Why It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Woodend
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and your ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. Around Woodend, finding it before the motor turns usually leaves draining and a thorough flush where it stands. Here in advance? Then what follows explains how it happens and what to prevent it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Not one fluid but two: that's what plenty of newer diesels around Woodend and Blackcat carry, with diesel for your motor. Its own tank holds it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, where spraying treats the fumes.
Different tanks, separate fillers. On a lot of motors the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel gets filled on every forecourt call-out, again and again. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less regularly. It is in that gap that the slip lives.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Woodend: how it happens
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
Hurry follows from the warning. The car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a driveway off Dunmow Road, or on the way home in the car park outside the pub in the village.
The old car's filler is where the hand goes — but a hire car, a new motor or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That is the second thing: an unfamiliar motor.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the pour once it has started. Whether it occurs in Beauchamp Roding or the middle of Woodend, it is the same few seconds.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
A couple of seconds is all these take — so check them before you pour anything, on a drive in Norwood End or a forecourt around Woodend.
- Check the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are often blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually are not.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- A label inside the fuel flap frequently shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Look for it.
- Cannot see it beside the diesel filler? Then check beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the owner's manual says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Sawbridgeworth.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
Wherever in Essex the light comes on, this is a routine for that day.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with your engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Horsecroft.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud 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 — then leave the car on.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before you start your car, close the cap and check a second time that the diesel cap was never opened off.
Spot at step two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? So stop right there. Don't go on to step five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Woodend?
Brief order, then. First: the engine remains unstarted. Don't switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Do not top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the car away from the pump if you're on a forecourt — the BP, the Applegreen or somewhere else. If you're on your own driveway around Woodend, leave the vehicle where it stands.
If your motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. On the M11, under 5 miles from Woodend, that means the next junction. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Woodend is smaller a job than a run of under 10 miles towards Chelmsford, and so tell us.
Our arrival in Woodend, and what happens next
Our engineers come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Matching Green Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School, near St Botolph, Beauchamp Roding or on your own drive. The answers decide this work and the price, and so we ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has run. On the phone call itself, you hear our price — ahead of anything else.
Then your tank is emptied and the fuel system rinsed thoroughly. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own — which is why that matters more here than with petrol. Filter flushed or, where needed, swapped; fresh diesel in; then a test of your vehicle. We don't leave until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour after we arrive, provided your motor has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet after dark outside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is included in many insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About Woodend and where it is
Woodend is a small hamlet in Essex, situated inland at an elevation of 76 metres, and is located near the larger city of Chelmsford. Woodend comprises predominantly detached housing and is home to a population of around 506 residents. Woodend is close to other nearby places such as Beauchamp Roding, Abbess Roding, and Abbess End, and is about 24.9 miles from London.
AdBlue drains around Woodend and across Essex
Abbess Roding and Abbess End are among the places near Woodend, a rural hamlet, that the same vans cover, over CM postcodes. A postcode starting CM5 0 gets our van to you fastest.
No need to move the car. Wherever it stands — near St Edmund, Abbess Roding, on a layby en route to Butthatch Wood, on a drive — that's where it is drained. Guessing won't help behind St Mary the Virgin, Little Laver, close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe; ring and check.
For Woodend drivers, the short version
Always, the cap; after that, the pour. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere around Essex, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless — so leave it off and phone 0333 366 0103.