How It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Orchard Park
Stop here a minute when your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and call 0333 366 0103. Around Orchard Park, finding it before your motor runs usually means a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. The rest of this page covers why it occurs and how to make sure it does not — handy if you are reading before it has happened.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of modern diesels in Histon, like those in Orchard Park, carry on two liquids; the motor takes only the diesel. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust gas to clean it.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Other cars keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty more have both together behind one flap. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less frequently. That gap is where the error lives.
Orchard Park: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the vehicle, and letting it run dry means limp mode — hence a hurried top-up, maybe before work off Circus Drive, perhaps outside The Ship on the way home that evening.
New-to-you cars are second, as well. Rentals, new motors and company vehicles put their fillers in new places, and habit reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, after begun, keeps on. Whether it happens in Arbury or the middle of Orchard Park, it's the same few seconds.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you tip anything, whether on a driveway in Chesterton or a forecourt in Orchard Park, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue ones are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally aren't.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- Look inside your fuel flap: plenty of motors have a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by your diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Cambridge North.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
The day the light goes on, wherever around Cambridgeshire, use this routine.
- Pull in somewhere level, engine off, with time in hand — never rushing on the side of Sweetpea Way.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Discover at the second or third step that AdBlue went in the wrong filler? That is where you stop. Do not go on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Orchard Park?
Short list, then. Top of that: the motor remains off. Do not switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Topping up with diesel won't thin it: instead, AdBlue drops to the bottom of your tank, just where fuel is drawn from.
On a forecourt — Esso, Gulf or another — the attendants will usually help roll the car away, if you ask. On your own drive around Orchard Park? Then your car stays put.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. On the M11, under 3 miles from Orchard Park, that means the next exit. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Cambridge, under 3 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Orchard Park.
What happens when our technicians turn up in Orchard Park
Our van reaches the vehicle anywhere it stopped — your own driveway, near Meadows Community Centre, or by Orchard Park Community Primary School. Our engineers ask what was put in, about how much, and if it has run, because the answers decide this work and the quote. No one sets off until you have heard the quote by phone.
Next: a drain, then a full flush of the entire system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own — which is why the flush matters more here than with petrol. The filter cleaned or, if needed, replaced; fresh diesel in; and then a test of the vehicle. Your engine is fired up next and checked to confirm it runs correctly, all before our engineers head off.
If the motor has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the documents an insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. It is worth checking your insurance while we travel to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Orchard Park itself
Orchard Park is a suburban area located near Cambridge in Cambridgeshire, sitting at an elevation of around 13 metres in the inland landscape of Eastern England. Orchard Park is characterised by its predominantly flat housing stock, with many residents living in flats. Orchard Park is situated close to other nearby places such as Arbury, Kings Hedges, and Impington, and is approximately 1.9 miles from Cambridge city centre.
AdBlue drains in Orchard Park and across Cambridgeshire
Over CB postcodes, the teams that cover Orchard Park — a residential suburb — work the surrounding locations too, Impington and Kings Hedges among them. A postcode starting CB4 2 gets the van to you fastest.
There's no need to move the vehicle. Draining happens on the spot, be it a drive, a street near The Orchard Community Centre, or a layby on the way to St Albans Recreation Ground. Guessing doesn't help at the back of Singing - Cloud, on a boundary, or somewhere awkward to pin down; ring and ask.
In short, for Orchard Park motorists
Always, the cap; then, the tip. Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, anywhere across Cambridgeshire, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank anyway — and so leave it off and phone 0333 366 0103.