Oaklands: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? In that case set this page aside a moment, keep your ignition and engine off, and ring 0333 366 0103. In Oaklands, finding it before your engine turns normally means draining and a full flush on the spot. Nothing happened yet? Further down, the rest of the page explains the why it occurs and the how to avoid it altogether.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Not one fluid but two: that's how plenty of modern diesels around Oaklands and Danesbury carry, with diesel feeding your engine. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Different tanks, different fillers. Under one flap, next to each other: that's the layout on many vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler sits under the bonnet or in your boot instead. Filling your diesel side at the petrol pump happens all the time. Much less commonly, the AdBlue side is topped up — normally from a bottle, by a person thinking about where it goes. It is in the gap that the error lives.
Oaklands: how AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place
It's seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from your car, and running dry means limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Canonsfield Road, perhaps at The North Star on the way home after work.
New-to-you vehicles are next, too. Hire cars, new cars and company vehicles place their fillers in new places, and habit goes for the cap it used on the old one.
Nothing 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. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Oaklands or out in Pottersheath.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Rableyheath or a forecourt around Oaklands, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Read the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually are not.
- The size. On many vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Open the filler flap and check for a label — plenty of vehicles show what belongs in which inlet just there.
- Cannot find it beside the diesel inlet? In that case check beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Welwyn North.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Hertfordshire that is.
- Pull in on level, engine off, with time in hand — not rushing on the side of Great North Road.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap works — once you've located the filler and read the cap.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the vehicle on.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Only after that, start the vehicle: close the cap, check again, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Spot at stage two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? So stop right there. Do not go on to step five.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, around Oaklands?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your motor. Don't switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, because AdBlue settles to the bottom rather than blending — and that's where the fuel is drawn from.
At a forecourt — BP, Esso or any other — the attendants will usually help roll your car clear, when you ask. If you are on your own driveway around Oaklands, leave the vehicle where it is.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Come off the A1(M) — under a mile out of Oaklands — at the next exit. About how far did it go? Crossing Oaklands is smaller a job than a trip of under 10 miles to St Albans, so say.
Oaklands: what occurs when we get there
Our van reaches the car wherever it stopped — your own driveway, beside St Michael's, or outside Oaklands Primary School. Which liquid went in, the quantity, and if it ran: we ask because the replies set the work and price. During the phone call itself, you are told our price — ahead of anything else.
Next: draining, then a thorough flush of the whole system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears out unaided. Hence it matters more. Your filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. Then our engineers fire it up and make sure it runs correctly before leaving.
Using pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the engine hasn't run need roughly half an hour after we arrive. No money upfront; you settle up on the day. At the end, the VAT invoice and the report from the engineer are handed to you for your insurer. It is worth looking at your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Oaklands, briefly
Oaklands is a village in Hertfordshire, situated inland at an elevation of 84 metres, approximately 23 miles north of London. Oaklands lies near several smaller communities, including Pottersheath, Woolmer Green, and Harmer Green, and is around 9 miles from the city of St Albans. Oaklands has a population of around 1753 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Oaklands is characterized by its rural setting and residential community.
AdBlue drains around Oaklands, and Hertfordshire beyond
Being a rural village, Oaklands has the same vans as surrounding areas — Woolmer Green, Harmer Green — all the way through AL postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. A postcode starting AL6 0 gets our van to you fastest.
The vehicle remains where it is. Wherever it sits — beside Woolmer Green Village Hall, in a layby en route to Puttockhill Wood, at home — that is where it gets emptied. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of War Memorial, ring and ask instead of guessing.
The short version for Oaklands people
Before you tip, read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank regardless? Keep the vehicle switched off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, across Hertfordshire.