Poulders Gardens: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. In Poulders Gardens, catching it before the engine turns usually means draining and a thorough flush on the spot. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of newer diesels in Felderland, like those in Poulders Gardens, run on two liquids; the engine takes only the diesel. Your exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the gas to clean them, from its own tank.
Every tank comes with one filler of its own. Other motors keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty more have the two together under one flap. Filling the diesel side at the pump goes on constantly. Much less frequently, the AdBlue side gets topped up — normally from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. The error lives in that gap.
Poulders Gardens: how AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
On a driveway off Postmill Road before work, or in the car park outside The Red Cow on the way home: that is where the hurried top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and once it is gone, limp mode follows.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Nothing stops the pour once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Stone Cross or the heart of Poulders Gardens: it takes the same few seconds either way.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Marshborough or a forecourt in Poulders Gardens, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally aren't.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- Can't find it next to your diesel inlet? In that case look beneath the bonnet or in the boot — the owner's manual will say which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside Sandwich? Check with whoever drove the car last before leaving, not once 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 in Kent that is.
- Turn off once parked — flat ground, motor off, and never in a rush beside Woodnesborough Road at the roadside.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap works — once you've located the filler and read it.
- Both under a single flap? So make sure the cap on the diesel filler stays closed ahead of lifting the bottle.
- 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.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Never carry on to step five.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Poulders Gardens already?
What follows is a short order of things, beginning with not starting your engine. Keep the ignition off too, since on many diesels it by itself starts the fuel pump. Don't top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where your fuel is drawn from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the vehicle away from the pump if you are at a forecourt — the Gulf, the Shell or anywhere else. Your own drive around Poulders Gardens is where it should stay.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. On the M20, under 15 miles from Poulders Gardens, that means the next exit. A short hop across Poulders Gardens is a smaller job than a run towards Canterbury, under 15 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
When we arrive around Poulders Gardens, what happens?
Anywhere your car has stopped, be it by Sandwich Junior School, near Jubilee Centre or at home, our van comes to it. The answers decide the work and the quote, so we ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has run. On the call itself, you hear our quote — ahead of dispatch.
Then the tank is emptied and the system purged thoroughly. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. Once the fuel filter has been flushed — or renewed, if required — fresh diesel is added, and then the vehicle is tested. Before we leave, we fire it up and check that it is running smoothly.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour once our engineers get there, provided the engine hasn't run — and the pumps we use are fine on a busy forecourt yet quiet after dark outside a house. The insurer usually wants an engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and both are yours at the end. Payment comes on the day, with no deposit. Misfuelling cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Poulders Gardens
Poulders Gardens is a small suburban area situated on the coast of Kent, with an elevation of approximately 6 metres above sea level. Poulders Gardens lies near the historic town of Sandwich and is also close to other nearby places such as Stone Cross and Woodnesborough. Poulders Gardens has a population of around 1878 residents, who mostly live in semi-detached housing. Poulders Gardens is located about 10.8 miles from Canterbury and 64.9 miles from London.
Poulders Gardens and Kent: AdBlue drains across the area
Over CT postcodes, the teams that cover Poulders Gardens — a residential suburb — work the nearby spots too, Woodnesborough and Sandwich among them. Give a postcode that starts CT13 0, and the van gets there fastest.
There's no need to shift the vehicle. We drain it where it is — a side street near Sandwich Wildlife Park, a lay-by on the way to The Butts, a driveway. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of United Reformed Church, ring and ask instead of assuming.
For Poulders Gardens drivers, the short version
First, the cap; then, the pour. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the car switched off and call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, across Kent.