The Park: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and your ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103. Usually, when your engine has not turned, it is drained and thoroughly cleaned where the car sits around The Park. The rest of this page explains why it occurs and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you are reading before it has happened.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Not one liquid but two: that's what plenty of newer diesels around The Park and Hilden Park run, with diesel for your engine. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
There is a filler on each tank. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the layout on a lot of motors. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Diesel goes in at every forecourt call-out, again and again. Seldom filled, AdBlue usually goes in out of a bottle, poured by a driver who has to stop and think what filler it needs. That gap is where the error lives.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in The Park: how it happens
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things coincide.
Haste follows from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a drive off Old London Road, or heading home in the car park outside The Royal Oak.
The old car's filler is where the hand goes — but a rental car, a new car or a company car keeps the fillers somewhere else. That is the second thing: a new vehicle.
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. Cage Green or the heart of The Park: it takes the same few seconds in both.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Trench Wood or a forecourt in The Park, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- The size. On many motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Open the filler flap and check for a label — many vehicles show what belongs in each inlet just there.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler is if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Tonbridge, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever across Kent, use this routine.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time in hand — not hurried on the side of Manor Grove.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — after you've located the filler and read it.
- Both under a single flap? So confirm the cap on your diesel filler stays closed ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check again. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
Find at the second or third step that the bottle went into the diesel tank? That's where you stop. Step five stays out.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around The Park already?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the motor. On many diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch it on. Filling up with diesel won't weaken it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the bottom of the tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
The staff at Shell, Sainsbury's or any forecourt will normally lend a hand to push the vehicle away if you ask. Leave it where it is if you are on your own driveway around The Park.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your motor has already run. The next junction means where to leave when you're on the M26, under 10 miles from The Park. About how far did it go? Crossing The Park is smaller work than a trip of under 50 miles to London, and so tell us.
Our arrival in The Park, and what happens next
We come to the car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Slade Primary School and Attached Unit for Children with Hearing Impairment, close to EM Forster Theatre or on your own drive. The replies determine this work and our quote, and so our engineers ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it's run. Nobody heads out before you have heard our quote by phone.
The fuel system is then purged thoroughly, after the tank is drained. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and none of it clears out unaided. Hence it matters more. Your filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. After that our engineers start the engine and confirm it runs smoothly before leaving.
If your engine has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About The Park itself
The Park is a suburban area in Kent, situated on the riverside with an elevation of 38 metres, and is located near Cage Green, Tonbridge, and Barden Park. The Park is characterized by its semi-detached housing and is approximately 27 miles from London. The Park sits within the South East region of England, close to the nearby city of London. The Park has a population of around 4809 residents.
AdBlue drains around The Park and across Kent
Tonbridge and Barden Park are among the towns around The Park, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, over TN postcodes. Fastest of all: give a TN9 1 postcode for our van.
No need to shift your car. Wherever it stands — beside St Saviour, Tonbridge, on a layby heading to Tonbridge Castle, on a drive — that is where it is cleared. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of St Peter and St Paul.
In short, for The Park drivers
First, the cap; after that, the tip. AdBlue in the diesel tank regardless? Leave the car off and phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, across Kent.