Spitalhatch: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Leave the motor and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait if AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Normally, if your engine hasn't turned, it's emptied and thoroughly purged where the car sits in Spitalhatch. Reading in advance? In that case the rest explains why it comes about and what to prevent it ever happening.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads about Spitalhatch and Mount Pleasant carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. AdBlue's own tank holds it, and from there it goes to your exhaust, where spraying treats the gas.
Every tank has a filler of its own. Many of vehicles share a single flap for the two, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, your diesel side is topped up all the time. Far less regularly, the AdBlue side gets topped up — mostly from a bottle, by a person thinking about where it goes. The mistake grows in that gap between them.
Spitalhatch: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Carelessness rarely explains it. Instead is three things coming up at once.
Haste follows from the warning. The car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a driveway off Spitalhatch, or on the way home in the car park at The Railway Arms.
Unfamiliar motors are next, too. Rentals, new motors and company cars put their fillers differently, and the hand reaches for the cap it 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, so nothing stops the tip once it has started. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Spitalhatch or out in Wilsom.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Newtown or a forecourt around Spitalhatch, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually aren't.
- Plenty of cars fit AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Open the flap and look for a label — plenty of vehicles show which goes in which filler right there.
- Can't find it beside the diesel filler? Then look beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook says where.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside Alton? Ask the person who drove the car last before you set off, rather than when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
For the day the warning appears — wherever you are around Hampshire — a simple routine to use.
- Switch off after you park — level ground, motor stopped, and never in a rush beside Wilsom Road at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the vehicle on.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Close the cap, then check once more — confirm your diesel filler remained shut the whole time. Only then, start your car.
Discover during the second or third step that the bottle went into the wrong tank? That's where you stop. Do not go on to stage five.
Spitalhatch: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Brief order, then. Top of it: your engine stays unstarted. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so do not switch the vehicle on. Thinning it with more diesel fails, since AdBlue sinks to the base rather than blending — and that's where the fuel is drawn from.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it is the the nearest petrol station or the BP, ask the staff to help push the car away from the pump. Your own driveway around Spitalhatch is where it stays.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. The next junction is the place to leave when you're on the M3, under 10 miles from Spitalhatch. About how far did it go? Crossing Spitalhatch is less work than a run of under 25 miles to Winchester, so tell us.
When our technicians arrive around Spitalhatch, what happens?
The van comes to your car anywhere it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Saint Mary's RC Church, or by Alton Infant School. We ask what was put in, about how much, and if it has run, because those answers decide this work and the price. On the phone call itself, you hear our quote — before dispatch.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, after that tank is cleared. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears out unaided. Hence it counts more. The fuel filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. Before we leave, our engineers fire it up and check that it is running properly.
Unrun vehicles mostly mean a half-hour visit after arrival. The kit is safe on a live forecourt, and quiet enough for a residential street after dark. Nothing upfront; you settle up that day. At the end, the VAT invoice and a report from the engineer go to you for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — so use the wait to check yours.
About Spitalhatch itself
Spitalhatch is a suburban area situated on the riverside in Hampshire, with a relatively low elevation of 106 metres. Spitalhatch lies within the South East region of England, approximately 43.7 miles from London and 16.2 miles from the nearest city, Winchester. Spitalhatch is characterised by its predominant flat housing and a population of around 4242 residents.
Spitalhatch and Hampshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Being a residential suburb, Spitalhatch shares its vans nearby areas — Anstey, Alton — all the way through GU postcodes and the wider area around them. A postcode starting GU34 2 gets the van to you fastest.
The vehicle does not need to move. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Alton Town Park, a side street near Curtis Museum: our technicians drain the vehicle where it is. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of War Memorial.
The short version for Spitalhatch motorists
Read the cap before you pour. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave the vehicle off then call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it sits, anywhere in Hampshire.