Parklands: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep your engine and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Usually, when your engine has not run, it's drained and fully cleaned where the car is around Parklands. Here before the event? Then the rest covers why it happens and what to stop it happening at all.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel vehicle need its own filler?
Many modern diesels on the roads round Parklands and Sunnyside carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to your exhaust, and there a spray cleans the fumes.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Many of cars share a single flap for the two, while some put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Topping up the diesel side at the petrol pump happens all the time. Much less commonly, the AdBlue side gets topped up — normally from a bottle, by a person thinking about where it goes. That gap is where the slip lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank happen in Parklands?
Carelessness seldom explains it. Instead is three things lining up at once.
Haste comes from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a drive off Ledaig Way, or on the way home in the car park outside Spinney Hill.
Then, your hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old motor — because a rental car, a new vehicle or a company car places the fillers where your last one did not.
No part stops the pour once it has started, because 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 Parklands or out in Moulton Park.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A couple of seconds is all these take — so check them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Kingsley Park or a forecourt in Parklands.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally are not.
- Plenty of motors give AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where the filler is if it's not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- The previous driver knows. Check as you pick up a hire car or company car — from Northampton's car park, perhaps — not once the warning comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Northamptonshire that is.
- Stop on level, engine off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Coppice Drive.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it does the trick.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish once the tank fills or the bottle runs dry; until then, tip gently through its own spout.
- Only after that, start your car: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
If at step two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Step five is off limits.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, around Parklands?
Short order, then. First: the engine stays unstarted. The fuel pump runs on many diesels the moment the ignition goes on — so keep it off. Don't top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where your fuel is pulled from.
On a forecourt — Morrisons Petrol Station, BP or any other — the attendants will normally help roll the vehicle away, if you ask. On your own drive around Parklands? Then the car stays put.
Where the motor has been run by now, pull over safely then switch it off. The next exit means the place to leave when you're on the M1, under 5 miles from Parklands. Distance counts — a short hop across Parklands makes a smaller job than driving under 25 miles to Milton Keynes — so say about how far it went.
Our arrival around Parklands, and what occurs next
The van comes to the car anywhere it has come to rest — your own driveway, near Parklands Community Centre, or outside Parklands Primary School. Our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has run, since the answers decide the work and the quote. That price comes over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
Then your tank is drained and the fuel system flushed thoroughly. With AdBlue that counts 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. Your filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running smoothly.
Using pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where your engine has not run take about half an hour once our technicians are there. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About Parklands
Parklands is a suburban area in Northamptonshire, situated approximately 61 miles northwest of London and 16 miles southeast of Milton Keynes. Parklands sits at an elevation of around 118 metres, characterised by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock. Parklands is located near other residential areas such as Moulton Park, Spinney Hill, and Eastfield, and is home to a population of around 3770 people.
AdBlue drains around Parklands and across Northamptonshire
Parklands is a residential suburb, and our teams that cover it also work the towns near it, Spinney Hill and Eastfield among them, across the NN postcode area. Quote a postcode beginning NN3 6, and our van arrives fastest.
There's no need to shift the vehicle. Draining happens on the spot, be it a driveway, a road by Eden Close Community Hub, or a lay-by towards Bradlaugh Fields. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Benham Sports Arena? Close to a border? Checking is better than guessing, so ring.
Parklands motorists: the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Keep it switched off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, throughout Northamptonshire.