Whitehill: 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 your motor and the ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a full flush, carried out right where the vehicle sits in Whitehill, is usually all it takes when caught before the engine runs. Here before the event? Then what follows covers why it comes about and how to prevent it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Diesel feeds your motor — yet plenty of modern diesels seen about Whitehill and Deadwater hold a second fluid too. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into your exhaust stream to clean it.
Each tank has its own filler. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in the boot or under the bonnet. At the pump, the diesel side is topped up constantly. The AdBlue side is fuelled far less commonly, usually from a bottle, and usually by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. The mistake grows in the gap between them.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs around Whitehill
Carelessness seldom causes it. What does is three things coming up together.
On a driveway off Petersfield Road before work, or in the car park at Woodlark on the way home: that's where the rushed top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue gets low your car warns you, and once it is gone, limp mode follows.
New-to-you cars are next, as well. Hire cars, new vehicles and company cars place their fillers differently, and habit reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, after begun, carries on. Whether it takes place in Hollywater or the middle of Whitehill, it is the same few seconds.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Whitehill forecourt or a drive out in Standford, take a couple of seconds over these before anything goes in.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not its position.
- Many vehicles give AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Look inside the fuel flap: plenty of vehicles carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by the diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before knows. Check when you pick up a rental or fleet car — at Liphook's car park, perhaps — rather than when the warning comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
Anywhere in Hampshire the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Not in a rush on the side of Lewis Close, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park and switch off first.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- The two under a single flap? Then confirm the cap on your diesel side stays shut before lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Only then, start your car: close the cap, check once more, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Find at step two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? Then stop just there. Never go on to stage five.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Whitehill?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. Don't switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel will not dilute it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of your tank, just where fuel is drawn from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it is the Shell or the Esso, ask the attendants to help push your car clear of the petrol pump. At home in Whitehill? So the car stays put.
Already run? Stop once it's safe, then switch off. The next junction means the place to come off if you are on the M3, under 15 miles from Whitehill. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Whitehill is less work than a trip of under 25 miles towards Chichester, and so tell us.
When our engineers get there in Whitehill, what takes place?
The van comes to the car wherever it has come to rest — your own driveway, near Whitehill Village Hall, or outside Woodlea Primary School. Both the work and the price depend on three answers — what fluid, which quantity, and if it's run — so our engineers ask. You get that quote on the phone, before anybody sets off.
Then your tank is emptied and your system flushed thoroughly. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and neither washes away unaided. That is why it matters more. Filter cleaned or, where it must be, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a check of the car. After that our technicians start it and confirm it runs smoothly before we leave.
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 roughly half an hour once our technicians arrive. Paying is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Before we get there, have a look at your policy; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Whitehill itself
Whitehill is a village in Hampshire, situated inland at an elevation of 96 metres, and is located near the villages of Hollywater and Blackmoor. Whitehill has a population of approximately 1719 residents, with a predominance of semi-detached housing. Whitehill is within commuting distance of London, being around 42.6 miles away, and is also close to the city of Chichester, which is 18.7 miles away. Whitehill sits near the town of Bordon, in the South East region of England.
AdBlue drains around Whitehill and across Hampshire
Whitehill is a rural village, and our vans that cover it also work the towns near it, Bordon and Blackmoor among them, across the GU postcode area. Quote a postcode beginning GU35 9, and the van arrives fastest.
Your car doesn't need to shift. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Tumulas, a lay-by on the way to Woolmer Forest, a driveway. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Tumulus? By a county line? Checking is better than assuming, and so ring.
Whitehill people: the short version
Pour no AdBlue till you have read the cap. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it wherever it is, wherever around Hampshire: switch the car off and ring 0333 366 0103.