How It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Cwm-y-glo
Keep your motor and ignition off and call 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before your motor runs, it is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Cwm-y-glo. The remainder of this page covers why it occurs and how to ensure it does not — useful if you're reading before it has happened.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
No single liquid but two: that is how plenty of newer diesels near Cwm-y-glo and Gors-goch carry, with diesel feeding the engine. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust stream to clean it.
Every tank has one filler of its own. Plenty of cars share a single flap for the two, while others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, your diesel side is topped up constantly. Seldom filled, AdBlue normally comes from a bottle, tipped by a driver who must stop and think which filler it needs. Mistakes happen in that gap between the two.
Cwm-y-glo: how AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things coincide.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out completely, the vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Carmarthen Road before work, or in the car park outside The Phoenix on the way home.
Then the car is strange. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spout-topped bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, after begun, keeps on. It takes a few seconds, be it in Cefneithin or bang in the centre of Cwm-y-glo.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A couple of seconds is all these take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Foelgastell or a forecourt in Cwm-y-glo.
- Blue and lettering: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- Check inside your fuel flap: many motors carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by your diesel cap, it is in your 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 — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Llandybie.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
Wherever across Carmarthenshire the light comes on, this is a routine for that day.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Heol-y-Dre.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" aloud while unscrewing it. It seems silly. It does the trick.
- The two under a single flap? So make sure the cap on the diesel side is still closed ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Only then, start the car: close the cap, check again, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Skip stage five altogether.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Cwm-y-glo?
Brief list, then. Top of it: your motor stays off. Leave the ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels switching it on by itself starts your fuel pump. Diluting it with extra diesel won't work, because AdBlue sinks to the base rather than blending — and that's where your fuel is pulled from.
If you are on a forecourt, whether it is the Esso or the Texaco, ask the attendants to help push your car away from the pump. At home around Cwm-y-glo? So the car stays where it is.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Come off the M4 — under 5 miles out of Cwm-y-glo — at the next junction. A short hop across Cwm-y-glo is a smaller job than a run towards Swansea, under 15 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
When our technicians get there around Cwm-y-glo, what occurs?
The van comes to the vehicle wherever it stopped — your own driveway, beside Tabor, or outside the local primary school. We ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it's run, because the replies decide the work and our price. During the call itself, you are told the price — ahead of anything else.
Your system is then purged thoroughly, after the tank is cleared. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that counts more here than with petrol. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. The motor is fired up next and checked to confirm it runs smoothly, all before we leave.
If your engine hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. While we travel, take a look at your insurance documents; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Cwm-y-glo itself
Cwm-y-glo is a small village in Carmarthenshire, situated on the banks of a river at an elevation of around 150 metres. Cwm-y-glo lies near the communities of Cefneithin, Cross Hands, and Gorslas, and is approximately 14 miles from Swansea. Cwm-y-glo has a population of around 769 people, predominantly living in detached houses.
AdBlue drains in Cwm-y-glo and across Carmarthenshire
Cross Hands and Gorslas are among the places near Cwm-y-glo, a village, that the same vans cover, throughout SA postcodes. Our van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting SA14 6.
Moving the car isn't necessary. Draining takes place on the spot, whether a driveway, a road near Cross Hands Public Hall & Cinema, or a lay-by towards Parc Cefneithin. Guessing doesn't help behind Tabernacle, on a boundary, or anywhere hard to pin down; phone and ask.
For Cwm-y-glo drivers, the short version
Pour nothing until you have read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless, leave the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it waits, anywhere in Carmarthenshire.