the tip once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it happens in Dodds Hill or the middle of Nutley, it's the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Cackle Street or a forecourt around Nutley.
- Read the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually aren't.
- The size. On plenty of cars the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Lift the flap and look for a label — many motors show what belongs in each filler right there.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler is if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- The previous driver knows. Check when you pick up a hire car or company car — from Buxted's car park, perhaps — rather than once the warning appears.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
Anywhere around East Sussex the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Stop somewhere level, motor off, with time in hand — not hurried on the side of Nether Lane.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap works — once you have located the filler and read the cap.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the vehicle on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, then look once more — making sure your diesel filler stayed closed the whole time. After that, start the vehicle.
Discover at the second or third stage that AdBlue went into the wrong filler? That's where you stop. Don't go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Nutley already?
Do not start the engine: that is how the short order of things starts. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch the vehicle on. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where your fuel is pulled from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it is the Harvest or the Shell, ask the attendants to help push the vehicle away from the pump. Leave it where it is if you are on your own drive around Nutley.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your engine has already run. Come off the M23 — under 15 miles out of Nutley — at the next junction. Distance matters — a quick hop across Nutley is a smaller job than heading under 25 miles towards Brighton and Hove — so say about how far it went.
What occurs when we arrive in Nutley
Anywhere the vehicle has stopped, be it by Nutley Church of England Primary School, beside St James the Less or on your own drive, our van travels to it. Both the work and our price depend on three answers — which liquid, which quantity, and if it's run — so our technicians ask. You get that quote by phone, before anybody heads out.
Emptying the tank comes next, followed by a thorough flush of the system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and none of it clears out by itself. Hence it counts more. The filter flushed or, if it must be, swapped; clean diesel in; and then a check of the vehicle. We do not go until it has been started and is running properly.
If the engine hasn't 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. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Before we get there, have a look at your insurance documents; many include cover for misfuelling.
About Nutley
Nutley is a small village in East Sussex, situated inland at an elevation of around 120 metres, with detached housing being the predominant type. Nutley lies near the villages of Dodds Hill and Dodds Bottom, and is close to Millbrook, in a rural area of the South East. Nutley is approximately 16.6 miles from Brighton and Hove, and around 34 miles from London. Nutley has a population of around 596 residents.
Nutley and East Sussex: AdBlue drains across the area
Dodds Bottom and Millbrook are among the towns near Nutley, a rural village, that the same teams cover, throughout TN postcodes. Quote a postcode beginning TN22 3, and our van arrives fastest.
The car doesn't need to shift. Wherever it sits — beside Nutley War Memorial Hall, in a layby en route to Fords Green, at home — that's where it gets emptied. Guessing won't help at the back of Nutley Tennis & Squash Club, close to a border, or anywhere hard to describe; ring and ask.
Nutley drivers: the short version
Pour nothing till you've read the cap. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it wherever it stands, anywhere in East Sussex: keep it off and call 0333 366 0103.