Smithley: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? Then set this page aside for now, leave the ignition and engine off, and ring 0333 366 0103. Usually, when your motor hasn't run, it is emptied and thoroughly purged where the vehicle sits in Smithley. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
No single fluid but two: that's how many modern diesels near Smithley and Lewden carry, with diesel feeding the motor. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
There is a filler on every tank. Many of motors share a single flap for the two, whereas some move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Topping up your diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. Rarely filled, AdBlue usually comes from a bottle, poured by a driver who must stop and think what filler it needs. That gap is where the error lives.
Smithley: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from your car, and letting it run out leads to limp mode — so a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off Little Stubbing, or outside Barley Sheaf on the way home after work.
Then the car is strange. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part stops the tip after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Low Laithes or the middle of Smithley: it is the same few seconds either way.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Smithley forecourt or a drive over in Hemingfield, spend a couple of seconds over these before any is poured in.
- Where it sits can mislead; the cap does not. AdBlue ones are often blue or carry the word "AdBlue" — diesel ones normally do not.
- On many vehicles, the size tells: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Lift the filler flap and look for a label — plenty of motors mark which goes in each filler just there.
- The handbook shows which it lives if your filler isn't next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Wombwell.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
On the day the warning comes on — anywhere you are around South Yorkshire — a simple routine to follow.
- Stop somewhere level, engine off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Great Stubbing.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and read it. Daft, perhaps, but it does the trick.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where the two share a flap, confirm it's shut before the bottle comes up.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into your diesel side, stop there. Stage five stays out.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Smithley?
Brief order, then. First: your motor stays unstarted. The fuel pump runs on plenty of diesels the moment the ignition is switched on — and so keep it off. Do not top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is drawn from.
The attendants at BP, Tesco or another forecourt will normally help pushing the vehicle away if you ask. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Smithley.
Already started? Pull over when it's safe, then switch off. The next junction is where to leave if you're on the M1, under 3 miles from Smithley. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Sheffield, under 15 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Smithley.
What happens when our engineers get there around Smithley
Outside High View Primary Learning Centre, near Hough Lane Community Church or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our technicians come to it. The answers decide this work and the price, and so we ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it's run. That quote is given over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
The system is then purged thoroughly, after your tank is drained. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own — which is why that counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. Once your filter is cleaned — or replaced, if required — clean diesel is added, and finally your car is tested. Your engine is started next and tested to be sure it runs correctly, all before we leave.
If your motor has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It's worth looking at your insurance while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About Smithley
Smithley is a locality in South Yorkshire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 76 metres, approximately 10 miles from Sheffield. Smithley has a mix of housing types, but semi-detached homes are the most predominant. Smithley is part of a network of local communities, including nearby Low Laithes, Swaithe, and Wombwell, and is located about 150 miles north of London. Smithley has a population of around 1676 residents.
AdBlue drains round Smithley, and South Yorkshire beyond
Swaithe and Wombwell are among the places around Smithley, a small village, that the same vans cover, over S postcodes. A postcode starting S73 8 gets our van to you fastest.
Shifting your car isn't necessary. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Highfield Park, a side street close to The Apostolic Church: we drain the car where it sits. If you're near a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Wombwell Community Hall, ring and ask rather than guessing.
The short version for Smithley people
First, the cap; after that, the pour. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it wherever it stands, wherever around South Yorkshire: keep the car off and phone 0333 366 0103.