AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Punnetts Town: How It Occurs and How to Avoid It
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and the ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. Usually, if the engine hasn't run, it's emptied and thoroughly rinsed where the vehicle sits in Punnetts Town. Reading before the event? In that case what follows explains why it happens and how to stop it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Plenty of modern diesels around Chapmans Town, like those in Punnetts Town, run on two fluids; the motor gets just the diesel. The exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to fresh it, from a separate tank.
Separate tanks, separate fillers. Other vehicles keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty of others place both side by side behind one flap. Diesel gets filled at every filling station visit, week in, week out. Seldom filled, AdBlue usually goes in out of a bottle, tipped by a driver who must stop and think which filler to use. The mistake grows in that gap between them.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank take place around Punnetts Town?
It's seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out completely, the vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Mill Lane before work, or in the car park outside The Three Cups Inn on the way home.
Then your car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spout-topped bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, once begun, carries on. Whether it occurs in Chapel Cross or the middle of Punnetts Town, it's the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Be it a Punnetts Town forecourt or a driveway out in Rushlake Green, take a few seconds over these before anything is poured in.
- Where it sits misleads; the cap does not. AdBlue caps are often blue or carry the name "AdBlue" — diesel ones normally do not.
- On plenty of motors, the size gives it away: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently shows which fuel goes where, on many vehicles. Look for it.
- The handbook says where it lives when the filler isn't next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Stonegate, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
On the day the warning appears — wherever it is around East Sussex — a routine to follow.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Upper Greenwoods Lane.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, yes, yet it works.
- Both behind one flap? So make sure the lid on your diesel side stays closed ahead of raising the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Discover during the second or third stage that the bottle went in the diesel filler? That's where you stop. Never go on to step five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Punnetts Town?
Short list, then. Top of it: the motor stays unstarted. Keep your ignition off too, because on many diesels switching it on by itself runs the fuel pump. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it's the BP or the Local Fuels, ask the attendants to help push your car clear of the petrol pump. If you're on your own driveway around Punnetts Town, leave it where it stands.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Leave the M23 — under 25 miles out of Punnetts Town — at the first exit. Mileage counts — a quick hop across Punnetts Town makes a smaller job than driving under 25 miles towards Brighton and Hove — so say roughly how far it went.
What happens when we arrive around Punnetts Town
By Punnetts Town Community Primary and Nursery School, near Heathfield Chapel Evangelical or on your own drive: wherever your car has stopped, we come to it. Those answers decide the work and our quote, and so our technicians ask what was put in, about how much, and if it has run. During the call itself, you are told our quote — before anything else.
Then the tank is drained and the 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, so it doesn't wash out on its own. The filter cleaned or, if needed, replaced; fresh diesel in; and then a check of your car. We don't leave until it has been fired up and is running properly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour after we arrive, provided your motor has not run — and the pumps our technicians use are safe on a live forecourt and quiet at night outside a house. Nothing upfront; you settle up that day. Afterwards, the VAT invoice and the report from the engineer are handed to you for your insurer. It's worth looking at your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with many policies.
About Punnetts Town, briefly
Punnetts Town is a small village in East Sussex, situated inland at an elevation of 169 metres. Punnetts Town lies near the settlements of Chapel Cross, Three Cups Corner, and Cade Street, and is approximately 22 miles from Brighton and Hove. Punnetts Town has a population of around 608 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Punnetts Town is also within commuting distance of London, being about 42 miles from the capital.
AdBlue drains across East Sussex, Punnetts Town included
Over TN postcodes, the teams that cover Punnetts Town — a rural village — work the surrounding places too, Cade Street and Three Cups Corner among them. Our van reaches you fastest with a postcode starting TN21 9.
The car remains where it is. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Punnetts Town Recreation Ground, a side street close to Ebenezer Strict Baptist Chapel: we drain the car where it stands. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of St George, ring and ask rather than guessing.
Punnetts Town people: the short version
Read the cap before you pour. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it stands, wherever in East Sussex: switch it off and ring 0333 366 0103.