Speen: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103. Around Speen, catching it before your motor turns usually leaves a drain and a thorough flush on the spot. The rest of this page covers why it takes place and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you're reading ahead of time.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of current diesels on the roads around Speen and Walters Ash carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. AdBlue's own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to the exhaust, and there spraying cleans the gas.
There's a filler for each tank. Under one flap, side by side: that's the arrangement on a lot of cars. On others, AdBlue's filler sits under the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the pump all the time. The AdBlue side is fuelled far less often, normally from a bottle, and normally by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. That gap is where the error lives.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank happens in Speen
Carelessness seldom causes it. What does is three things lining up together.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, the vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Flowers Bottom Lane before work, or in the car park at The Black Horse on the way home.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Nothing halts the tip once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Speen or out in Flowers Bottom.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A few seconds is all these take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Bryants Bottom or a forecourt in Speen.
- Read the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually are not.
- The size. On many vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Check inside your fuel flap: many vehicles have a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler sits if it's not by your diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Saunderton? Ask the person who drove the vehicle last before leaving, rather than when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
For the day the light appears — anywhere you are around Buckinghamshire — a simple routine to use.
- Not in a rush on the side of Arch Way, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park and switch off properly.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew the cap works — after you have found your filler and read it.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the car, close the cap and check a second time that the diesel cap was never came off.
Spot at step two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? Then stop just there. Don't go on to step five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Speen?
Do not start your motor: that's where the short order of things begins. The fuel pump starts on many diesels as soon as the ignition goes on — and so keep it off. Diluting it with more diesel won't work, because AdBlue sinks to the base instead of mixing — and that is where your fuel is sucked from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the car away from the pump if you are at a forecourt — the Esso, the Murco or anywhere else. Your own driveway in Speen is the place it should stay.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your engine has already run. On the M40, under 5 miles from Speen, that means the next junction. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards St Albans, under 25 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Speen.
Speen: what takes place when our technicians arrive
The van comes to the car wherever it stopped — your own drive, beside Speen Village Hall, or outside Speen CofE VA School. Both the work and the quote rest on three answers — which liquid, what amount, and whether it has run — so we ask. On the phone call itself, you hear the price — ahead of anything else.
Emptying the tank comes next, followed by a thorough flush of the fuel system. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own. Filter flushed or, where it must be, swapped; clean diesel in; and then a check of the car. The motor is fired up next and tested to be sure it runs correctly, all before our technicians head off.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour once our technicians arrive, as long as your engine hasn't run — and the pumps we use are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet at night outside a house. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork an insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. While we travel, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty carry cover for misfuelling.
About Speen itself
Speen is a small village in Buckinghamshire, situated in the Chiltern Hills at an elevation of 172 metres. Speen lies approximately 31 miles west of London and 19 miles northwest of St Albans, with nearby places including Flowers Bottom, Darvillshill, and Lacey Green. Speen has a population of around 598 people, predominantly living in detached houses.
AdBlue drains across Buckinghamshire, Speen included
Darvillshill and Lacey Green are among the towns near Speen, a rural village, that the same vans cover, throughout HP postcodes. Our van reaches you fastest with a postcode starting HP27 0.
Your car does not need to move. Wherever it stands — beside Speen Baptist Chapel, on a layby en route to Dan Ridgley's Field, on a drive — that is where it is drained. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you're near a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Saint John The Evangelist.
The short version for Speen drivers
Before you pour, read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Keep the car switched off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, throughout Buckinghamshire.