How It Happens and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Little Drayton
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? Then put this page down a moment, keep the ignition and engine off, and ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before the engine runs, it is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is around Little Drayton. If you're reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Many modern diesels on the roads about Little Drayton and Longslow carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to your exhaust, where a spray cleans the gas.
Different tanks, different fillers. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less frequently. Mistakes happen in the gap between them.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place around Little Drayton?
Rarely is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Chestnut Road before work, or in the car park outside Kings Head Inn on the way home.
Then your car is strange. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand gets to 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 pour after it has started. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Little Drayton or out in Longford Turning.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Be it a Little Drayton forecourt or a drive over in Longford, spend a few seconds over these before anything goes in.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Go by the cap, not its position.
- Plenty of motors fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Look inside your fuel flap: many motors carry a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by the diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside Prees? Check with the person who drove it last before leaving, not once the light goes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
For the day the warning appears — wherever it is around Shropshire — a routine to follow.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with your motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Simons Road.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It works.
- 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's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start your car, close the cap and look a second time that the diesel cap was never came off.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Stage five is out.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Little Drayton?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting your engine. Keep your ignition off as well, because on many diesels switching it on by itself runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel won't dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the bottom of the tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
On a forecourt — Shell, Morrisons or any other — the staff will normally help push the car clear, when you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Little Drayton.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the motor has already run. Come off the M6 — under 15 miles out of Little Drayton — at the first exit. About how far did it go? Crossing Little Drayton is smaller work than a run of under 25 miles towards Stoke-on-Trent, and so tell us.
What happens when our engineers arrive around Little Drayton
The van comes to the car anywhere it stopped — your own drive, near Christ Church, or by Market Drayton Junior School. What fluid went in, the amount, and if it ran: our engineers ask because those answers decide both work and quote. During the phone call itself, you hear the price — ahead of dispatch.
Then your tank is emptied and the system flushed thoroughly. 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 counts more here than with petrol. After the filter is cleaned — or renewed, if needed — fresh diesel goes in, and finally the vehicle gets tested. Before leaving, our engineers fire it up and check that it's running smoothly.
Unrun cars usually need a half-hour job after arrival. The equipment is safe on a busy filling station, and quiet enough for a driveway after dark. Nothing upfront; you settle up that day. At the end, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in many insurance policies — so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Little Drayton
Little Drayton is a suburban area in Shropshire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 96 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Little Drayton lies near the towns of Market Drayton and Stoke-on-Trent, with the latter being approximately 16 miles away. Little Drayton is part of the wider West Midlands region, with London being around 139 miles to the southeast. Little Drayton has a population of around 5514 people, with nearby areas including Longford Turning and Greenfields.
Little Drayton and Shropshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Little Drayton is a residential suburb, and the teams that cover it also work the towns around it, Greenfields and Market Drayton among them, across the TF postcode area. A postcode starting TF9 3 gets our van to you fastest.
The car stays where it is. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Christchurch Park, a side street close to Beacon Community Centre: we drain the car where it stands. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Festival Drayton Centre, ring and ask rather than assuming.
For Little Drayton people, the short version
Always, the cap; then, the tip. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will empty it wherever it is, wherever across Shropshire: keep the car off then call 0333 366 0103.