Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Langley Green: Why It Happens
AdBlue already in the diesel tank? Then set this page aside a moment, leave your ignition and engine off, and ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before your motor runs, it's normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in Langley Green. The rest of this page covers why it takes place and how to make sure it does not — handy if you're reading ahead of time.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of modern diesels in Hilltop, as well as Langley Green, carry on two fluids; your engine takes just the diesel. Your exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the fumes to clean it, from a separate tank.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Plenty of motors share a single flap for both, while some put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is filled at the petrol pump all the time. 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.
Langley Green: how AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs
Rarely is it carelessness: usually three things coincide.
Hurry comes from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank sends it into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a drive off Primrose Bank, or on the way home in the car park at Old Cross.
Then the car is new. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
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 after it has started. It takes a few seconds, be it out in Langley or bang in the heart of Langley Green.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
Before you tip anything, whether on a driveway in Bristnall Fields or a forecourt in Langley Green, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows which it lives when your filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at the nearest station.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around West Midlands that is.
- Pull in somewhere level, engine off, with time in hand — not rushing on the side of Hall Gardens.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and reading it. Daft, perhaps, yet it works.
- Both under a single flap? Then make sure the cap on your diesel side stays closed ahead of raising the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Only after that, start your car: close the cap, check once more, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into the diesel side. Stage five is off limits.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Langley Green already?
Brief order, then. Top of it: your motor remains unstarted. The fuel pump runs on plenty of diesels the moment your ignition is switched on — and so leave it off. Topping up with diesel will not dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of the tank, just where fuel is taken from.
Ask the staff to help push the vehicle away from the petrol pump if you're at a forecourt — the Esso, the Asda or somewhere else. At home around Langley Green? Then your car stays put.
Already run? Stop when it is safe, then turn off. The next exit means where to come off if you're on the M5, under a mile from Langley Green. Distance matters — a short hop across Langley Green makes a smaller job than driving under 5 miles towards Birmingham — so say about how far it went.
What happens when our engineers turn up around Langley Green
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Our Lady and St Hubert's Catholic Primary School, near Sandwell Christian Centre (Oldbury Elim Pentecostal Bethel Hub) or on your own driveway. Our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it's run, because the answers decide the work and our quote. That quote is given on the call, before any van leaves.
After that: draining, then a thorough flush of the entire system. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and neither washes away unaided. That is why it counts more. The filter flushed or, where needed, swapped; fresh diesel in; then a test of the car. The engine is started next and tested to be sure it runs correctly, all before we head off.
Unrun cars mostly need a half-hour visit after the moment we arrive. The equipment is safe on a live filling station, and quiet enough for a residential street late at night. Your insurer will ask for an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both at the end. Payment is on the day, with no deposit. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
About Langley Green and where it is
Langley Green is a suburban area in the West Midlands, situated near several lakes and water features, with Langley Green itself being around 171 metres above sea level. Langley Green lies close to the city of Birmingham, approximately 4.4 miles from the city centre, and is part of a larger network of suburban communities including Langley, Tat Bank, and Rood End. Langley Green has a population of around 8336 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing.
AdBlue drains across West Midlands, Langley Green included
Over B postcodes, our teams that cover Langley Green — a residential suburb — work the surrounding locations too, Rood End and Tat Bank among them. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting B68 8.
There's no need to shift the vehicle. Draining takes place on the spot, be it a driveway, a road by Krunch Sandwell, or a layby on the way to Oak Green Lodge Secret Garden. Ring and ask instead of assuming if you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Mitchells & Butlers Donation Stone.
For Langley Green people, the short version
First, the cap; after that, the tip. Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, anywhere around West Midlands, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — so leave the car off then phone 0333 366 0103.