How It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Witherwack
Leave the motor and ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Usually, when the engine has not turned, it's drained and thoroughly flushed where your vehicle is in Witherwack. The rest of this page explains why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't — useful if you are reading before it has happened.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
Diesel feeds the motor — but plenty of newer diesels seen around Witherwack and High Southwick hold another fluid too. Your exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to fresh them, from a separate tank.
Each tank comes with a filler of its own. On a lot of motors the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Filling the diesel side at the pump happens all the time. Seldom filled, AdBlue usually comes out of a bottle, tipped by someone who must stop and think what filler it needs. The mistake grows in that gap between them.
Witherwack: how AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
Hurry comes from the warning. The vehicle warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a drive off Wembley Road, or heading home in the car park outside The Times Inn.
Then your car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, once begun, keeps on. Marley Pots or the heart of Witherwack: it takes the same few seconds either way.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Southwick or a forecourt in Witherwack, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Check the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally aren't.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of motors, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside the fuel flap often says which fuel goes where, on many motors. Check for it.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by your diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Seaburn, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
When the light goes on, wherever around Tyne and Wear, use this routine.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Wiltshire Road.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and read it. Daft, yes, but it works.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the car, shut the cap and look a second time that your diesel cap never came off.
Spot at stage two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? Then stop right there. Skip stage five altogether.
Witherwack: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Brief order, then. First: the motor remains off. Leave your ignition off as well, since on many diesels it alone runs your fuel pump. Thinning it with more diesel won't work, because AdBlue sinks to the base instead of blending — and that's where the fuel is sucked from.
Ask the staff to help push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump if you're at a forecourt — the Sainsbury's, the Asda or somewhere else. Your own drive in Witherwack is the place it stays.
Already started? Stop once it's sensible, then switch off. Come off the A194(M) — under 5 miles out of Witherwack — at the first junction. A short hop across Witherwack is a smaller job than a run towards Sunderland, under 3 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
Witherwack: what occurs when our technicians get there
Anywhere the car came to rest, whether by Willow Wood Community Primary School, near Holy Trinity Southwick or at home, the van travels to it. We ask what was put in, about how much, and if it has run, because those replies settle the work and our quote. Nobody sets off before you have heard our quote by phone.
The system is then purged thoroughly, after that tank is drained. 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 the flush matters more here than with petrol. The filter flushed or, if it must be, swapped; fresh diesel in; and then a check of the car. Before leaving, we start it and check that it is running correctly.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour once we arrive, as long as the engine hasn't run — and the pumps our technicians use are fine on a busy forecourt yet quiet at night beside 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 checking your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with many policies.
About Witherwack and where it is
Witherwack is a suburban area located on the coast of Tyne and Wear, near the city of Sunderland. Witherwack sits at an elevation of around 50 metres, with nearby places including Marley Pots, Carley Hill, and Hylton Red House. Witherwack is characterized by its semi-detached housing and is situated approximately 2.2 miles from Sunderland. Witherwack has a population of around 3809 residents.
AdBlue drains across Tyne and Wear, Witherwack included
Witherwack is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the places near it, Carley Hill and Hylton Red House among them, across the SR postcode area. A postcode starting SR5 5 gets the van to you fastest.
Moving the car isn't necessary. Draining happens on the spot, whether a drive, a road by St Cuthbert, or a lay-by on the way to Marley Pots Playing Field. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Fulwell Acoustic Mirror.
For Witherwack motorists, the short version
Always, the cap; then, the tip. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it wherever it stands, wherever in Tyne and Wear: keep the vehicle off and ring 0333 366 0103.