Hixon: 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 your motor and your ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. Normally, if your engine hasn't run, it is emptied and fully purged where your car is around Hixon. The rest of this page explains why it occurs and how to make sure it doesn't — handy if you are reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of current diesels on the roads around Hixon and Shirleywich carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, and there a spray treats the gas.
Different tanks, different fillers. Many of motors share a single flap for the two, while some put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is filled at the pump all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less often, normally from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. The mistake grows in that gap between the two.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Hixon: how it takes place
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things coincide.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the car, and letting it run dry leads to limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Highfield Road, perhaps at The Bank House on the way home after work.
The old car's cap is where your hand goes — yet a hire car, a new car or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That's the second thing: a strange motor.
No part halts the tip after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it occurs in Pasturefields or the middle of Hixon, it's the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Check these first, on a forecourt in Hixon or a driveway out in Amerton. Seconds, that's all.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Go by the cap, not its position.
- On many vehicles, the size tells: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- Open the flap and look for a label — many motors mark which goes in which filler just there.
- The handbook says which it is when the filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Whoever had it before knows. Check as you pick up a hire car or company car — at Rugeley Trent Valley's car park, say — not once the warning appears.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Staffordshire that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Walnut Crest, not on a slope, not with the motor running: park and switch off first.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap works — once you've located the filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the vehicle, shut the cap and look again that the diesel cap never came off.
Find at step two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? So stop right there. Leave out step five entirely.
Hixon: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
What follows is a short order of things, beginning with not starting the motor. Don't switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Do not top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where your fuel is pulled from.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it is the Harvest Energy or the Esso, ask the staff to help roll the vehicle clear of the pump. Your own driveway around Hixon is where it stays.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your engine has already run. Come off the M6 — under 10 miles out of Hixon — at the first exit. About how far did it go? Crossing Hixon is less work than a trip of under 15 miles to Lichfield, and so tell us.
What happens when our engineers get there around Hixon
The van comes to the car anywhere it stopped — your own drive, beside Hixon Memorial Hall, or outside St Peter's CofE Primary School. Which liquid was put in, the quantity, and if it ran: our engineers ask since those answers decide both work and quote. That quote comes on the call, before any van leaves.
Emptying the tank comes next, followed by a thorough 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, and so it doesn't wash out on its own. The filter flushed or, where needed, replaced; clean diesel in; then a test of the vehicle. After that our engineers fire it up and make sure it runs smoothly before we go.
Using pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where the engine hasn't run need roughly half an hour once our engineers are there. No money in advance; you settle up on the day. At the end, the VAT invoice and a report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it's worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Hixon, briefly
Hixon is a small village in Staffordshire, situated in the West Midlands region of England, with a population of around 1102 people. Hixon sits at an elevation of 104 metres, approximately 12 miles from the city of Lichfield and 121 miles from London. Hixon is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock and is surrounded by nearby places such as Pasturefields and Stowe-by-Chartley. Hixon remains a quiet, rural community with a strong sense of local identity.
AdBlue drains about Hixon, and Staffordshire beyond
Over ST postcodes, our vans covering Hixon — a rural village — work the nearby spots too, Little Ingestre and Stowe-by-Chartley included. Quickest of all: give a ST18 0 postcode for the van.
Moving your car is not needed. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Hixon Parish Council Playing Field, a side street near St Peter's: our technicians drain the vehicle where it is. Guessing doesn't help behind St John the Baptist, close to a border, or somewhere awkward to describe; phone and check.
For Hixon motorists, the short version
Tip nothing until you have read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank regardless? Keep the vehicle off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, throughout Staffordshire.