Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in St Helena: Why It Happens
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a full flush, carried out right where your car sits around St Helena, is normally all it needs when found before the engine runs. Nothing happened yet? Below, the rest of the page explains the why it takes place and the how to prevent it for good.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of current diesels on the roads about St Helena and Grendon carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. The exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the gas to clean them, from its own tank.
Every tank has a filler of its own. Plenty of motors have a single flap for the two, while some put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, your diesel side gets filled constantly. Seldom filled, AdBlue normally comes out of a bottle, poured by someone who has to stop and think what filler to use. The mistake grows in that gap between them.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around St Helena: how it takes place
Carelessness seldom causes it. Instead is three things coming up at once.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from your car, and running out leads to limp mode — so a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Sycamore Avenue, perhaps at Royal Oak on the way home that evening.
The old car's filler is where the hand goes — but a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That's the second thing: an unfamiliar vehicle.
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. Polesworth or the middle of St Helena: it is the same few seconds in both.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Stonydelph or a forecourt around St Helena, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally is not. Read it rather than going by position.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler is if it's not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Polesworth.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
When the light goes on, anywhere across Warwickshire, use this routine.
- Switch off once parked — flat ground, motor off, and not rushed beside Park Avenue on the verge.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew it. It seems silly. It works.
- The two behind one flap? So confirm the cap on your diesel filler stays shut ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Finish when the tank fills or the bottle is empty; before that, tip slowly through its own spout.
- Only after that, start the car: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Discover at the second or third step that the bottle went into the wrong filler? That is where you stop. Step five stays off limits.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in St Helena?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your motor. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so do not switch the car on. Thinning it with more diesel won't work, because AdBlue settles to the base instead of blending — and that's where the fuel is sucked from.
Ask the staff to help roll your car away from the pump if you're on a forecourt — the Polesworth Garage, the Asda Express or anywhere else. If you're on your own driveway around St Helena, leave it where it stands.
If your engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. On the M42, under 3 miles from St Helena, that means the next exit. A short hop across St Helena is a smaller job than a run towards Lichfield, under 15 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
St Helena: what happens when our technicians arrive
By Birchwood Primary School, near St. Leonard's Chapel or on your own drive: wherever your car has stopped, our technicians come to it. Both the work and the quote rest on three replies — what liquid, what quantity, and whether it has run — so our engineers ask. No one heads out before you have heard our quote over the phone.
Emptying the tank comes next, then a full flush of the system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and neither clears away by itself. Hence it counts more. Once the filter is flushed — or renewed, if needed — clean diesel is added, and then the car gets tested. Before we go, we start it and check that it's running correctly.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once we arrive, as long as your motor hasn't run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a live forecourt yet quiet at night outside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It is worth looking at your policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About St Helena and where it is
St Helena is a locality in Warwickshire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 78 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. St Helena lies near the cities of Lichfield and Tamworth, and is close to the villages of Polesworth, Dordon, and Birchmoor. St Helena is around 10 miles from Lichfield and approximately 99 miles northwest of London. St Helena has a population of around 1543 residents.
AdBlue drains across Warwickshire, St Helena included
Dordon and Birchmoor are among the towns near St Helena, a small village, that the same vans cover, over B postcodes. A postcode starting B78 1 gets our van to you fastest.
No need to move the vehicle. Wherever it stands — near Polesworth Abbey Church of St Editha, on a lay-by heading to Abbey Green Park, at home — that's where it is drained. Awkward to pin down, like the back of St Leonard? By a county line? Asking is better than guessing, and so phone.
The short version for St Helena people
Before you pour, read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Keep it switched off then call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, across Warwickshire.