How It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Box
Keep the engine and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Around Box, finding it before the engine runs usually means draining and a full flush where it stands. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it doesn't.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Plenty of modern diesels on the roads round Box and Coed Cae carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Its own tank holds it, and from there it is sent to the exhaust, where a spray treats the gas.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Plenty of cars have a single flap for both, while others move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the pump goes on constantly. The AdBlue side is fuelled far less frequently, normally from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. It is in the gap that the error happens.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs in Box
Carelessness seldom explains it. Instead is three things lining up at once.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out completely, your vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Penallt Road before work, or in the car park outside The Jock Stein Lounge on the way home.
Then the car is new. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and your hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Nothing stops the pour after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It's seconds, whether out in Penallt or bang in the heart of Box.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Check these before pouring, at a forecourt in Box or a drive out in Mount Pleasant. A few seconds, that's all.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap normally is not. Read it rather than going by position.
- Plenty of cars give AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Open the flap and look for a label — plenty of vehicles mark what goes in each inlet right there.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by the diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before knows. Check as you collect a rental or company car — at Llanelli's car park, perhaps — rather than once the warning comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
On the day the light comes on — wherever it is across Carmarthenshire — a simple routine to use.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time to spare — never rushing on the side of Frondeg Terrace.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it works.
- The diesel cap stays on. When both share a flap, confirm it's closed before lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, then check again — making sure the diesel cap stayed shut throughout. Only then, start your car.
Find during the second or third stage that AdBlue went in the wrong tank? That is where you stop. Stage five stays out.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Box?
Brief order, then. First: the motor remains unstarted. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch the vehicle on. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where the fuel is pulled from.
The attendants at BP, Morrisons or any forecourt will usually lend a hand pushing the vehicle away when you ask. If you are on your own driveway in Box, leave the car where it sits.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Leave the M4 — under 5 miles out of Box — at the next junction. Distance counts — a quick hop across Box is a smaller job than heading under 10 miles to Swansea — so say about how far it went.
Our arrival in Box, and what happens next
Our van reaches the car wherever it stopped — your own driveway, beside Stebonheath Park, or outside the local primary school. Which liquid got in, the quantity, and if it ran: our technicians ask because the answers decide the work and price. During the call itself, you hear the price — before dispatch.
The fuel system is then flushed thoroughly, once the tank is drained. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. Testing is at the end: before that, fresh diesel is added, and the filter is cleaned or replaced if necessary. We don't go until it has been started and is running correctly.
Unrun cars mostly mean a half-hour visit from the moment we arrive. The equipment is fine on a live forecourt, and quiet enough for a driveway after dark. Nothing upfront; you settle up on the day. Afterwards, the VAT invoice and the report from the engineer go to you for your insurer. Before we get there, have a look at your policy; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Box
Box is a suburban area in Carmarthenshire, situated near the coast of Wales, with an elevation of around 26 metres. Box lies close to the nearby places of Penallt, Capel, and Llanerch, and is approximately 9.8 miles from the city of Swansea. Box has a population of around 5326 people, predominantly living in terraced housing. Box is also within commuting distance to larger cities, with London being around 172.8 miles away.
AdBlue drains in Box and across Carmarthenshire
Throughout SA postcodes, the vans that cover Box — a residential suburb — work the surrounding locations too, Llanerch and Capel among them. Fastest of all: give a SA15 1 postcode for our van.
The vehicle doesn't need to move. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street close to Christadelphian Hall, a lay-by on the way to Penygaer Playing Fields, a driveway. Awkward to explain, like the back of The Salvation Army? By a border? Checking beats guessing, and so ring.
Box people: the short version
Tip no AdBlue until you have read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Keep it off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, throughout Carmarthenshire.