Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Willesden Green
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Around Willesden Green, catching it before the engine runs usually leaves draining and a full flush on the spot. The remainder of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it does not — useful if you're reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
Not one fluid but two: that is what plenty of modern diesels near Willesden Green and Kensal Green carry, with diesel for your engine. Your exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the fumes to clean them, from its own tank.
Each tank has one filler of its own. Under one flap, side by side: that is the arrangement on many vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in the boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. The AdBlue side is topped up far less regularly, usually from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. The slip lives in that gap.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank happen around Willesden Green?
It's hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the car, and running dry means limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off All Souls Avenue, or at The Rising Sun on the way home that evening.
Then the vehicle is new. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spouted bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, after begun, carries on. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Willesden Green or out in Brondesbury Park.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Before you pour anything, whether on a drive in College Park or a forecourt around Willesden Green, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Go by the cap, not its position.
- The size. On many cars the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler is if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Kensal Rise? Ask the person who drove the vehicle last before leaving, not once the light goes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
When the light comes on, wherever around Greater London, use this routine.
- Turn off after you park — flat ground, engine off, and never in a rush by Donnington Road at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it does the trick.
- Both behind one flap? So confirm the lid on the diesel side stays shut before lifting the bottle.
- Finish when your tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; before that, tip slowly through its built-in spout.
- Close the cap, then look again — confirm the diesel cap remained closed the whole time. After that, start your car.
Find during the second or third step that the bottle went in the wrong tank? That's where you stop. Stage five is off limits.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, in Willesden Green?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the engine. On many diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so do not switch the car on. Filling up with diesel won't thin it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of your tank, just where the fuel is taken from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the car away from the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the Shell, the Texaco or anywhere else. Leave it where it is if you are on your own drive in Willesden Green.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. On the M1, under 3 miles from Willesden Green, that means the next exit. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Westminster, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Willesden Green.
Willesden Green: what happens when we get there
Outside Donnington Primary School, close to Willesden Sports Centre or on your own drive: wherever the car has stopped, we come to it. Our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has run, because the answers settle this work and the quote. That quote comes over the phone, before any van leaves.
After that: draining, then a full flush of the whole system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why the flush counts more here than with petrol. After your filter has been cleaned — or replaced, where required — fresh diesel goes in, and finally your vehicle gets tested. Before we go, we start it and check that it is running smoothly.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour after our technicians arrive, as long as your motor has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a live forecourt and quiet after dark outside a house. Nothing in advance; you settle up on the day. At the end, a VAT invoice and the report from the engineer go to you for your insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Willesden Green
Willesden Green is a suburban area in northwest London, situated approximately 4.9 miles from the city centre. Willesden Green sits at an elevation of 61 metres, surrounded by nearby places such as Brondesbury Park and Kensal Rise. Willesden Green is predominantly composed of flat housing, with a population of around 11,984 residents. Willesden Green is close to the neighbouring area of Willesden, with Westminster just 5.2 miles away.
AdBlue drains about Willesden Green, and Greater London beyond
Throughout NW postcodes, our vans covering Willesden Green — a residential suburb — work the surrounding spots too, Kensal Rise and Willesden included. Our van reaches you fastest with a postcode starting NW10 3.
The car doesn't need to move. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street close to St Mary Magdalen RC Church, a lay-by on the way to Chelmsford Square Tennis Courts & Gardens, a driveway. If you're near a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Willesden Synagogue, ring and ask rather than assuming.
For Willesden Green people, the short version
Always, the cap; after that, the pour. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it is, anywhere across Greater London: keep the car off then call 0333 366 0103.