AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Wooburn Moor: Why It Happens and How to Prevent It
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? In that case set this page down a moment, leave the ignition and engine off, and call 0333 366 0103. A drain and a full flush, carried out just where the car stands in Wooburn Moor, is usually all it takes if caught before the motor runs. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Diesel goes to the motor — but plenty of newer diesels seen around Wooburn Moor and Flackwell Heath hold another fluid as well. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust stream and cleans it.
Every tank has a filler of its own. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on a lot of vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits under the bonnet or in your boot instead. Filling the diesel side at the petrol pump happens constantly. The AdBlue side is fuelled far less frequently, usually from a bottle, and normally by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between the two.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Wooburn Moor: how it occurs
It is seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Haste comes from the warning. The car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a driveway off White Hill, or on the way home in the car park outside The Falcon.
Then the car is strange. 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.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, and so nothing stops the pour after it has started. Whether it takes place in Wooburn Green or the middle of Wooburn Moor, it is the same few seconds.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Wooburn Moor forecourt or a drive over in Forty Green, take a couple of seconds over these before any is poured in.
- Position can mislead; the cap doesn't. AdBlue caps tend to be blue or carry the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps usually don't.
- On plenty of cars, the size tells: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Lift the filler flap and check for a label — many motors show what goes in each filler right there.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that is where the filler is if it's not by your diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park at Beaconsfield? Check with whoever drove the car last before you set off, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Buckinghamshire that is.
- Switch off after you park — level ground, engine stopped, and never in a rush by London Road at the roadside.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" out loud as unscrewing it. It sounds daft. It works.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Stop once the tank fills or the bottle is empty; until then, tip gently using the built-in spout.
- Only then, start the vehicle: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Discover during the second or third stage that the bottle went into the diesel tank? That's where you stop. Don't go on to stage five.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Wooburn Moor?
Short list, then. Top of it: the motor stays off. Leave the ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels switching it on alone starts the pump. Filling up with diesel will not dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of your tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
The staff at Esso, Shell or another forecourt will normally help to push the vehicle clear when asked. Leave it where it is if you're on your own drive in Wooburn Moor.
If the motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. The next junction means where to come off if you're on the M40, under a mile from Wooburn Moor. Distance matters — a short hop across Wooburn Moor makes a smaller job than driving under 25 miles to St Albans — so say roughly how far it went.
Wooburn Moor: what takes place when our technicians turn up
The van reaches the car anywhere it has come to rest — your own drive, near St Mary's Pastoral Centre, or outside Wooburn Green Primary School. Both the work and our price depend on three replies — which fluid, what quantity, and whether it has run — so we ask. During the phone call itself, you are told our price — ahead of anything else.
Draining the tank comes next, then a full flush of your system. Much more than with petrol, it matters with AdBlue: crystals form, certain metals corrode, and nothing clears away unaided, no matter how long it is left. After the filter has been flushed — or renewed, where required — clean diesel goes in, and then the car gets tested. We do not go until it has been fired up and is running smoothly.
If the motor has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. It's worth looking at your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Wooburn Moor itself
Wooburn Moor is a suburban area in Buckinghamshire, situated near the River Thames at an elevation of 73 metres. Wooburn Moor lies within the commuter belt, approximately 24.8 miles from London and 18.1 miles from St Albans. Wooburn Moor is characterised by its semi-detached housing and proximity to nearby places such as Wooburn Green, Holtspur, and Loudwater.
AdBlue drains across Buckinghamshire, Wooburn Moor included
Wooburn Moor is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Holtspur and Loudwater among them, across the HP postcode area. Fastest of all: quote a HP10 0 postcode for our van.
No need to shift your car. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Watery Lane Open Space, a side street near David Lloyd Clubs: our technicians drain the car where it is. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Loudwater Boys Club/Centre, ring and ask instead of assuming.
Wooburn Moor people: the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave the vehicle off then ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it waits, anywhere around Buckinghamshire.