Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Polegate: Why It Occurs
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103. Normally, when your motor has not turned, it is drained and fully purged where your car is around Polegate. Reading before the event? In that case the rest explains how it happens and how to stop it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Plenty of newer diesels around Filching, as well as Polegate, carry on two fluids; your motor takes just the diesel. Your exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the fumes to clean them, from its own tank.
Each tank has its own filler. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at every forecourt call-out, week in, week out. The AdBlue side is topped up far less regularly, usually from a bottle, and usually by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. The mistake lives in that gap.
Polegate: how AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place
Rarely is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, your vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Roy Martin Way before work, or in the car park at The Dinkum on the way home.
New-to-you motors come next, as well. Rentals, new motors and company cars place their fillers differently, and the hand reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
Nothing halts the tip once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it happens in Foulride Green or the middle of Polegate, it is the same few seconds.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Check these before pouring, on a forecourt around Polegate or a driveway over in Folkington. Seconds, that's all.
- Position misleads; the cap doesn't. AdBlue ones tend to be blue or carry the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps normally do not.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on many cars, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of cars say there which fuel goes where.
- Can't find it next to the diesel filler? Then check below the bonnet or inside your boot — the owner's manual says which.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park at the nearest station, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around East Sussex that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Gilda Crescent, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park and switch off first.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud as unscrewing it. It seems daft. It works.
- The two behind one flap? So confirm the cap on the diesel filler stays shut ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the vehicle, close the cap and look a second time that the diesel cap never came off.
Find at stage two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? Then stop right there. Do not go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Polegate already?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting the engine. On plenty of diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch it on. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is drawn from — so don't top up with diesel to thin it.
At a forecourt — Esso, Asda or another — the staff will usually help push your car away, if you ask. If you are on your own drive in Polegate, leave it where it stands.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the engine has already run. On the M23, under 50 miles from Polegate, that means the next junction. About how far did it go? Crossing Polegate is smaller a job than a trip of under 25 miles to Brighton and Hove, and so tell us.
What occurs when we turn up in Polegate
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Polegate Primary School, close to Polegate Town Council or on your own driveway. We ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has run, because the answers settle this work and our price. You get that price on the phone, before anybody heads out.
Next: draining, then a thorough flush of the entire system. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own. Your filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the car is tested. Next we fire it up and confirm it runs correctly before we go.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour after our technicians get there, as long as your motor has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a busy forecourt yet quiet after dark beside a house. The insurer usually wants the engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and both are yours once this job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. Before we get there, take a look at your policy; many include cover for misfuelling.
About Polegate and where it is
Polegate is a town situated inland in East Sussex, England. It is located near the town of Eastbourne, which lies a short distance to the south. The town is part of a larger area and has a significant proportion of older residents. Polegate is nestled in the Wealden District, a picturesque part of the country.
Polegate and East Sussex: AdBlue drains across the area
Being a town, Polegate shares its vans surrounding places — Wannock, Lower Willingdon — right through BN postcodes and the surrounding area around them. Give a postcode beginning BN26 6, and the van arrives quickest.
Shifting the car is not needed. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Polegate War Memorial recreation ground, a side street close to The Free Church Hall: our engineers drain the car where it stands. Ring and ask instead of assuming if you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Polegate Free Church.
Polegate people: the short version
Pour no AdBlue till you've read the cap. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it where it is, wherever in East Sussex: switch it off and call 0333 366 0103.