Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Base Green: Why It Happens
Keep the engine and ignition off and call 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Caught before your engine runs, it's normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is in Base Green. If you're reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Diesel goes to your motor — yet plenty of modern diesels driven round Base Green and Gleadless hold a second fluid too. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
There's a filler for every tank. Plenty of motors have a single flap for both, while others move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel gets filled on every filling station call-out, week in, week out. Far less frequently, the AdBlue side gets topped up — mostly from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. It is in that gap that the mistake happens.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur in Base Green?
It is hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Haste comes 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 drive off White Lane, or heading home in the car park outside Pig & Whistle Micropub.
The old car's cap is where the hand reaches — but a rental car, a new motor or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That's a second factor: a new motor.
A spout-topped bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, after started, carries on. Charnock Hall or the heart of Base Green: it is the same few seconds in both.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you tip anything, whether on a driveway in Intake or a forecourt around Base Green, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally aren't.
- 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 cars say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by the diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Darnall.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in South Yorkshire that is.
- Stop on level, motor off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Carter Hall Road.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" aloud while unscrewing it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- The two behind one flap? Then make sure the lid on the diesel filler stays shut ahead of raising the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the vehicle, close the cap and look again that the diesel cap was never opened off.
If at step two or three you find you have already poured into your diesel side, stop there. Do not go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Base Green already?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. Keep your ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels it by itself runs your pump. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where your fuel is sucked from.
Ask the attendants to help push the car clear of the petrol pump if you're at a forecourt — the Esso, the another forecourt nearby or anywhere else. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway around Base Green.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the motor has already run. The next junction is where to come off when you are on the M1, under 5 miles from Base Green. Roughly how far did it go? Crossing Base Green is less a job than a run of under 5 miles to Sheffield, so say.
Our arrival around Base Green, and what happens next
The van comes to the vehicle anywhere it stopped — your own drive, beside St Peter’s Church, or by Charnock Hall Primary Academy. Both the work and our quote depend on three answers — which fluid, what quantity, and whether it has run — so our technicians ask. No one heads out until you have had our price by phone.
Your system is then flushed thoroughly, after your tank is drained. Unlike petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and none of it washes out unaided. Hence it counts more. A test is at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and your filter is flushed or replaced if necessary. We do not go until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour once we get there, provided the engine has not run — and the pumps our technicians use are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet at night outside a house. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the documents your insurer asks for: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. It is worth looking at your policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About Base Green and where it is
Base Green is a suburban area located on the outskirts of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, sitting near the River Sheaf at an elevation of around 188 metres. Base Green is characterized by its semi-detached housing stock and is situated close to nearby places such as Charnock Hall and Gleadless Townend. Base Green has a population of approximately 6001 residents and is within a short distance of Sheffield city centre, around 3.5 miles away. Base Green is also relatively close to the national motorway network, with London being around 138 miles to the south.
AdBlue drains around Base Green and across South Yorkshire
Base Green is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Gleadless Townend and Herdings among them, across the S postcode area. Quickest of all: give a S12 3 postcode for the van.
Your car remains put. Anywhere it sits — beside Gleadless Methodist Church, on a layby heading to Charnock Recreation Grounds, on a drive — that is where it gets emptied. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Allied Snooker Club, ring and ask rather than assuming.
For Base Green people, the short version
Tip no AdBlue until you've read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, anywhere around South Yorkshire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same — so leave it off and call 0333 366 0103.