Why It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in West End
Keep the motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait if AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. In West End, finding it before the motor runs normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. The rest of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it does not — handy if you're reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads round West End and Mearbeck carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Your exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the gas to fresh it, from a separate tank.
Each tank has its own filler. Other cars keep the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; a lot of others have the two together under one flap. Topping up your diesel side at the pump goes on constantly. Seldom topped up, AdBlue usually goes in from a bottle, tipped by someone who must stop and think which cap to use. It's in that gap that the mistake lives.
West End: how AdBlue in your diesel tank happens
Carelessness seldom explains it. What does is three things coming up at once.
Haste follows from the warning. The car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up happens in a rush, before work on a drive off A65, or heading home in the car park at Maypole Inn.
The old car's filler is where your hand goes — yet a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers elsewhere. That's a second factor: a new motor.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, once started, carries on. It's seconds, whether in Town Head or right in the centre of West End.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Whether a West End forecourt or a drive out in Wigglesworth, take a few seconds over these before any is poured in.
- Where it sits misleads; the cap doesn't. AdBlue ones tend to be blue or carry the word "AdBlue" — diesel ones usually do not.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on many vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside the fuel flap frequently shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of motors. Look for it.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler sits if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before will know. Ask when you collect a hire car or fleet car — from Long Preston's car park, say — rather than once the light appears.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
For the day the warning appears — anywhere it is around North Yorkshire — a routine to follow.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with your engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Tranmere Court.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap works — after you've found your filler and read it.
- The diesel cap remains on. Where the two share a flap, confirm it is closed before lifting the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the car, close the cap and check a second time that the diesel cap never came off.
Find at the second or third step that the bottle went in the wrong filler? That is where you stop. Step five stays out.
West End: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your engine. Do not switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Topping up with diesel will not thin it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of the tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
If you are on a forecourt, whether it's the Asda Express or the another forecourt nearby, ask the staff to help push the vehicle away from the petrol pump. On your own drive in West End? Then your car remains put.
Where your engine has been run by now, stop safely then switch it off. On the M65, under 15 miles from West End, that means the next exit. A short hop across West End is a smaller job than a run towards Lancaster, under 25 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
When we arrive in West End, what occurs?
Outside Long Preston Endowed Voluntary Aided Primary School, close to Long Preston Methodist Church or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, we come to it. Those replies decide this work and our quote, and so our technicians ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has run. That price comes on the call, ahead of any van leaving.
After that: a drain, then a full flush of the entire 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 counts more here than with petrol. A test comes last: before that, clean diesel goes in, and your filter is flushed or replaced if necessary. We do not leave until it has been started and is running smoothly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour after our technicians arrive, provided the motor hasn't run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a busy forecourt yet quiet after dark outside a house. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Misfuelling cover is part of many insurance policies — so use the wait to look at yours.
About West End itself
West End is a suburban area in North Yorkshire, situated inland at an elevation of 154 metres. West End lies near several small settlements, including Town Head, Long Preston, and Bendgate, and is approximately 22 miles from Lancaster. West End has a population of around 774 people and features predominantly terraced housing. West End is located about 195 miles north of London, in the heart of the Yorkshire countryside.
West End and North Yorkshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Throughout BD postcodes, our vans that cover West End — a residential suburb — work the surrounding places too, Bendgate and Long Preston among them. Quickest of all: give a BD23 4 postcode for our van.
Moving the car isn't needed. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street near Long Preston Village Hall, a lay-by on the way to New Pasture Plantation, a drive. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Long Preston War Memorial, ring and ask rather than guessing.
For West End drivers, the short version
Tip no AdBlue till you have read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere across North Yorkshire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same — so leave the car off then call 0333 366 0103.