Why It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Sketchley Old Village
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. A drain and a full flush, done just where the car sits around Sketchley Old Village, is usually all it needs if caught before your engine runs. The rest of this page explains why it happens and how to make sure it does not — useful if you are reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Many newer diesels on the roads round Sketchley Old Village and Hinckley carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust stream to clean it.
Different tanks, different fillers. Other cars put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty more have the two together under one flap. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. Much less commonly, the AdBlue side is filled — mostly from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. The mistake lives in that gap.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Sketchley Old Village: how it takes place
It's rarely carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, your vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Sketchley Lane before work, or in the car park at Hinckley Knight on the way home.
Next, the hand reaches for the cap it knew on the old motor — since a rental car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't.
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 once it has started. Sketchley or the middle of Sketchley Old Village: it is the same few seconds either way.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Whether a Sketchley Old Village forecourt or a drive over in Leicester Grange, spend a few seconds on these before any goes in.
- Blue and lettering: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Trust the cap, not its position.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- Check inside your fuel flap: many motors carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- Can't find it beside the diesel inlet? Then look below the bonnet or inside your boot — the owner's manual will say which.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Hinckley, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around Leicestershire that is.
- Turn off after you park — flat ground, motor off, and not rushed by The Stables on the verge.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and reading it. Daft, perhaps, yet it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the car on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the car, close the cap and check again that your diesel cap was never opened off.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into the diesel side. Stage five stays off limits.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, in Sketchley Old Village?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting the motor. Keep your ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels switching it on alone runs your fuel pump. Filling up with diesel will not weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the base of the tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
Ask the staff to help push the vehicle away from the petrol pump if you are on a forecourt — the Esso, the Tesco or somewhere else. If you are on your own drive around Sketchley Old Village, leave the car where it is.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if the engine has already run. On the M69, under a mile from Sketchley Old Village, that means the next junction. Distance matters — a quick hop across Sketchley Old Village is a smaller job than driving under 10 miles to Coventry — so tell us roughly how far it went.
What occurs when we get there in Sketchley Old Village
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Sketchley Hill Primary School Burbage, near 1945 Vickers Wellington crash memorial or on your own drive. Our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it's run, because those answers settle this work and the quote. You hear that price on the phone, before anybody sets off.
Draining the tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the system. Unlike petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and neither clears away by itself. That is why it counts more. Filter cleaned or, where needed, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a test of your vehicle. We don't go until it has been fired up and is running properly.
Unstarted vehicles usually need a half-hour visit from the moment we arrive. The kit is safe on a live forecourt, and quiet enough for a driveway after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Sketchley Old Village and where it is
Sketchley Old Village is a suburban area situated on the riverside in Leicestershire, with a mix of detached housing and local amenities. Sketchley Old Village sits at an elevation of 118 metres, close to the nearby settlements of Sketchley and Burbage. Sketchley Old Village is located near the city of Coventry, which is approximately 9.8 miles away, and is also within commuting distance of London, around 88.1 miles to the southeast.
AdBlue drains across Leicestershire, Sketchley Old Village included
Sketchley Old Village is a residential suburb, and the vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Burbage and The Crescent among them, across the LE postcode area. Give a postcode that starts LE10 3, and the van arrives fastest.
Shifting your car is not needed. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Colts Close Recreation Ground, a side street close to Pentecostal Church: our engineers drain it where it sits. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Hinckley Hub, ring and ask instead of guessing.
For Sketchley Old Village people, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless, leave the vehicle off then phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it sits, anywhere around Leicestershire.