Green Street: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and your ignition off then call 0333 366 0103. A drain and a thorough flush, done right where the vehicle stands in Green Street, is usually what it needs if caught before your motor runs. Not happened yet? Further down, the page explains the reasons it takes place and the how to prevent it altogether.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Many modern diesels on the roads about Green Street and Hatfield carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank comes with a filler of its own. Other cars keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot more place the two together under one flap. At the petrol pump, the diesel side gets filled all the time. Seldom filled, AdBlue usually goes in out of a bottle, tipped by someone who must stop and think which filler it needs. That gap is where the slip lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank happen in Green Street?
It is seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the car, and running dry leads to limp mode — so a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Fox Lane, perhaps at The Huntsman Inn on the way home that evening.
New-to-you vehicles are next, as well. Hire cars, new vehicles and company vehicles put their fillers differently, and habit goes for the cap it used on the old one.
No part halts the pour after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It's seconds, be it out in Napleton or bang in the heart of Green Street.
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 Kempsey or a forecourt in Green Street.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- Lift the flap and check for a label — many motors mark what belongs in which filler right there.
- Cannot find it next to your diesel inlet? In that case look beneath the bonnet or in the boot — the owner's manual says where.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Worcestershire Parkway? Check with whoever drove the vehicle last before you set off, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around Worcestershire that is.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Post Office Lane.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew the cap works — once you have located the filler and read it.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where both sit under a flap, confirm it is shut before the bottle comes up.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start your car, shut the cap and check a second time that your 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.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Green Street?
Brief list, then. First: your engine remains off. Do not switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel will not thin it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of the tank, right where the fuel is taken from.
On a forecourt — Esso, Tesco or another — the attendants will normally help roll your car clear, if you ask. If you're on your own driveway around Green Street, leave it where it sits.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if the motor has already run. The next junction means the place to leave if you're on the M5, under a mile from Green Street. About how far did it go? Crossing Green Street is smaller work than a run of under 5 miles towards Worcester, so say.
Our arrival around Green Street, and what happens next
Wherever your car has stopped, be it outside Kempsey Primary School, beside Kempsey Youth Centre or on your own drive, our van comes to it. Our technicians ask what was put in, about how much, and if it's run, since the replies determine this work and the price. On the call itself, you are told our quote — ahead of dispatch.
Draining the tank comes next, followed by a full flush of your 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 doesn't wash out on its own. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the car is tested. We do not go until it has been started and is running properly.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once we arrive, provided the motor has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a live forecourt and quiet after dark beside a house. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Before we get there, take a look at your insurance documents; many include cover for misfuelling.
About Green Street
Green Street is a small village in Worcestershire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 34 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Green Street lies close to the city of Worcester, approximately 3.9 miles away, and is also near to other local places such as Napleton, Stonehall, and Brook End. Green Street has a population of around 527 people and is located in a rural area of the West Midlands region. Green Street is relatively distant from London, at a distance of 98.3 miles.
AdBlue drains about Green Street, and Worcestershire beyond
As a village, Green Street has the same vans as nearby areas — Stonehall, Brook End — all the way through WR postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. The van reaches you fastest with a postcode starting WR5 3.
The vehicle stays put. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street close to Kempsey Village Hall, a lay-by on the way to Pirton Gorse, a drive. Assuming doesn't help behind Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, on a boundary, or somewhere awkward to describe; phone and check.
Green Street drivers: the short version
Pour nothing until you've read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless, leave it off and phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it waits, anywhere across Worcestershire.