Why It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Sherrardspark
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a thorough flush, carried out right where your vehicle stands in Sherrardspark, is normally all it takes when caught before the engine runs. The rest of this page covers why it happens and how to ensure it does not — handy if you're reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel car, and its separate tank
Many modern diesels in Peartree, as well as Sherrardspark, carry on two fluids; the engine takes only your diesel. AdBlue's own tank keeps it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, where a spray cleans the fumes.
Each tank has one filler of its own. Other motors put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty of others have both side by side under one flap. Topping up your diesel side at the pump goes on constantly. Much less often, the AdBlue side gets filled — normally from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. The error lives in that gap.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Sherrardspark: how it occurs
Carelessness seldom explains it. What does is three things coming up at once.
On a drive off Sherrardspark Road before work, or in the car park outside Two Willows on the way home: that's where the hurried top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue gets low the vehicle warns you, and once it is gone, limp mode kicks in.
Next, your hand goes for the cap it knew on the old car — since a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't.
Lastly, the bottle goes in: a diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it slides in just as readily, and once the tip starts, nothing halts it. It takes seconds, whether out in Welwyn Garden City or right in the heart of Sherrardspark.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Handside or a forecourt in Sherrardspark, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Colour 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.
- Plenty of cars give AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Lift the filler flap and look for a label — plenty of vehicles show what goes in each filler just there.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by the diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Welwyn Garden City? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before you set off, rather than when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Hertfordshire that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Digswell Road, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park then switch off properly.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once you find the AdBlue filler and reading it. Daft, perhaps, yet it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the car on.
- Stop once the tank fills or the bottle runs dry; until then, tip slowly through its built-in spout.
- Close the cap, and check once more — confirm the diesel filler remained closed the whole time. Only then, start the car.
Find during the second or third step that the bottle went in the diesel filler? That's where you stop. Don't go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Sherrardspark already?
Do not start the motor: that's where the short order of things starts. The fuel pump starts on many diesels as soon as the ignition goes on — so leave it off. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is drawn from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
The attendants at Esso, Shell or another forecourt will normally help to push the vehicle clear if asked. If you're on your own driveway in Sherrardspark, leave it where it is.
If the motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. The next junction is where to leave when you are on the A1(M), under a mile from Sherrardspark. A short hop across Sherrardspark is a smaller job than a run towards St Albans, under 10 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
What occurs when our engineers turn up around Sherrardspark
By Templewood Primary School, close to Hawthorne Theatre & Cinema or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, we come to it. The answers determine this work and our quote, and so we ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it's run. During the call itself, you are told our price — ahead of anything else.
Emptying the 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 doesn't wash out on its own. Filter flushed or, if needed, replaced; clean diesel in; then a check of the car. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
With pumps safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where the engine has not run take roughly half an hour after our technicians are there. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Misfuelling cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — so use the wait to look at yours.
About Sherrardspark and where it is
Sherrardspark is a suburban area in Hertfordshire, situated approximately 21 miles north of London and 6.8 miles southeast of St Albans. Sherrardspark sits at an elevation of around 106 metres, amidst the generally flat landscape of the eastern Home Counties. Sherrardspark is characterised by its predominantly flat-based housing stock, with nearby Welwyn Garden City, Haldens, and Digswell Park also forming part of the local residential landscape.
AdBlue drains across Hertfordshire, Sherrardspark included
Sherrardspark is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Haldens and Digswell Park among them, across the AL postcode area. Quote a postcode that starts AL8 7, and the van arrives quickest.
No need to shift the car. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street close to Welwyn Garden City Central Library, a lay-by on the way to The Campus Parkway, a driveway. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Cinema at Campus West Welwyn Garden City.
For Sherrardspark motorists, the short version
First, the cap; then, the pour. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it where it is, wherever around Hertfordshire: switch the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103.