How It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Readers Corner
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and your ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. A drain and a thorough flush, carried out right where the car stands in Readers Corner, is usually what it needs when caught before the motor runs. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Diesel goes to your engine — yet plenty of modern diesels seen round Readers Corner and Baddow Park hold a second liquid as well. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on many cars. On others, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in the boot instead. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less frequently. Mistakes happen in that gap between them.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place around Readers Corner?
Carelessness rarely causes it. Instead is three things coming up together.
Haste follows from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens in a rush, before work on a driveway off Pitt Chase, or on the way home in the car park outside White Horse.
Unfamiliar vehicles come second, as well. Hire cars, new vehicles and company vehicles place their fillers differently, and the hand goes for the cap used on the old one.
Nothing stops the tip after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Great Baddow or the middle of Readers Corner: it is the same few seconds either way.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Look at these first, on a forecourt in Readers Corner or a drive out in Galleywood. A few seconds, that's all.
- Where it sits misleads; the cap does not. AdBlue caps tend to be blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps usually don't.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many cars, the AdBlue one.
- Open the filler flap and check for a label — plenty of motors mark which goes in which inlet right there.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler sits if it's not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Chelmsford? Ask the person who drove it last before you set off, not once the light goes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
The day the light comes on, anywhere around Essex, use this routine.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Galleywood Road.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" aloud as unscrewing it. It sounds silly. It works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the vehicle on.
- Finish when your tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; until then, pour gently through the built-in spout.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Don't go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Readers Corner already?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. Do not switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Diluting it with extra diesel won't work, since AdBlue settles to the bottom instead of blending — and that's where your fuel is drawn from.
The staff at Texaco, BP or another forecourt will normally lend a hand to push your car clear if you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own drive in Readers Corner.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the engine has already run. Come off the M25 — under 15 miles out of Readers Corner — at the first exit. About how far did it go? Hopping across Readers Corner is less a job than a trip of under 3 miles to Chelmsford, and so say.
What happens when our technicians arrive in Readers Corner
The van reaches the car anywhere it has come to rest — your own driveway, near Baddow Village sign, or outside Larkrise Primary School. Both the work and our price rest on three replies — which liquid, which quantity, and if it has run — so our engineers ask. Nobody sets off before you have heard the quote over the phone.
Your system is then purged thoroughly, once your tank is drained. Unlike petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and none of that clears away by itself. Hence it matters more. Once the filter has been cleaned — or renewed, where needed — clean diesel goes in, and finally your vehicle gets tested. Your engine is started next and tested to make sure it runs correctly, all before our technicians leave.
If your engine has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours whilst we're on the way.
About Readers Corner itself
Readers Corner is a locality in Essex, situated approximately 1.9 miles from Chelmsford and 30.3 miles from London. Readers Corner lies in a relatively low-lying area, with an elevation of around 46 metres, and is surrounded by nearby places such as Great Baddow, Galleyend, and Sandon. Readers Corner has a population of approximately 3147 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing.
AdBlue drains around Readers Corner, and Essex beyond
Being a neighbourhood, Readers Corner has the same vans as nearby places — Galleyend, Sandon — right through CM postcodes and the wider area beyond. Our van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting CM2 8.
Moving your car isn't needed. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to The Donkey Fields, a side street close to St Mary the Virgin, Great Baddow: we drain the car where it stands. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Great Baddow Library? By a county line? Checking beats guessing, and so ring.
For Readers Corner people, the short version
First, the cap; after that, the tip. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it is, anywhere around Essex: keep the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103.