AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Tower Hill: Why It Occurs and How to Avoid It
Keep your engine and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Normally, when your motor has not run, it is emptied and thoroughly purged where the car sits in Tower Hill. Reading before the event? In that case what follows explains how it happens and how to stop it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Many newer diesels on the roads around Tower Hill and Perry carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. The exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to clean it, from its own tank.
Different tanks, different fillers. Other motors keep the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; plenty more place both together under one flap. Diesel gets filled at every filling station visit, week in, week out. The AdBlue side is topped up far less often, normally from a bottle, and normally by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. The error lives in that gap.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Tower Hill: how it occurs
It is hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Haste comes from the warning. The car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends it into limp mode — so the top-up happens in a rush, before work on a drive off Beeches Road, or heading home in the car park at The Towers.
Next, the hand goes for the cap it would have used on the old vehicle — since a rental car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, after started, carries on. It takes seconds, whether in Perry Beeches or bang in the heart of Tower Hill.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
A few seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Browns Green or a forecourt around Tower Hill.
- Check the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue caps are often blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally aren't.
- Many motors fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- Lift the filler flap and look for a label — plenty of vehicles show which goes in each filler just there.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by your diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before will know. Ask when you pick up a hire car or company car — from Hamstead's car park, say — not once the warning appears.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
The day the light goes on, anywhere across West Midlands, use this routine.
- Not in a rush on the side of Tower Hill, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park and switch off first.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it works.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where both sit under a flap, confirm it's shut before lifting the bottle.
- Stop once the tank fills or the bottle runs dry; before that, pour gently using the own spout.
- Only then, start the vehicle: close the cap, check again, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into your diesel side, stop there. Stage five stays off limits.
Tower Hill: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your motor. The fuel pump runs on many diesels as soon as the ignition is switched on — and so leave it off. Filling up with diesel will not thin it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the base of that tank, just where fuel is drawn from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the vehicle away from the pump if you're at a forecourt — the Gulf, the Shell or somewhere else. On your own drive in Tower Hill? So the car remains put.
Already run? Stop when it's safe, then switch off. Come off the M6 — under a mile out of Tower Hill — at the next junction. Roughly how far did it go? Crossing Tower Hill is smaller work than a run of under 5 miles towards Birmingham, so say.
What occurs when our engineers arrive around Tower Hill
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Dorrington Academy, near Tower Hill Library or on your own drive. Those replies determine the work and the price, so our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it has run. During the phone call itself, you hear the price — before anything else.
Draining the tank comes next, then a thorough flush of your system. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own. Testing is last: before that, clean diesel goes in, and the fuel filter is cleaned or replaced as needed. Before we leave, our engineers fire it up and make sure that it's running smoothly.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour after our engineers get there, as long as the engine hasn't run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a busy forecourt yet quiet at night outside a house. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. While we travel, take a look at your policy; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Tower Hill, for a moment
Tower Hill is a suburban area in the West Midlands, situated near the River Tame and close to the city of Birmingham. Tower Hill has a mix of housing types, but semi-detached homes are the most common, and its population is around 9267 residents. Tower Hill is located near several other suburban areas, including Perry Beeches, Perry Barr, and Hamstead, and it sits at an elevation of 140 metres. Tower Hill is also within commuting distance of Birmingham, being only 3.9 miles away from the city centre.
AdBlue drains around Tower Hill and across West Midlands
Over B postcodes, our teams covering Tower Hill — a residential suburb — work the surrounding places too, Hamstead and Perry Barr included. Give a postcode that starts B42 1, and the van gets there quickest.
The vehicle doesn't need to move. Anywhere it sits — beside carving, on a layby heading to Kingsdown Park, on a drive — that's where it is drained. Tricky to explain, like the back of Beeches Pool & Fitness Centre? Close to a county line? Asking is better than guessing, and so ring.
Tower Hill drivers: the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it stands, anywhere across West Midlands: keep it off then ring 0333 366 0103.