How It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Trenance
Keep your engine and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Caught before your motor runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Trenance. The rest of this page explains why it occurs and how to make sure it doesn't — useful if you are reading ahead of time.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Many current diesels on the roads round Trenance and Trevemper carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. Your exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the gas to clean them, from its own tank.
Each tank has its own filler. Other vehicles keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot of others have both together under one flap. Diesel goes in at every filling station call-out, week in, week out. Much less often, the AdBlue side is topped up — mostly from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. The mistake lives in that gap.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs around Trenance
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
Hurry follows from the warning. The car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a driveway off Trenance Lane, or heading home in the car park outside Top of the Town.
The old car's filler is where the hand goes — yet a rental car, a new car or a company car keeps the fillers somewhere else. That's a second thing: a new vehicle.
Third, the bottle fits: a diesel filler or AdBlue one, it goes in just as easily, and once the tip starts, no part stops it. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Trenance or out in Treninnick.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Check these first, on a forecourt in Trenance or a driveway out in Lane. A few seconds, no more.
- Check the cap instead of going by where it sits: AdBlue caps are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually are not.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- Check inside the fuel flap: plenty of vehicles have a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by the diesel cap, it's in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver knows. Check when you pick up a rental or fleet car — at Newquay's car park, say — rather than once the warning comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
For the day the warning appears — anywhere you are in Cornwall — a simple routine to follow.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with your motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Headleigh Road.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, yes, but it works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure the diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Leave out stage five altogether.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Trenance already?
Do not start your motor: that's how the short order of things starts. On plenty of diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch the vehicle on. Diluting it with more diesel fails, because AdBlue settles to the base instead of mixing — and that's where the fuel is sucked from.
Ask the staff to help roll the vehicle clear of the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the Texaco, the Esso or anywhere else. Your own driveway in Trenance is where it stays.
Already started? Pull over once it is sensible, then switch off. The next exit is the place to come off if you are on the M5, over 50 miles from Trenance. Distance matters — a quick hop across Trenance is a smaller job than driving under 15 miles to Truro — so say roughly how far it went.
When our engineers arrive in Trenance, what occurs?
The van comes to the car anywhere it has come to rest — your own driveway, near Heron Tennis Centre, or by Trenance Learning Academy. The answers determine the work and the price, so our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it's run. You hear that quote by phone, before anyone heads out.
Emptying that tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the fuel system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own — which is why that matters more here than with petrol. Filter cleaned or, where it must be, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a test of the vehicle. Before we go, our technicians start the car and confirm that it is running smoothly.
If your motor hasn't run, most 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. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the documents your insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Wrong-fuel cover is part of many insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Trenance itself
Trenance is a suburban area in Cornwall, situated near the coast and approximately 10 miles from Truro. Trenance has a relatively low elevation of around 14 metres, and its housing stock is predominantly semi-detached. Trenance is close to nearby places such as Treninnick, Newquay, and Trencreek, and is about 228 miles from London.
AdBlue drains around Trenance and across Cornwall
Newquay and Trencreek are among the towns around Trenance, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, over TR postcodes. A postcode starting TR7 2 gets our van to you fastest.
There's no need to move the vehicle. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Trenance Gardens, a side street near Waterworld: our technicians drain it where it sits. Assuming doesn't help at the back of Newquay Zoo, on a border, or somewhere awkward to pin down; ring and check.
For Trenance people, the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank regardless? Keep the car switched off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, across Cornwall.