Woodhouses: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and the ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. Caught before the motor runs, it's usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is around Woodhouses. If you're reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel car, and its separate tank
Not one fluid but two: that is what many newer diesels near Woodhouses and Burntwood carry, with diesel for the engine. Your exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the gas to fresh it, from a separate tank.
There's a filler on each tank. Many of vehicles have a single flap for the two, while others put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel gets filled on every filling station call-out, again and again. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less frequently. It's in the gap that the slip lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place in Woodhouses?
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things coincide.
On a drive off Woodhouses Road before work, or in the car park outside The Nelson heading home: that is where the rushed top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and once it is gone, limp mode follows.
The old car's cap is where the hand goes — but a hire car, a new motor or a company car keeps the fillers somewhere else. That's a second thing: a new motor.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, after started, keeps on. Edial or the heart of Woodhouses: it takes the same few seconds either way.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A few seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Burntwood Green or a forecourt around Woodhouses.
- Read the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue ones are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- On plenty of motors, size gives it away: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by your diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Lichfield City? Check with the person who drove it last before you set off, rather than once the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
When the light comes on, wherever around Staffordshire, follow this routine.
- Not in a rush on the side of St Matthews Avenue, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park then switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it works.
- The diesel cap remains on. Where both sit under a flap, confirm it's closed before the bottle comes up.
- Stop when the tank fills or the bottle runs dry; until then, pour slowly through its built-in spout.
- Before starting the car, close the cap and look a second time that your diesel cap was never opened off.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into the diesel side. Do not go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Woodhouses already?
What follows is a short order of things, beginning with not starting your motor. The fuel pump runs on plenty of diesels as soon as the ignition is switched on — so keep it off. Topping up with diesel won't thin it: instead, AdBlue drops to the bottom of the tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
Ask the attendants to help push the car clear of the pump if you're on a forecourt — the Esso, the Morrisons or somewhere else. Leave it where it is if you're on your own drive in Woodhouses.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Woodhouses sits under 3 miles from the M6 Toll; there, use the first junction. A short hop across Woodhouses is a smaller job than a run towards Lichfield, under 3 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
What occurs when our technicians get there in Woodhouses
Our van comes to your car anywhere it has come to rest — your own drive, near Christ Church, or outside Fulfen Primary School. Both the work and the quote rest on three answers — what liquid, what quantity, and if it has run — so we ask. During the phone call itself, you are told our price — before dispatch.
The fuel system is then flushed thoroughly, after that tank is drained. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own. A test comes last: before that, clean diesel goes in, and the filter is flushed or changed as needed. Then we start the car and confirm it runs correctly before we go.
With pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs in which your engine has not run need roughly half an hour after our technicians are there. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it's worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Woodhouses
Woodhouses is a small hamlet in Staffordshire, situated near the city of Lichfield and surrounded by other local places such as Edial and Creswell Green. Woodhouses sits at an elevation of 129 metres, in a rural area of the West Midlands region. Woodhouses is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its quiet and residential nature.
AdBlue drains about Woodhouses, and Staffordshire beyond
Over WS postcodes, the teams that cover Woodhouses — a rural hamlet — work the surrounding locations too, Gorstey Ley and Creswell Green among them. A postcode starting WS7 9 gets our van to you fastest.
Moving the vehicle is not needed. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Burntwood Methodist Church, a lay-by on the way to Prince's Park, a driveway. Ring and ask rather than assuming if you are near a border, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Hammerwich House.
For Woodhouses people, the short version
Pour no AdBlue until you have read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Keep the vehicle switched off then ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, throughout Staffordshire.