Sandleheath: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Stop here for a moment if your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, then phone 0333 366 0103. In Sandleheath, finding it before the engine turns usually leaves draining and a full flush where it stands. Not happened yet? Further down, the page explains the reasons it occurs and the ways to avoid it altogether.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
No single liquid but two: that's what many modern diesels around Sandleheath and Damerham carry, with diesel feeding your engine. Your exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the fumes to clean them, from its own tank.
Each tank has a filler of its own. Many of cars have a single flap for both, while some put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, the diesel side is topped up constantly. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less regularly. That gap is where the mistake lives.
Sandleheath: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
On a driveway off Station Road before work, or in the car park outside Railway Hotel on the way home: that's where the rushed top-up happens. Why the rush? As AdBlue gets low the vehicle warns you, and if it's gone, limp mode follows.
Then your car is strange. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part halts the tip after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Brickhill or the middle of Sandleheath: it is the same few seconds in both.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Whether a Sandleheath forecourt or a driveway out in Camel Green, take a couple of seconds on these before any goes in.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally are not.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook says where it is if your filler isn't next to the diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Salisbury? Check with whoever drove the car last before you set off, not once the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
On the day the warning comes on — wherever it is across Hampshire — a routine to use.
- Stop on level, engine off, with time in hand — never hurried on the side of Elms Close.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap works — once you have located the filler and read the cap.
- The two behind a single flap? Then confirm the lid on the diesel filler stays closed ahead of raising the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the car, shut the cap and check again that the diesel cap was never came off.
Spot at stage two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? Then stop right there. Leave out step five altogether.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Sandleheath?
What follows is a short order of things, beginning with no starting the engine. On plenty of diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch it on. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue sinks to the bottom instead of mixing — and that is where the fuel is drawn from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it is the Harvest Energy or the Shell Verwood, ask the staff to help push your car away from the pump. Leave it where it is if you are on your own drive in Sandleheath.
Already started? Pull over once it is safe, then switch off. Sandleheath lies under 15 miles from the M27; there, take the next junction. A short hop across Sandleheath is a smaller job than a run towards Salisbury, under 10 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
Our arrival in Sandleheath, and what happens next
By St James' Church of England First School and Nursery, Alderholt, near Sandleheath Uniting Church or on your own drive: wherever your car has stopped, our engineers come to it. Both the work and our quote rest on three replies — what liquid, which quantity, and if it's run — so our technicians ask. During the call itself, you hear the price — ahead of anything else.
Then the tank is drained and the fuel system purged 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 does not wash out on its own. Once your filter has been cleaned — or replaced, if required — fresh diesel is added, and finally the car is tested. We don't leave until it has been started and is running smoothly.
If the engine has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. The insurer will ask for the engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and both are yours at the end. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. It is worth checking your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Sandleheath
Sandleheath is a village in Hampshire, situated on the banks of the River Avon at an elevation of around 57 metres. Sandleheath lies near the city of Salisbury, approximately 9.6 miles away, and is surrounded by other small villages such as Brickhill and Ashford. Sandleheath has a population of around 605 people and predominantly features detached housing. Sandleheath is located in the South East region of England, about 83.4 miles from London.
AdBlue drains across Hampshire, Sandleheath included
Sandleheath is a village, and the teams that cover it also work the places near it, Ashford and Tinkers Cross among them, across the SP postcode area. Give a postcode beginning SP6 1, and our van arrives fastest.
Moving your car is not necessary. Draining happens on the spot, whether a drive, a street by Sir Eyre Coote's Monument, or a layby towards Sandleheath Common. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Alderholt Park House.
For Sandleheath drivers, the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, anywhere across Hampshire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway — and so leave the vehicle off then call 0333 366 0103.