Millbrook: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? Then put this page down a moment, leave the ignition and engine off, then phone 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a full flush, carried out right where the vehicle stands around Millbrook, is normally all it needs when found before your engine runs. Reading in advance? In that case what follows explains why it comes about and how to prevent it ever happening.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Many current diesels on the roads about Millbrook and Cawsand carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Your exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the gas to fresh them, from a separate tank.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Under one flap, side by side: that is the layout on a lot of vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. Filling the diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less regularly. It is in that gap that the mistake happens.
Millbrook: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
It's seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Hurry follows from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a drive off Fore Street, or heading home in the car park outside The Devon and Cornwall.
Then the car is strange. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part halts the pour once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Millbrook or out in Insworke.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Whether a Millbrook forecourt or a drive out in Forder, spend a few seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- Many motors give AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Look inside your fuel flap: many motors have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows where it is when the filler is not next to your diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove the car last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Devonport, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Cornwall that is.
- Turn off after you park — flat ground, engine stopped, and not in a rush beside Millpool Head at the roadside.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly. It works.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, then check again — confirm the diesel filler stayed closed the whole time. After that, start the vehicle.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Never go on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Millbrook?
Brief order, then. First: your engine stays off. Keep your ignition off too, because on many diesels it by itself runs your pump. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue settles to the base instead of blending — and that's where your fuel is drawn from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it's the Esso or the Gulf, ask the attendants to help push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump. Your own drive around Millbrook is the place it stays.
When the motor has run already, stop somewhere safe and switch the vehicle off. On the M5, under 50 miles from Millbrook, that means the next exit. Mileage matters — a quick hop across Millbrook makes a smaller job than driving under 5 miles to Plymouth — so say about how far it went.
What occurs when we get there in Millbrook
Wherever your car came to rest, be it by Millbrook CofE Primary School, beside Methodist Church or at home, our van travels to it. What liquid was put in, the quantity, and if it ran: our engineers ask since the answers set both work and price. Nobody sets off before you've heard the price over the phone.
The fuel system is then flushed thoroughly, once your tank is drained. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own. The filter flushed or, where it must be, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a test of your car. Your engine is started next and tested to make sure it runs correctly, all before we head off.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour after we get there, as long as the motor hasn't run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a live 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. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
About Millbrook and where it is
Millbrook is a small coastal village in Cornwall, situated near the Rame Peninsula and close to the city of Plymouth. Millbrook sits at a low elevation of around 6 metres, with its terraced housing reflecting the village's historical development. Millbrook is part of a wider area that includes nearby settlements like Insworke and Kingsand, and it is located within a short distance of the Devon border. Millbrook has a population of approximately 1473 residents, who live in a community that is connected to the larger city of Plymouth.
Millbrook and Cornwall: AdBlue drains across the area
Over PL postcodes, our teams that cover Millbrook — a coastal village — work the surrounding spots too, Kingsand and Tregonhawke among them. A postcode starting PL10 1 gets our van to you fastest.
There's no need to shift your car. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Millbrook Village Hall, a lay-by on the way to The Tanyard, a driveway. If you're near a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of All Saints, ring and ask instead of assuming.
In short, for Millbrook people
Read the cap before you tip. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave it off and ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it sits, anywhere around Cornwall.