Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Rotten Green: Why It Happens
Leave your engine and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Normally, if your motor hasn't turned, it is drained and fully cleaned where your vehicle is in Rotten Green. Here before the event? Then what follows covers how it comes about and how to stop it ever happening.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of newer diesels around Winchfield Hurst, like those in Rotten Green, carry on two fluids; the motor takes only the diesel. The exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the fumes to clean it, from a separate tank.
Each tank has its own filler. Other cars keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty of others place the two side by side behind one flap. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol 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 often. It's in the gap that the slip happens.
Rotten Green: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
Haste comes from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens in a rush, before work on a driveway off Mattingley Drive, or heading home in the car park outside De Havilland Arms.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, and so nothing stops the pour once it has started. Elvetham Heath or the heart of Rotten Green: it takes the same few seconds in both.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Check these first, on a forecourt in Rotten Green or a drive over in Dogmersfield. Seconds, no more.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- On plenty of cars, the size tells: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Check for it.
- The handbook says which it is when your filler isn't next to the diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Fleet, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
For the day the warning appears — wherever it is across Hampshire — a simple routine to follow.
- Switch off once parked — level ground, motor stopped, and not in a rush by Micheldever Drive on the verge.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after finding the AdBlue filler and reading it. Daft, perhaps, yet it works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish when the tank fills or the bottle is empty; until then, tip gently through the built-in spout.
- Close the cap, then check again — confirm the diesel filler remained closed throughout. Only then, start the vehicle.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Skip step five entirely.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Rotten Green?
Do not start the engine: that's how the short order of things starts. Leave the ignition off as well, because on plenty of diesels it alone runs your pump. Do not top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is drawn from.
On a forecourt — Shell, another forecourt nearby or any other — the attendants will usually help push your car clear, if you ask. If you are on your own driveway around Rotten Green, leave the car where it stands.
If the motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. The next exit is the place to come off if you're on the M3, under a mile from Rotten Green. About how far did it go? Crossing Rotten Green is smaller a job than a trip of under 50 miles towards Winchester, and so tell us.
What happens when we arrive around Rotten Green
Our van comes to your car anywhere it has come to rest — your own driveway, near The Key Centre, or by Elvetham Heath Primary School. What fluid was put in, the amount, and if it ran: we ask because those replies decide both work and price. No one sets off before you've heard our quote by phone.
Emptying that tank comes next, followed by 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, so it does not wash out on its own. After the filter has been flushed — or renewed, if needed — fresh diesel is added, and then your car is tested. Before leaving, we start it and confirm that it is running smoothly.
If the motor has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. No money upfront; you settle up on the day. Afterwards, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer go to you for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Rotten Green
Rotten Green is a locality in Hampshire, situated inland at an elevation of 72 metres, and is located near the towns of Fleet and Elvetham. Rotten Green is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting the area's residential nature. Rotten Green sits within the wider South East region, approximately 34.9 miles from London and 25.2 miles from the city of Winchester.
AdBlue drains in Rotten Green and across Hampshire
Rotten Green is a small village, and our teams that cover it also work the places near it, Elvetham and Fleet among them, across the GU postcode area. Fastest of all: quote a GU51 1 postcode for our van.
No need to shift the car. The drain happens on the spot, be it a driveway, a street by Church on the Heath, or a lay-by towards the green space at the edge of the village. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of The Scream, ring and ask rather than guessing.
Rotten Green drivers: the short version
Pour nothing till you've read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same, leave the vehicle off then ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it sits, anywhere across Hampshire.