Peasmarsh: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Keep your motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Normally, if your motor hasn't turned, it's emptied and fully rinsed where your car is around Peasmarsh. Not happened yet? Further down, the page explains the why it occurs and the ways to prevent it altogether.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
No single fluid but two: that is how many newer diesels near Peasmarsh and Four Oaks run, with diesel feeding your engine. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust gas to clean it.
Every tank comes with a filler of its own. Under one flap, side by side: that's the layout on a lot of motors. On others, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is filled at the pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less regularly. That gap is where the error lives.
Peasmarsh: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
It is seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Hurry follows from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends it into limp mode — so the top-up happens in a rush, before work on a drive off Malthouse Lane, or on the way home in the car park outside The Cock Inn.
Next, the hand goes for the cap it would have used on the old car — since a rental car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, once started, carries on. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Peasmarsh or out in Flackley Ash.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
A couple of seconds is all these take — so check them before you pour anything, on a drive in Beckley or a forecourt in Peasmarsh.
- Where it sits misleads; the cap doesn't. AdBlue ones are often blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel ones normally do not.
- Plenty of vehicles fit AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- A label inside your fuel flap often shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Check for it.
- Can't see it next to the diesel filler? In that case check below the bonnet or inside your boot — the handbook will say which.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park outside Rye, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
When the light comes on, anywhere in East Sussex, use this routine.
- Pull in on level, engine off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Main Street.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud while unscrewing it. It seems daft. It works.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where both sit under a flap, make sure it is shut before the bottle comes up.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, and check again — making sure the diesel cap stayed closed the whole time. Only then, start your car.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Leave out stage five entirely.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Peasmarsh?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your engine. The fuel pump runs on many diesels as soon as the ignition goes on — so leave it off. Diluting it with extra diesel won't work, because AdBlue settles to the base instead of blending — and that is where the fuel is drawn from.
At a forecourt — JET, Murco or any other — the staff will normally help roll the vehicle away, when you ask. Your own drive in Peasmarsh is the place it should stay.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your motor has already run. The next exit is the place to come off when you are on the M20, under 15 miles from Peasmarsh. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Canterbury, under 50 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Peasmarsh.
Peasmarsh: what occurs when our engineers turn up
Wherever the car came to rest, whether by Peasmarsh Church of England Primary School, near St Peter & St Paul or on your own drive, the van travels to it. The replies settle the work and the quote, and so our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it's run. You get that price on the phone, before anyone sets off.
Draining that tank comes next, then a thorough 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 does not wash out on its own. The filter flushed or, if needed, replaced; clean diesel in; then a test of the car. We do not leave until it has been started and is running properly.
If your motor hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. No money in advance; 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 checking your insurance while we travel to you: misfuelling cover is included with many policies.
About Peasmarsh, briefly
Peasmarsh is a village in East Sussex, situated on the banks of the River Rother at an elevation of around 27 metres. Peasmarsh lies near the towns of Rye and Tenterden, and is close to the villages of Flackley Ash and Rye Foreign. Peasmarsh has a population of approximately 900 people, living in predominantly detached houses, and is located about 51 miles from London. Peasmarsh is also near the village of Bowlers Town, and is within commuting distance of the city of Canterbury, which is around 27 miles away.
AdBlue drains in Peasmarsh and across East Sussex
Peasmarsh is a village, and the teams that cover it also work the towns around it, Rye Foreign and Bowlers Town among them, across the TN postcode area. Quickest of all: quote a TN31 6 postcode for our van.
There's no need to shift the car. Draining happens on the spot, whether a drive, a street by Iden Auxiliary Units Observational Base, or a lay-by on the way to Malthouse Wood. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of All Saints, ring and ask instead of assuming.
In short, for Peasmarsh drivers
Tip no AdBlue till you have read the cap. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will drain it wherever it is, anywhere around East Sussex: switch the car off then phone 0333 366 0103.