Sparrows Green: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Leave your motor and ignition off and call 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before the motor runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Sparrows Green. Here in advance? Then what follows explains why it comes about and how to stop it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads around Sparrows Green and Pell Green carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. The exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to clean it, from its own tank.
Every tank comes with one filler of its own. Other motors keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot more place the two side by side under one flap. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. Far less regularly, the AdBlue side gets filled — mostly from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between them.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Sparrows Green: how it takes place
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the vehicle, and letting it run dry leads to limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off George Street, perhaps at White Hart on the way home after work.
Then the vehicle is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Third, the spout goes in: a diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it slides in just as easily, and after the tip begins, no part halts it. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Sparrows Green or out in Primmers Green.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Check these before pouring, on a forecourt around Sparrows Green or a drive over in Woods Green. Seconds, that's all.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap usually isn't. Read it instead of going by position.
- Plenty of vehicles fit AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Look inside your fuel flap: many motors carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler is if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Wadhurst? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before leaving, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around East Sussex that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of South View Road, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park and switch off first.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Only then, start the vehicle: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Never go on to stage five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Sparrows Green?
Do not start the engine: that's where the short order of things begins. On many diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so don't switch the car on. Filling up with diesel will not weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of your tank, right where the fuel is drawn from.
If you are on a forecourt, whether it is the Wadhurst Service Station or the Mayfield Garage, ask the staff to help roll the vehicle away from the pump. If you are on your own drive around Sparrows Green, leave the vehicle where it is.
Already started? Pull over once it is safe, then turn off. Leave the M26 — under 25 miles out of Sparrows Green — at the next exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Sparrows Green is smaller work than a trip of under 50 miles to Brighton and Hove, so tell us.
When our engineers turn up around Sparrows Green, what happens?
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Wadhurst CofE Primary School and Nursery, close to Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul or on your own drive. Both the work and the price rest on three answers — what fluid, which amount, and if it has run — so we ask. You get that quote on the phone, before anybody heads out.
The system is then cleaned thoroughly, once the tank is cleared. More than with petrol, it matters with AdBlue: crystals build up, certain metals are attacked, and none of that washes away unaided, no matter how long it is left. Filter cleaned or, where it must be, swapped; fresh diesel in; then a test of the car. After that we fire it up and check it runs smoothly before we leave.
With pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor has not run take about half an hour once our technicians are there. Your insurer will ask for an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and both are yours once the job is done. Payment is on the day, with no deposit. It is worth looking at your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Sparrows Green
Sparrows Green is a suburban area in East Sussex, situated inland at an elevation of 161 metres, with Sparrows Green being one of the higher points in the surrounding countryside. Sparrows Green is located near several other small settlements, including Primmers Green, Wadhurst, and Durgates, and Sparrows Green is also within commuting distance of Brighton and Hove. Sparrows Green has a population of approximately 1750 residents, with Sparrows Green being characterised by predominantly detached housing.
AdBlue drains in Sparrows Green and across East Sussex
Wadhurst and Durgates are among the towns near Sparrows Green, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, over TN postcodes. A postcode starting TN5 6 gets the van to you fastest.
No need to move the vehicle. Draining takes place right there, be it a drive, a street near Wadhurst Village Hall, or a lay-by towards Little Pell Wood. Awkward to pin down, like the back of Wadhurst Library? By a border? Checking beats guessing, and so phone.
The short version for Sparrows Green people
Read the cap before you pour. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave the car off and call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it sits, anywhere around East Sussex.