Marshchapel: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Pause here a minute when your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and call 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a thorough flush, carried out right where your vehicle stands in Marshchapel, is usually all it takes when found before your engine runs. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Not one fluid but two: that's what plenty of newer diesels around Marshchapel and North Cotes run, with diesel for your engine. The exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the fumes to clean them, from a separate tank.
Each tank has a filler of its own. Many of vehicles have a single flap for the two, while others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is filled at the petrol pump all the time. Much less often, the AdBlue side gets filled — mostly from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. That gap is where the error lives.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur in Marshchapel?
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
Hurry comes from the warning. The car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a driveway off Church Lane, or on the way home in the car park outside The White Horse.
New-to-you vehicles are second, as well. Hire cars, new motors and company cars place their fillers differently, and habit reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
Third, the spout fits: diesel filler or AdBlue filler, it goes in as easily, and after the tip starts, no part halts it. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Marshchapel or out in Eskham.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Grainthorpe or a forecourt in Marshchapel, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Check the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are often blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally are not.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- Lift the flap and look for a label — many vehicles mark what belongs in each inlet just there.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler is if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park at Cleethorpes? Check with whoever drove the vehicle last before leaving, not when the light goes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
On the day the light appears — wherever it is around Lincolnshire — a simple routine to use.
- Not in a rush on the side of Mill Lane, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park then switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Only after that, start the vehicle: close the cap, check again, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Discover during the second or third step that the bottle went into the diesel tank? That's where you stop. Never go on to stage five.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, around Marshchapel?
What follows is a short order of things, starting with not starting your engine. Keep your ignition off too, since on plenty of diesels it alone runs your pump. Topping up with diesel won't thin it: instead, AdBlue drops to the base of your tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it is the the nearest petrol station or the another forecourt nearby, ask the attendants to help push your car clear of the pump. If you're on your own driveway around Marshchapel, leave it where it is.
When your engine has been run already, stop somewhere safe and switch the car off. On the M180, under 25 miles from Marshchapel, that means the next exit. A short hop across Marshchapel is a smaller job than a run towards Kingston upon Hull, under 25 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
Marshchapel: what takes place when our technicians turn up
Anywhere the vehicle has stopped, whether by Marshchapel Infant School, beside St Mary or at home, the van travels to it. The answers settle the work and our price, and so we ask what got in, about how much, and whether it has run. You get that quote on the phone, before anybody sets off.
Emptying your tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. After that our technicians start it and make sure it runs correctly before we leave.
With pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which your engine hasn't run need about half an hour once our engineers arrive. Your insurer usually wants the engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and you get both once the job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no deposit. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Marshchapel and where it is
Marshchapel is a small coastal village in Lincolnshire, situated near the mouth of the Humber Estuary at an elevation of around 3 metres. Marshchapel lies within a short distance of several nearby settlements, including Eskham, West End, and Wragholme. Marshchapel has a population of approximately 770 residents, with a predominance of detached housing stock. Marshchapel is located about 24 miles from Kingston upon Hull and around 136 miles from London.
Marshchapel and Lincolnshire: AdBlue drains across the area
West End and Wragholme are among the places around Marshchapel, a coastal village, that the same vans cover, over DN postcodes. Quickest of all: quote a DN36 5 postcode to the van.
No need to shift the vehicle. Wherever it sits — near Marshchapel Methodist Church, on a layby heading to the green space at the edge of the village, at home — that's where it gets drained. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of St Nicholas, ring and ask rather than assuming.
Marshchapel drivers: the short version
First, the cap; then, the pour. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway, leave it off then ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it waits, anywhere in Lincolnshire.