How It Happens and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Ainsdale
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? In that case set this page aside a moment, keep your ignition and engine off, then call 0333 366 0103. Usually, if the motor has not run, it's drained and thoroughly rinsed where your vehicle is in Ainsdale. The rest of this page covers why it happens and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you are reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Many newer diesels on the roads about Ainsdale and Birkdale carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. The exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the fumes to fresh it, from a separate tank.
There is a filler for each tank. Plenty of motors have a single flap for both, while some put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel gets filled on each filling station call-out, week in, week out. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less regularly. That gap is where the slip lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank occur around Ainsdale?
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out completely, your vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Village Row before work, or in the car park at The Mallard on the way home.
The old car's cap is where your hand goes — yet a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That's a second thing: a new vehicle.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, and so nothing stops the pour once it has started. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Ainsdale or out in Woodvale.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Be it a Ainsdale forecourt or a driveway out in Freshfield, spend a few seconds over these before anything is poured in.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue caps are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally aren't.
- On many vehicles, size gives it away: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- Open the flap and check for a label — plenty of vehicles show what goes in each filler just there.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by your diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver will know. Ask as you collect a hire car or fleet car — at the nearest station's car park, say — rather than once the warning appears.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
For the day the warning appears — wherever it is around Merseyside — a routine to use.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Burnley Road.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly. It does the trick.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish once that tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; until then, tip gently using the own spout.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Find at step two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? Then stop right there. Don't go on to step five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Ainsdale already?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start your engine. The fuel pump starts on many diesels the moment your ignition goes on — so leave it off. Topping up with diesel won't weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the base of the tank, right where fuel is taken from.
At a forecourt — Shell, EG On the Move or any other — the attendants will usually help roll the car clear, when you ask. On your own drive around Ainsdale? So the vehicle stays where it is.
Where your motor has run already, stop somewhere safe and turn the vehicle off. The next junction means the place to leave if you're on the M58, under 10 miles from Ainsdale. A short hop across Ainsdale is a smaller job than a run towards Liverpool, under 15 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
Ainsdale: what takes place when our engineers turn up
Wherever the car has stopped, be it by Ainsdale St John's Church of England Primary School, beside Ainsdale Village Church or at home, the van travels to it. The replies settle the work and the quote, so our engineers ask what went in, about how much, and if it's run. On the call itself, you are told the quote — before anything else.
Then your tank is cleared and your system cleaned thoroughly. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own. Filter cleaned or, where it must be, replaced; clean diesel in; then a test of the car. Then we fire it up and check it runs smoothly before leaving.
If your motor hasn't run, the majority of 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 at night. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is included in many insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Ainsdale itself
Ainsdale is a suburban area located on the coast of Merseyside, with Ainsdale sitting near the mouth of the River Alt and looking out over the Irish Sea. Ainsdale has a relatively low elevation of 16 metres above sea level and Ainsdale is situated approximately 13.6 miles north of Liverpool. Ainsdale is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock and Ainsdale is close to nearby places such as Woodvale and Hillside.
AdBlue drains in Ainsdale and across Merseyside
Ainsdale is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the towns near it, Ainsdale-on-Sea and Hillside among them, across the PR postcode area. Quote a postcode that starts PR8 3, and our van arrives fastest.
Shifting the vehicle is not necessary. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street near 658 Fitness, a lay-by on the way to Ainsdale Village Park, a driveway. Assuming won't help behind Ainsdale Methodist Church, close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe; ring and ask.
The short version for Ainsdale motorists
Pour no AdBlue until you've read the cap. AdBlue in the diesel tank regardless? Keep it off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, throughout Merseyside.