Why It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Shardlow
Leave the engine and ignition off and call 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Caught before the motor runs, it's usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is in Shardlow. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads round Shardlow and Church Wilne carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. The exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the gas to fresh it, from a separate tank.
Each tank has a filler of its own. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in the boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, the diesel side is topped up all the time. Rarely filled, AdBlue usually comes from a bottle, poured by a driver who must stop and think what filler it needs. Mistakes happen in that gap between them.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur around Shardlow?
It's hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, your vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Ambaston Lane before work, or in the car park at The Dog and Duck on the way home.
Then your car is new. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand hits 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, and so nothing stops the pour after it has started. Cavendish Bridge or the heart of Shardlow: it is the same few seconds either way.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
A couple of seconds is all these take — so check them before you tip anything, on a drive in Aston-on-Trent or a forecourt in Shardlow.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Go by the cap, not its position.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- Look inside your fuel flap: plenty of cars carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by your diesel cap, it's in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park at Long Eaton? Ask the person who drove it last before you set off, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
When the light goes on, wherever across Derbyshire, use this routine.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with your engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Clover Court.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it works.
- The diesel cap remains on. When both sit under a flap, make sure it is closed before the bottle comes up.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting your car, close the cap and check again that the diesel cap never opened off.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Don't carry on to stage five.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Shardlow?
Brief list, then. First: the motor remains off. Don't switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is drawn from — so do not top up with diesel to dilute it.
The attendants at Shell, BP or any forecourt will usually lend a hand pushing the car away when asked. At home around Shardlow? So the car stays put.
If your motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Shardlow sits under 3 miles from the M1; there, use the next exit. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Shardlow is less work than a run of under 10 miles towards Derby, and so say.
Our arrival around Shardlow, and what happens next
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Shardlow Primary School, near St James' Shardlow or on your own driveway. The answers settle this work and the quote, and so our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has run. That quote is given on the call, before any van leaves.
Draining your tank comes next, then a full flush of the system. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and attacks certain fuel-system metals, and none of that washes out by itself. That is why it matters more. A test is at the end: before that, fresh diesel is added, and the filter is cleaned or changed as needed. We don't leave until it has been fired up and is running properly.
If your engine hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we are there, using pumps that are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. It's worth checking your policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Shardlow itself
Shardlow is a village in Derbyshire, situated on the banks of the River Trent at an elevation of 36 metres. Shardlow lies approximately 6 miles south-east of Derby and 108 miles north of London, with nearby places including Cavendish Bridge, Great Wilne, and Ambaston. Shardlow has a population of around 651 people and predominantly consists of detached housing.
AdBlue drains around Shardlow, and Derbyshire beyond
Great Wilne and Ambaston are among the towns around Shardlow, a village, that the same teams cover, throughout DE postcodes. Give a postcode that starts DE72 2, and our van gets there quickest.
Your car stays where it is. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Shardlow Heritage Centre, a lay-by on the way to Bottom Wood, a driveway. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Shardlow Village Hall, ring and ask rather than assuming.
For Shardlow drivers, the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless, leave the car off then phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere in Derbyshire.