How It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Old Hatfield
Stop reading a minute when your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and call 0333 366 0103. Caught before your motor runs, it's normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is in Old Hatfield. The remainder of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it does not — handy if you are reading ahead of time.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Not one fluid but two: that is what many newer diesels near Old Hatfield and Roe Green run, with diesel for your engine. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it goes to your exhaust, where a spray cleans the gas.
Each tank has a filler of its own. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. At the pump, your diesel side is topped up constantly. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less commonly. The mistake lives in that gap.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Old Hatfield: how it takes place
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
Haste follows from the warning. The vehicle tells you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a drive off Beaconsfield Road, or on the way home in the car park at The Great Northern.
Next, your hand goes for the cap it knew on the old car — because a rental car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
Third, the spout goes in: diesel filler or AdBlue one, it goes in as readily, and once the tip starts, nothing stops it. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Old Hatfield or out in Hatfield.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Before you pour anything, whether on a drive in Oxlease or a forecourt around Old Hatfield, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Read the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally are not.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows which it is when your filler is not next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Whoever had it before knows. Check when you collect a hire car or fleet car — from Hatfield's car park, perhaps — rather than when the warning appears.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
The day the light goes on, wherever around Hertfordshire, use this routine.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time to spare — not hurried on the side of Endymion Road.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- Both behind one flap? So confirm the cap on the diesel side is still closed ahead of raising the bottle.
- Stop once the tank fills or the bottle runs dry; before that, tip gently through the built-in spout.
- Before starting the car, shut the cap and look again that the diesel cap was never came off.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Do not go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Old Hatfield already?
Brief order, then. Top of that: the engine stays unstarted. Keep your ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels switching it on by itself starts the pump. Diluting it with extra diesel won't work, since AdBlue settles to the bottom instead of mixing — and that's where the fuel is sucked from.
At a forecourt — Asda, Tesco or any other — the staff will normally help push your car clear, when you ask. Your own driveway around Old Hatfield is where it stays.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your engine has already run. The next junction is where to leave when you're on the Hatfield Tunnel, under a mile from Old Hatfield. A short hop across Old Hatfield is a smaller job than a run towards St Albans, under 10 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
Our arrival around Old Hatfield, and what happens next
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Countess Anne Church of England School, close to Christ Church or on your own driveway. Those replies decide this work and our quote, and so we ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has run. On the phone call itself, you hear our price — ahead of anything else.
Draining your tank comes next, then a full flush of your system. 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 doesn't wash out on its own. Once the fuel filter has been flushed — or renewed, where needed — fresh diesel is added, and finally your vehicle gets tested. We don't leave until it has been fired up and is running smoothly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour once we arrive, as long as the engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet after dark outside a house. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the documents an insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Before we get there, have a look at your insurance documents; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Old Hatfield, briefly
Old Hatfield is a suburban area in Hertfordshire, situated approximately 18 miles north of London and 5 miles east of St Albans. Old Hatfield sits at an elevation of around 82 metres, characterised by its predominantly terraced housing stock. Old Hatfield is located near the towns of Hatfield and St Albans, with nearby neighbourhoods including Birchwood and The Ryde.
AdBlue drains in Old Hatfield and across Hertfordshire
Being a residential suburb, Old Hatfield has the same vans as nearby places — Birchwood, The Ryde — all the way through AL postcodes and the wider area beyond. Fastest of all: quote a AL10 8 postcode to the van.
The car doesn't need to shift. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street near Robert Arthur Talbot, Marquess of Salisbury, a lay-by on the way to St Albans Road East Recreational Ground, a drive. Assuming won't help behind The Old Courthouse, close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe; ring and ask.
For Old Hatfield motorists, the short version
First, the cap; after that, the pour. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the car switched off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, across Hertfordshire.