Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Alder Forest
Stop here a minute when your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and ring 0333 366 0103. Usually, if the motor has not turned, it's drained and thoroughly cleaned where your car is in Alder Forest. Reading before the event? Then what follows explains why it comes about and what to prevent it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Plenty of modern diesels in Broadoak Park, like those in Alder Forest, carry on two fluids; your motor gets just your diesel. The exhaust, not the engine, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the gas to clean it, from a separate tank.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Plenty of cars have a single flap for both, while others put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at each forecourt call-out, week in, week out. Far less frequently, the AdBlue side is filled — normally from a bottle, by a person thinking about where it goes. It's in that gap that the slip happens.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place around Alder Forest
Carelessness rarely explains it. Instead is three things coming up together.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the car drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Walker Road before work, or in the car park outside The Barton Arms on the way home.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Lastly, the bottle fits: a diesel filler or AdBlue one, it slides in as easily, and after the pour begins, no part stops it. Whether it takes place in Westwood Park or the middle of Alder Forest, it's the same few seconds.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Be it a Alder Forest forecourt or a drive over in Egerton Park, spend a couple of seconds over these before any goes in.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- Can't see it next to your diesel filler? In that case look beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook says where.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Patricroft.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
When the light goes on, anywhere in Greater Manchester, use this routine.
- Switch off once parked — level ground, engine off, and never rushed beside Alder Forest Avenue at the roadside.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew it. It sounds silly. It does the trick.
- Both behind a single flap? Then confirm the cap on your diesel filler stays closed ahead of raising the bottle.
- Stop once that tank fills or the bottle is empty; until then, pour gently using its own spout.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Find at stage two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? Then stop just there. Do not go on to step five.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Alder Forest?
What follows is a short order of things, starting with no starting your engine. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so don't switch it on. Filling up with diesel won't weaken it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of your tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it's the Texaco or the Esso, ask the attendants to help roll the car away from the pump. Your own drive around Alder Forest is where it stays.
Where your engine has been run already, pull over somewhere safe and turn it off. Alder Forest lies under a mile from the M60; there, use the first exit. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Salford, under 5 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Alder Forest.
When we turn up around Alder Forest, what happens?
Anywhere the car has stopped, whether by Westwood Park Community Primary School, near Winton Bowling, Tennis and Social Club or on your own drive, our van travels to it. Those replies determine this work and the quote, and so our technicians ask what went in, about how much, and whether it's run. Nobody heads out until you've heard our price by phone.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, once that tank is emptied. Much more than with petrol, it counts with AdBlue: the crystals build up, certain metals are attacked, and none of it clears out on its own, no matter how long it sits. The filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and your car is tested. After that we start the car and make sure it runs smoothly 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 motor hasn't run need roughly half an hour after our engineers are there. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Before we get there, have a look at your insurance documents; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Alder Forest and where it is
Alder Forest is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated near the River Irwell and close to the city of Salford. Alder Forest has a mix of semi-detached housing and local amenities, with nearby green spaces such as Westwood Park. Alder Forest is located at a relatively low elevation of 23 metres, near the urban centres of Salford and Manchester. Alder Forest is part of the larger North West region, with London approximately 167 miles to the south.
AdBlue drains round Alder Forest, and Greater Manchester beyond
Winton and Broad Oak are among the towns near Alder Forest, a residential suburb, that the same vans cover, over M postcodes. Quickest of all: give a M30 8 postcode to our van.
Shifting the vehicle is not needed. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street near Westwood Centre, a lay-by on the way to Winton Cricket Club, a driveway. Ring and ask instead of guessing if you're near a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Saint Mary Magdalene's Church.
In short, for Alder Forest people
Pour no AdBlue till you've read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Leave the car off then ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, across Greater Manchester.