Thurston 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 motor and your ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. Around Thurston Park, finding it before the engine runs normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Many modern diesels in Lower Island, as well as Thurston Park, carry on two liquids; the motor gets only the diesel. Your exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to clean it, from a separate tank.
Every tank has a filler of its own. Many of motors share a single flap for the two, whereas some move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at each forecourt call-out, week in, week out. The AdBlue side is filled far less often, usually from a bottle, and normally by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. Mistakes happen in that gap between the two.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank happens in Thurston Park
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
Hurry follows from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a drive off Millstream Close, or on the way home in the car park at The Monument.
Then the vehicle is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Third, the spout goes in: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it slides in just as easily, and after the pour starts, no part stops it. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Thurston Park or out in Whitstable.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Whether a Thurston Park forecourt or a driveway over in Tankerton, take a couple of seconds on these before anything goes in.
- Check the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally are not.
- Plenty of vehicles fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Look inside the fuel flap: plenty of cars carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by your diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Whitstable.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
On the day the light comes on — anywhere you are in Kent — a routine to use.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Old Bridge Road.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you've found the filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the vehicle on.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Stage five stays out.
Thurston Park: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Don't start the engine: that's how the short order of things begins. Keep your ignition off as well, because on plenty of diesels it alone runs your fuel pump. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where your fuel is sucked from — so don't top up with diesel to thin it.
The attendants at JET, Tesco or any forecourt will normally help to push your car away when asked. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Thurston Park.
When the motor has been run already, pull over safely then turn the car off. The next exit means the place to come off when you're on the M2, under 10 miles from Thurston Park. A short hop across Thurston Park is a smaller job than a run towards Canterbury, under 10 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
What takes place when our engineers get there around Thurston Park
Our van reaches the car anywhere it stopped — your own drive, beside Hamilton Road Evangelical Church, or outside Westmeads Community Infant School. Both the work and our price rest on three answers — which fluid, what quantity, and whether it's run — so we ask. That quote is given over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
Draining that tank comes next, followed by a full flush of your system. Much more than with petrol, it counts here: the crystals build up, certain metals corrode, and none of that clears away unaided, no matter how long it sits. Filter cleaned or, where needed, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a test of the vehicle. Before leaving, we fire it up and check that it's 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 need roughly half an hour once our engineers arrive. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Thurston Park, for a moment
Thurston Park is a suburban area located on the coast of Kent, with an elevation of around 8 metres above sea level. Thurston Park sits near the city of Canterbury, approximately 5.7 miles away, and is close to other nearby places such as Whitstable and South Tankerton. Thurston Park has a population of around 7099 people and is characterised by predominantly terraced housing. Thurston Park is also situated within commuting distance to London, being around 51.1 miles away.
Thurston Park and Kent: AdBlue drains across the area
Thurston Park is a residential suburb, and our teams that cover it also work the places around it, Church Street and South Tankerton among them, across the CT postcode area. Our van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting CT5 1.
The car does not need to shift. The drain happens on the spot, be it a driveway, a road near All Saints Church, or a layby on the way to Westmeads Recreation Ground. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of St John's Methodist Church, ring and ask instead of assuming.
The short version for Thurston Park motorists
Before you pour, read the cap. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it is, wherever in Kent: keep the car off then ring 0333 366 0103.