Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Cheadle Park
Pause reading a minute if the diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and ring 0333 366 0103. Usually, when the engine has not run, it's emptied and fully flushed where the vehicle is in Cheadle Park. Not happened yet? Further down, the rest of the page explains the reasons it happens and the how to prevent it altogether.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
No single fluid but two: that is what many modern diesels around Cheadle Park and Rakeway carry, with diesel feeding your engine. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas to clean it.
Each tank has its own filler. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less regularly, usually from a bottle, and usually by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. The mistake lives in that gap.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur in Cheadle Park?
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 completely, the vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Hall Orchard before work, or in the car park outside The Talbot Inn on the way home.
Then the vehicle is new. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no resistance at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. So the tip, once begun, carries on. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Cheadle Park or out in Cheadle.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Whether a Cheadle Park forecourt or a driveway over in Commonside, take a few seconds over these before any goes in.
- Read the cap instead of going by where it sits: AdBlue caps are often blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually are not.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many cars say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook says where it is when the filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Blythe Bridge? Ask the person who drove it last before you set off, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Staffordshire that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Nursery Close, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park then switch off first.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud as unscrewing it. It sounds silly. It does the trick.
- Both under one flap? Then make sure the cap on the diesel filler stays shut ahead of raising the bottle.
- Stop once the tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; before that, pour gently through its built-in spout.
- Only then, start your car: close the cap, check a second time, and make sure your diesel cap was never opened.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Never go on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank around Cheadle Park?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so do not switch it on. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue sinks to the bottom instead of mixing — and that is where the fuel is drawn from.
At a forecourt — Knights Of Cheadle, Shell or another — the staff will usually help roll your car away, when you ask. Leave it where it is if you are on your own driveway around Cheadle Park.
Where your engine has been run by now, stop safely and turn the car off. Cheadle Park sits under 10 miles from the M6; on it, take the next exit. About how far did it go? Hopping across Cheadle Park is less a job than a trip of under 10 miles to Stoke-on-Trent, and so say.
When we get there around Cheadle Park, what happens?
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Bishop Rawle CofE Primary School, close to Saint Giles the Abbot or on your own drive. What fluid got in, the amount, and if it ran: our technicians ask because those answers set the work and price. During the phone call itself, you hear our quote — before anything else.
The fuel system is then purged thoroughly, after that tank is emptied. With AdBlue that matters 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. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. We do not go until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
Using pumps safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor has not run take roughly half an hour once our engineers are there. No money in advance; you settle up that day. At the end, a VAT invoice and the report from the engineer go to you for your insurer. Before we get there, have a look at your insurance documents; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Cheadle Park and where it is
Cheadle Park is a locality in Staffordshire, situated inland at an elevation of 201 metres, approximately 7.8 miles from Stoke-on-Trent. Cheadle Park is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its residential nature. Cheadle Park lies near the towns of Cheadle and Brookhouses, and is also close to the area of Lightwood.
AdBlue drains around Cheadle Park, and Staffordshire beyond
Over ST postcodes, our teams that cover Cheadle Park — a small village — work the nearby locations too, Lightwood and Brookhouses among them. Fastest of all: give a ST10 1 postcode to the van.
Your car does not need to shift. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street close to Cheadle Masonic Hall, a lay-by on the way to Cheadle Park Wood, a driveway. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Drinking Fountain.
For Cheadle Park drivers, the short version
First, the cap; then, the pour. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same, leave the car off then call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it sits, anywhere in Staffordshire.