Woodlands: 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 for now, keep your ignition and motor off, then call 0333 366 0103. Around Woodlands, catching it before your motor runs normally means draining and a full flush where it stands. The remainder of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it does not — handy if you're reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Many newer diesels on the roads round Woodlands and East Hill carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank has a filler of its own. On a lot of vehicles 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 at every forecourt call-out, week in, week out. Much less regularly, the AdBlue side is topped up — mostly from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. The error lives in that gap.
Woodlands: how AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place
Carelessness seldom explains it. What does is three things lining up at once.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the vehicle, and letting it run out leads to limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off Knatts Valley Road, perhaps at The Rising Sun on the way home that evening.
Then, the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old car — since a rental car, a new vehicle or a company car places the fillers where your last one did not.
No part halts the pour once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Woodlands or out in Knatts Valley.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
A couple of seconds is all these take — so check them before you tip anything, on a drive in Heaverham or a forecourt around Woodlands.
- Check the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue ones are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there 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.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside Kemsing? Ask whoever drove it last before you set off, rather than when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
Anywhere in Kent the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Switch off after you park — flat ground, engine off, and never rushed by Tinkerpot Rise at the roadside.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, yes, but it does the trick.
- Both under a single flap? So confirm the lid on the diesel side is still closed before lifting the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Before you start your car, close the cap and look again that the diesel cap never opened off.
Spot at step two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? So stop just there. Never carry on to stage five.
Woodlands: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the engine. On plenty of diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch it on. Don't top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is drawn from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the car away from the pump if you are on a forecourt — the Texaco, the Sainsbury's or somewhere else. If you're on your own driveway in Woodlands, leave the vehicle where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the engine has already run. On the M20, under 3 miles from Woodlands, that means the next exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Woodlands is smaller work than a run of under 25 miles towards London, and so tell us.
What happens when we get there in Woodlands
Our van reaches the car wherever it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Woodlands Church, or outside Kemsing Primary School. The answers settle the work and our quote, so we ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it's run. You get that price by phone, before anyone heads out.
The fuel system is then purged thoroughly, after that tank is emptied. Unlike petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither washes out unaided. That is why it counts more. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. We don't leave until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once we get there, as long as the engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet at night beside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is part of many insurance policies — and so use the wait to check yours.
About Woodlands and where it is
Woodlands is a small hamlet in Kent, situated inland at an elevation of around 150 metres, and is located approximately 20 miles from London. Woodlands is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock and is surrounded by nearby places such as Knatts Valley and Knockmill. Woodlands sits within a wider landscape of rolling hills and valleys, typical of the Kent countryside.
AdBlue drains about Woodlands, and Kent beyond
As a rural hamlet, Woodlands shares its vans nearby places — Knockmill, Romney Street — all the way across TN postcodes and the wider area around them. Quote a postcode that starts TN15 6, and our van arrives quickest.
There's no need to move the vehicle. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Whitehill Wood, a side street near St Mary the Virgin: our engineers drain the vehicle where it sits. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of St Edith's Hall, ring and ask instead of guessing.
Woodlands drivers: the short version
Read the cap before you pour. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave the vehicle off and ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it sits, anywhere in Kent.