Brooklands: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep the motor and ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. A drain plus a thorough flush, carried out just where the vehicle sits in Brooklands, is normally what it needs if caught before your motor runs. The rest of this page explains why it occurs and how to make sure it does not — useful if you are reading ahead of time.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Plenty of current diesels on the roads about Brooklands and Baguley carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
There's a filler for each tank. Some vehicles put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty of others have the two together behind one flap. At the pump, your diesel side gets filled constantly. Far less regularly, the AdBlue side gets filled — mostly from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. That gap is where the error lives.
Brooklands: how AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs
Carelessness seldom causes it. What does is three things lining up together.
Hurry comes from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank sends the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a drive off Norris Road, or heading home in the car park at The Little B.
Then, the hand goes for the cap it knew on the old car — since a hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the tip after it has started. Whether it happens in Sale or the middle of Brooklands, it is the same few seconds.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Whether a Brooklands forecourt or a driveway out in Northern Moor, spend a couple of seconds on these before any goes in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is often blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally is not. Read it instead of going by where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook says where it lives if the filler is not next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park outside Navigation Road, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
On the day the light appears — wherever it is around Greater Manchester — a simple routine to use.
- Not in a rush on the side of Brooklands Road, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park and switch off first.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once finding the AdBlue filler and reading it. Silly, yes, but 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.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Shut the cap, and look again — making sure the diesel filler remained closed throughout. Only then, start the car.
Find during the second or third step that the bottle went into the diesel filler? That is where you stop. Don't carry on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Brooklands?
Brief order, then. First: your engine remains off. Keep the ignition off as well, because on many diesels switching it on alone starts the pump. Thinning it with more diesel fails, because AdBlue settles to the base rather than mixing — and that is where the fuel is pulled from.
On a forecourt — Asda, Texaco or another — the staff will normally help roll your car away, when you ask. On your own drive in Brooklands? So the car stays put.
Where the engine has run already, stop somewhere safe then turn it off. The next exit is the place to come off when you are on the M60, under 3 miles from Brooklands. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Salford, under 5 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Brooklands.
Brooklands: what happens when our engineers turn up
Outside Brooklands Primary School, near Brooklands Sports Club or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, we come to it. What fluid got in, the quantity, and whether it ran: we ask because the replies set the work and quote. You hear that quote on the phone, before anyone sets off.
Draining the tank comes next, then a full flush of the system. 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. After the filter has been flushed — or renewed, where needed — clean diesel goes in, and finally your car is tested. We do not go until it has been started and is running smoothly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour after our technicians get there, provided your engine has not run — and the pumps we use are fine on a live forecourt yet quiet at night outside a house. Payment is on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer asks for: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Wrong-fuel cover is included in many insurance policies — so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Brooklands itself
Brooklands is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 28 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Brooklands is located near the cities of Salford and Manchester, and is close to nearby places such as Sale, Ashton upon Mersey, and Timperley. Brooklands has a population of approximately 6042 residents, and is about 160.8 miles northwest of London. Brooklands is characterized by its quiet, residential atmosphere, with the River Mersey flowing nearby.
AdBlue drains across Greater Manchester, Brooklands included
As a residential suburb, Brooklands shares its vans surrounding places — Ashton upon Mersey, Timperley — right across M postcodes and the wider area beyond. Give a postcode beginning M33 3, and the van arrives fastest.
The vehicle remains where it is. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Walton Park, a side street near St John the Divine: we drain the vehicle where it stands. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Heywood Road, ring and ask instead of assuming.
In short, for Brooklands people
Read the cap before you pour. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it wherever it stands, anywhere across Greater Manchester: keep the vehicle off then ring 0333 366 0103.