Week Green: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep your engine and ignition off then call 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Usually, if your motor hasn't turned, it's emptied and fully cleaned where the car is in Week Green. The rest of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you are reading before it has happened.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Diesel goes to the motor — yet many newer diesels driven about Week Green and Poundstock hold another fluid too. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust gas and cleans it.
Every tank has a filler of its own. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less regularly. The slip lives in that gap.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place in Week Green
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the vehicle, and running out leads to limp mode — so a hurried top-up, maybe before work off Ashbury Grove, or outside the pub in the village on the way home that evening.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Lastly, the spout goes in: a diesel filler or AdBlue one, it slides in just as easily, and once the pour begins, nothing halts it. It's a few seconds, whether out in Week St Mary or right in the centre of Week Green.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Check these first, on a forecourt in Week Green or a driveway over in Whitstone. Seconds, no more.
- Check the cap instead of going by where it sits: AdBlue ones are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally aren't.
- Plenty of motors fit AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Look inside the fuel flap: many cars carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- Cannot see it beside the diesel filler? Then check below the bonnet or inside the boot — the owner's manual will say which.
- Whoever had it before knows. Ask as you pick up a hire car or company car — at the nearest station's car park, say — rather than once the warning appears.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
When the light goes on, anywhere in Cornwall, use this routine.
- Switch off once parked — flat ground, motor stopped, and not rushed by Bastville on the verge.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" out loud while unscrewing it. It sounds daft. It works.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where both share a flap, confirm it is shut before the bottle comes up.
- Finish once your tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; until then, pour slowly using the own spout.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Never go on to stage five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Week Green?
Don't start the motor: that is where the short order of things starts. Don't switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue sinks to the bottom rather than mixing — and that is where the fuel is drawn from.
Ask the staff to help roll the vehicle clear of the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the Gulf, the another forecourt nearby or anywhere else. Your own drive around Week Green is where it should stay.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if the engine has already run. On the M5, under 50 miles from Week Green, that means the next junction. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Plymouth, under 50 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Week Green.
Our arrival around Week Green, and what occurs next
The van reaches the car wherever it stopped — your own drive, beside St Mary the Virgin, or by Whitstone Primary School. Both the work and our price rest on three replies — what liquid, which quantity, and whether it's run — so our engineers ask. No one heads out until you've heard the quote by phone.
The fuel system is then cleaned thoroughly, after your tank is cleared. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and neither washes out by itself. Hence it matters more. The filter flushed or, where needed, swapped; clean diesel in; and then a check of the vehicle. After that our technicians fire it up and check it runs smoothly before we go.
With pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where the engine has not run take roughly half an hour once our technicians arrive. Nothing upfront; you settle up on the day. At the end, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer go to you for your insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it's worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Week Green, briefly
Week Green is a rural locality in inland Cornwall, situated approximately 145 metres above sea level. Week Green lies near several small settlements, including Week St Mary and Treskinnick Cross, and is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock. Week Green is also relatively distant from major urban centres, with Plymouth being the nearest city at around 30 miles away.
AdBlue drains around Week Green and across Cornwall
Week Green is a small village, and the teams that cover it also work the towns around it, Treskinnick Cross and Bakesdown among them, across the EX postcode area. Quote a postcode that starts EX22 6, and our van gets there quickest.
The vehicle doesn't need to move. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Little Wood, a side street close to Ashbury hill fort: our engineers drain the car where it sits. Awkward to pin down, like the back of Penhallam Manor? By a border? Asking beats assuming, so phone.
For Week Green motorists, the short version
Read the cap before you tip. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless, leave the vehicle off and phone 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it waits, anywhere around Cornwall.