Why It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Lilleshall
Keep your engine and ignition off then ring 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Around Lilleshall, finding it before the engine turns usually leaves a drain and a full flush on the spot. The rest of this page covers why it occurs and how to make sure it does not — useful if you are reading before it has happened.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel vehicle need its own filler?
No single liquid but two: that's what plenty of newer diesels around Lilleshall and Cheswell run, with diesel feeding your engine. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank comes with a filler of its own. Under one flap, side by side: that is the arrangement on many cars. On others, AdBlue's filler is under the bonnet or in your boot instead. Filling your diesel side at the petrol pump happens constantly. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. That gap is where the slip lives.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Lilleshall: how it happens
Carelessness rarely explains it. What does is three things lining up at once.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, the vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Limekiln Lane before work, or in the car park outside The Red House on the way home.
Next, the hand reaches for the cap it knew on the old motor — because a rental car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
A spouted bottle finds no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the tip, once started, keeps on. It takes a few seconds, be it out in The Incline or right in the heart of Lilleshall.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Be it a Lilleshall forecourt or a drive out in Muxton, spend a couple of seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually aren't.
- On plenty of motors, the size gives it away: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Open the flap and look for a label — plenty of motors mark what goes in which inlet right there.
- The handbook says where it lives when your filler isn't next to your diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Oakengates? Ask the person who drove it last before leaving, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
Anywhere around Shropshire the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Not in a rush on the side of Church Road, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park then switch off properly.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you've located the filler and read the cap.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave it on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Only after that, start the vehicle: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into the diesel side. Do not go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Lilleshall already?
The short order of things, starting with no starting your engine. Leave the ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels it alone starts your fuel pump. Diluting it with extra diesel won't work, since AdBlue sinks to the bottom rather than mixing — and that's where your fuel is sucked from.
On a forecourt — Shell, Esso or any other — the attendants will usually help push the vehicle away, if you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Lilleshall.
Already started? Pull over once it's sensible, then switch off. Come off the M54 — under 5 miles out of Lilleshall — at the first junction. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Lilleshall is smaller work than a trip of under 25 miles towards Wolverhampton, so tell us.
Lilleshall: what happens when our engineers get there
Our technicians come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Lilleshall Primary School, close to Lilleshall Monument or on your own drive. The answers settle this work and our price, so we ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether it's run. No one heads out until you've had our quote by phone.
Next: draining, then a thorough flush of the entire system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks certain fuel-system metals, and none of it washes away by itself. That is why it counts more. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. We don't go until it has been started and is running properly.
Using pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor has not run take about half an hour once our engineers are there. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the documents an insurer asks for: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Lilleshall and where it is
Lilleshall is a village in Shropshire, situated inland at an elevation of 111 metres, approximately 15 miles from Wolverhampton. Lilleshall has a population of around 944 people, predominantly living in detached houses. Lilleshall is close to nearby places such as The Incline, Honnington, and Brockton, and is about 128 miles northwest of London.
AdBlue drains across Shropshire, Lilleshall included
Lilleshall is a rural village, and our vans that cover it also work the towns near it, Honnington and Brockton among them, across the TF postcode area. Quote a postcode beginning TF10 9, and our van arrives fastest.
The vehicle does not need to move. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street close to St Michael, a lay-by on the way to Abbey Wood, a driveway. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Lilleshall Village Hall.
In short, for Lilleshall people
Pour nothing until you have read the cap. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it is, anywhere around Shropshire: keep the car off and phone 0333 366 0103.