Beechwood: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Normally, when your engine has not turned, it's emptied and thoroughly cleaned where your vehicle is around Beechwood. Nothing happened yet? Below, the page explains the reasons it happens and the ways to avoid it altogether.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
Many newer diesels around Brookvale, as well as Beechwood, run on two liquids; your motor takes only the diesel. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust gas and cleans it.
Each tank has its own filler. Other motors put the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; a lot more have both together behind one flap. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. Far less often, the AdBlue side gets topped up — normally from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. The mistake grows in that gap between them.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank happen around Beechwood?
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the car, and letting it run out leads to limp mode — so a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off Arndale, or outside The Beechwood on the way home after work.
The old car's cap is where the hand reaches — yet a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That's a second thing: a new motor.
A spout-topped bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the tip, after begun, keeps on. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Beechwood or out in Hallwood Park.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
A few seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Halton Lea or a forecourt around Beechwood.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally isn't. Read it rather than going by position.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- Lift the filler flap and check for a label — many vehicles mark what goes in each inlet right there.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't 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 outside Frodsham? Ask the person who drove it last before leaving, rather than when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
Anywhere in Cheshire the light comes on, here is a routine for that day.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with your engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Bramble Way.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Only after that, start your car: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Don't go on to step five.
Beechwood: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Brief order, then. Top of that: your engine remains off. Leave the ignition off too, because on many diesels it by itself runs the fuel pump. Topping up with diesel won't dilute it: instead, AdBlue drops to the base of that tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
The attendants at Shell, Asda or another forecourt will usually help to push your car away if you ask. If you're on your own drive in Beechwood, leave it where it sits.
Where the engine has run already, stop somewhere safe then switch the vehicle off. The next junction means the place to leave when you're on the M56, under a mile from Beechwood. About how far did it go? Hopping across Beechwood is smaller a job than a trip of under 15 miles towards Chester, so say.
Beechwood: what occurs when we turn up
Our van reaches the car wherever it stopped — your own drive, near Saint Mark, or outside Hillview Primary School. Both the work and our quote rest on three answers — which fluid, which quantity, and if it's run — so our engineers ask. During the phone call itself, you hear the quote — ahead of anything else.
Draining that tank comes next, followed by a full flush of your system. More than with petrol, it counts with AdBlue: crystals form, certain metals corrode, and none of that washes away unaided, no matter how long it sits. The fuel filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. Next our technicians fire it up and make sure it runs properly before leaving.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour after we arrive, as long as the engine hasn't run — and the pumps we use are safe on a live forecourt yet quiet after dark outside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Beechwood
Beechwood is a suburban area located near the coast in Cheshire, with a mix of housing types but predominantly detached homes. Beechwood sits at an elevation of 47 metres, close to the nearby places of Hallwood Park, Clifton, and Palace Fields. Beechwood is situated approximately 11.7 miles from Chester, a major city in the North West of England. Beechwood has a population of around 3138 residents, living in a relatively low-lying area near the coast.
AdBlue drains around Beechwood and across Cheshire
Being a residential suburb, Beechwood shares its vans surrounding places — Clifton, Palace Fields — all the way through WA postcodes and the surrounding area around them. A postcode starting WA7 3 gets the van to you fastest.
Shifting the vehicle isn't necessary. Wherever it stands — beside Beechwood West Community Centre, on a lay-by heading to Floodbrook Clough, on a drive — that is where it is emptied. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Rocksavage, ring and ask rather than assuming.
For Beechwood people, the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same, leave it off then call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it sits, anywhere across Cheshire.