How It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Brookfield
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and the ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. Normally, when your motor has not run, it's drained and fully rinsed where the car is around Brookfield. If you're reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
No single liquid but two: that's how many modern diesels near Brookfield and Thornton carry, with diesel feeding your engine. Your exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to fresh it, from a separate tank.
Separate tanks, separate fillers. Plenty of vehicles share a single flap for the two, whereas some put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at every filling station visit, again and again. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. The error lives in that gap.
Brookfield: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Carelessness rarely causes it. Instead is three things coming up together.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the car goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Pineda Close before work, or in the car park at The Blue Bell on the way home.
The old car's filler is where the hand reaches — but a hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere else. That is the second thing: a new car.
A spout-topped bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, once started, carries on. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Brookfield or out in Hemlington.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Check these before pouring, on a forecourt around Brookfield or a driveway out in Whinney Banks. A few seconds, no more.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- The size. On plenty of motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of cars say there which fuel goes where.
- Cannot find it beside the diesel filler? Then look below the bonnet or inside the boot — the owner's manual will say which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park at James Cook University Hospital? Ask the person who drove the car last before you set off, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
Wherever in North Yorkshire the light comes on, here is a routine for that day.
- Not in a rush on the side of Low Lane, not on a slope, not with the engine running: park and switch off first.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft 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.
- Before starting your car, shut the cap and check again that your diesel cap never came off.
Find at the second or third step that the bottle went into the diesel tank? That is where you stop. Skip step five entirely.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Brookfield?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting the motor. The fuel pump starts on many diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — so keep it off. Topping up with diesel will not thin it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of that tank, right where the fuel is taken from.
Ask the attendants to help roll the car away from the petrol pump if you are at a forecourt — the Esso, the Tesco or anywhere else. Leave it where it is if you're on your own drive around Brookfield.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Leave the A1(M) — under 15 miles out of Brookfield — at the next exit. A short hop across Brookfield is a smaller job than a run towards Durham, under 25 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
What happens when we arrive around Brookfield
Outside Hemlington Hall Academy, near Catholic Church of Saint Clare of Assisi or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, we come to it. Both the work and the quote depend on three answers — which fluid, which amount, and if it's run — so we ask. That price comes on the call, before any van leaves.
Then that tank is drained and the system purged thoroughly. 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 that counts more here than with petrol. Filter flushed or, if needed, replaced; fresh diesel in; then a test of your vehicle. Next our technicians start the engine and check it runs correctly before leaving.
If the engine hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. The insurer usually wants the engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both at the end. Payment is on the day, with no deposit. Misfuelling cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Brookfield, for a moment
Brookfield is a suburban area in North Yorkshire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of around 35 metres. Brookfield lies near the cities of Durham and Middlesbrough, and is close to the nearby places of Hemlington, Stainton, and Acklam. Brookfield has a population of approximately 4967 people, and its predominant housing stock consists of semi-detached homes.
Brookfield and North Yorkshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Brookfield is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Stainton and Acklam among them, across the TS postcode area. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting TS5 8.
The vehicle does not need to shift. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Natures World, a side street near Saint Margaret's Church: our engineers drain the car where it is. Tricky to explain, like the back of Hemlington Baptist Church? Close to a border? Checking beats guessing, so phone.
Brookfield drivers: the short version
Always, the cap; after that, the tip. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will empty it wherever it stands, wherever around North Yorkshire: keep the vehicle off then call 0333 366 0103.