Warners End: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
AdBlue already in the diesel tank? In that case set this page down a moment, leave the ignition and engine off, and phone 0333 366 0103. Caught before your engine runs, it is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Warners End. Not happened yet? Below, the page covers the why it occurs and the ways to avoid it altogether.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Many modern diesels around Hammerfield, as well as Warners End, carry on two fluids; your motor takes just your diesel. Your exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the fumes to clean it, from its own tank.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Many of cars have a single flap for the two, while some put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at every filling station call-out, again and again. Much less frequently, the AdBlue side is topped up — mostly from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. It's in the gap that the slip happens.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs around Warners End
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
Hurry comes from the warning. The car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a driveway off Martindale Road, or heading home in the car park outside Top Of The World.
Then the vehicle is strange. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Nothing stops the pour after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it occurs in Counters End or the middle of Warners End, it is the same few seconds.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Check these first, on a forecourt in Warners End or a driveway out in Green End. A few seconds, no more.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Trust the cap, not its position.
- The size. On many motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Look inside your fuel flap: plenty of cars have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by the diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver knows. Check when you pick up a rental or fleet car — from Hemel Hempstead's car park, perhaps — rather than when the warning comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Hertfordshire that is.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time in hand — never hurried on the side of Galley Hill.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft. 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 does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Stage five is off limits.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Warners End?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start your motor. On plenty of diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so do not switch the vehicle on. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is drawn from — so do not top up with diesel to thin it.
On a forecourt — Shell, Middlesex and Herts Boat Services Fuel Pump or any other — the staff will usually help roll your car away, when you ask. Your own driveway in Warners End is where it stays.
Where your motor has run already, stop safely then turn the car off. On the M1, under 5 miles from Warners End, that means the next exit. Distance matters — a quick hop across Warners End makes a smaller job than heading under 10 miles to St Albans — so say roughly how far it went.
When we turn up around Warners End, what happens?
Our van reaches the car wherever it stopped — your own drive, near Saint Mark's, Roman Catholic Church, or by Micklem Primary School. Which liquid went in, the quantity, and whether it ran: we ask since the answers set the work and quote. On the phone call itself, you are told our price — before dispatch.
Then that tank is emptied and the system rinsed thoroughly. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and your car is tested. After that our engineers fire it up and check it runs smoothly before leaving.
With pumps safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which your engine hasn't run need about half an hour after our engineers are there. The insurer usually wants an engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and you get both at the end. Payment is on the day, with no money upfront. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours whilst we're on the way.
About Warners End itself
Warners End is a suburban area in Hertfordshire, situated approximately 6.8 miles from St Albans and 23.6 miles from London. Warners End sits at an elevation of around 149 metres, characterised by terraced housing and a mix of local amenities. Warners End is bordered by nearby places such as Counters End, Gadebridge, and Fields End, forming part of the wider suburban landscape around St Albans.
Warners End and Hertfordshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Warners End is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Gadebridge and Fields End among them, across the HP postcode area. Fastest of all: quote a HP1 2 postcode to the van.
Moving the vehicle isn't necessary. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Warners End Valley, a side street near St Alban's Church: our technicians drain the vehicle where it is. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Gadebridge Community Centre, ring and ask instead of assuming.
For Warners End drivers, the short version
First, the cap; then, the pour. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it wherever it is, anywhere around Hertfordshire: switch the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103.