Baddeley Green: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Leave your motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Normally, when your engine has not run, it's drained and fully flushed where the car is around Baddeley Green. Nothing happened yet? Further down, the rest of the page covers the why it occurs and the how to avoid it altogether.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Diesel feeds the motor — yet plenty of modern diesels driven round Baddeley Green and Light Oaks hold a second liquid too. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank has its own filler. Plenty of vehicles share a single flap for both, whereas others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, your diesel side gets filled constantly. The AdBlue side is fuelled far less commonly, usually from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. It's in the gap that the error happens.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Baddeley Green: how it occurs
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the vehicle, and running dry leads to limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Roundfields, or at The Sportsman on the way home after work.
Then, the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old vehicle — because a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car places the fillers where your last one didn't.
Nothing stops the tip once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Baddeley Edge or the heart of Baddeley Green: it takes the same few seconds either way.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Norton Green or a forecourt around Baddeley Green, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Check the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue ones are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally aren't.
- Many cars fit AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Lift the filler flap and check for a label — many cars show which goes in each filler just there.
- Can't see it beside the diesel inlet? Then look beneath the bonnet or in the boot — the owner's manual says which.
- The person who drove the car last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park outside Longport, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
On the day the warning comes on — anywhere it is in Staffordshire — a routine to use.
- Not in a rush on the side of The Homestead, not on a slope, not with the engine running: park then switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it works.
- The two under a single flap? So confirm the lid on the diesel filler stays shut before lifting the bottle.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the vehicle, shut the cap and look again that your diesel cap was never opened off.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Leave out stage five altogether.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, in Baddeley Green?
Don't start your engine: that's where the short order of things begins. Leave your ignition off as well, because on many diesels it by itself runs your pump. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue settles to the bottom instead of blending — and that's where your fuel is drawn from.
If you're at a forecourt, whether it is the Shell or the Esso, ask the attendants to help roll the vehicle clear of the pump. Your own drive in Baddeley Green is where it should stay.
If the motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. On the M6, under 10 miles from Baddeley Green, that means the next junction. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Stoke-on-Trent, under 5 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Baddeley Green.
What takes place when we turn up around Baddeley Green
Our technicians come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Greenways Primary Academy, near St. Philip and St. James or on your own drive. The replies settle this work and the price, and so our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. During the call itself, you are told our price — ahead of anything else.
Draining that tank comes next, followed by a full flush of the fuel system. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own. The filter flushed or, where it must be, replaced; fresh diesel in; then a check of the vehicle. The motor is fired up next and checked to be sure it runs correctly, all before we head off.
With pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the motor hasn't run need roughly half an hour once our technicians arrive. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Before we get there, have a look at your insurance documents; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Baddeley Green and where it is
Baddeley Green is a suburban area located on the outskirts of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, situated near the River Trent at an elevation of around 150 metres. Baddeley Green sits close to nearby places such as Baddeley Edge and Stockton Brook, and is approximately 3 miles from the city centre. Baddeley Green has a population of around 3801 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing. Baddeley Green is also within commuting distance to larger cities, with London being around 137 miles away.
Baddeley Green and Staffordshire: AdBlue drains across the area
As a residential suburb, Baddeley Green shares its vans nearby places — Stockton Brook, Milton — right across ST postcodes and the surrounding area around them. A postcode starting ST2 7 gets our van to you fastest.
Moving the car isn't needed. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Greenways Primary Academy, a side street near Zion Methodist Church: our engineers drain the car where it sits. Assuming doesn't help at the back of Moorlands Village Hall, close to a border, or somewhere awkward to pin down; ring and check.
For Baddeley Green motorists, the short version
Always, the cap; after that, the tip. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway, leave it off and call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it waits, anywhere across Staffordshire.