Lakeside: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Pause reading a minute if your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, and phone 0333 366 0103. Normally, if your motor has not run, it is emptied and thoroughly rinsed where your vehicle is in Lakeside. Here in advance? In that case what follows explains why it comes about and how to stop it ever happening.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of newer diesels in Greenlands, like those in Lakeside, carry on two fluids; the engine takes only your diesel. AdBlue's own tank holds it, and from there it is sent to your exhaust, and there a spray cleans the gas.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Plenty of cars share a single flap for both, while others put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel gets filled at every filling station call-out, week in, week out. The AdBlue side is topped up 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 them.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Lakeside: how it occurs
Carelessness seldom causes it. What does is three things coming up at once.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, the car goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Arrowdale Road before work, or in the car park outside The Mayfly on the way home.
The old car's cap is where your hand goes — yet a hire car, a new motor or a company car keeps the fillers somewhere else. That is a second thing: a strange vehicle.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the tip once it has started. Lodge Park or the middle of Lakeside: it is the same few seconds in both.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A few seconds is all the checks take — so check them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Abbeydale or a forecourt in Lakeside.
- Where it sits can mislead; the cap doesn't. AdBlue ones are often blue or bear the word "AdBlue" — diesel caps usually do not.
- On plenty of cars, the size gives it away: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Lift the flap and look for a label — plenty of cars mark which goes in each filler just there.
- The handbook shows which it lives when your filler isn't next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Redditch.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
For the day the warning appears — anywhere you are around Worcestershire — a routine to use.
- Not in a rush on the side of Studley Road, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park then switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the car on.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the vehicle, close the cap and look a second time that your diesel cap never opened off.
Find at the second or third step that the bottle went into the diesel tank? That is where you stop. Do not go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Lakeside already?
Short list, then. First: the engine remains off. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so don't switch the vehicle on. Diluting it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue settles to the base instead of mixing — and that is where your fuel is sucked from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it is the Morrisons Fuel or the another forecourt nearby, ask the staff to help push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump. If you are on your own driveway in Lakeside, leave the car where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if the engine has already run. Leave the M42 — under 5 miles out of Lakeside — at the next junction. Distance matters — a quick hop across Lakeside makes a smaller job than heading under 15 miles to Birmingham — so tell us roughly how far it went.
Our arrival in Lakeside, and what occurs next
Our technicians come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Oak Hill First School, near Studley Road Social Club or on your own driveway. The answers settle this work and the quote, so we ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has run. You get that price on the phone, before anybody heads out.
Emptying the tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the fuel system. 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 the flush matters more here than with petrol. Once the fuel filter has been flushed — or renewed, if needed — clean diesel goes in, and then the car gets tested. We don't go until it has been started and is running smoothly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour after we get there, as long as your engine has not run — and the pumps we use are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet at night beside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It's worth looking at your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with many policies.
About Lakeside, briefly
Lakeside is a suburban area in Worcestershire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 91 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Lakeside is located near other local places such as Lodge Park, St Georges, and Smallwood, and is approximately 12.4 miles from Birmingham. Lakeside has a population of around 4074 residents and is about 94.2 miles from London.
AdBlue drains round Lakeside, and Worcestershire beyond
Lakeside is a residential suburb, and the vans that cover it also work the towns near it, St Georges and Smallwood among them, across the B postcode area. A postcode starting B98 7 gets our van to you fastest.
No need to shift your car. Wherever it stands — near Our Lady of mount Carmel, on a lay-by en route to Greenland Park, on a drive — that is where it gets emptied. Ring and ask instead of assuming if you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of St. George the Martyr.
In short, for Lakeside drivers
Read the cap before you tip. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave the vehicle off then phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it waits, anywhere across Worcestershire.