Eastham: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and your ignition off then call 0333 366 0103. Usually, when your engine has not turned, it is drained and fully rinsed where your car sits in Eastham. Here before the event? Then the rest covers why it happens and how to stop it happening at all.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
Diesel feeds the motor — yet plenty of current diesels driven round Eastham and Hooton hold another fluid too. AdBlue's own tank holds it, and from there it is sent to the exhaust, where a spray treats the gas.
There is a filler for every tank. Plenty of vehicles share a single flap for both, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is fuelled at the petrol pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less commonly. It's in that gap that the error lives.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Eastham: how it takes place
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from the car, and running dry leads to limp mode — so a hurried top-up, perhaps before work off Saint David Road, perhaps at The Hooton Arms on the way home that evening.
Then, the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old car — since a hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
No part halts the tip after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Eastham Ferry or the middle of Eastham: it takes the same few seconds in both.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Be it a Eastham forecourt or a driveway out in Bromborough, spend a few seconds over these before any goes in.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- The size. On plenty of vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many vehicles say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by your diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Eastham Rake.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Merseyside that is.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of New Chester Road.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after finding the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, yes, yet it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave the car on.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, then look again — confirm your diesel cap remained shut the whole time. Only then, start the vehicle.
Discover at the second or third step that the bottle went in the wrong tank? That is where you stop. Skip stage five entirely.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Eastham already?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the motor. Do not switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where the fuel is pulled from — so do not top up with diesel to thin it.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it is the Shell or the Texaco, ask the staff to help roll the car clear of the pump. Leave it where it is if you are on your own drive around Eastham.
Already run? Stop once it is sensible, then switch off. Leave the M53 — under a mile out of Eastham — at the next exit. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Liverpool, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Eastham.
What occurs when our technicians arrive in Eastham
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Heygarth Primary School, near Saint Mary or on your own drive. The answers determine this work and the price, and so we ask what went in, about how much, and whether it has run. That price comes on the call, before any van leaves.
Then that tank is cleared and your system rinsed thoroughly. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why that counts more here than with petrol. Once your filter is flushed — or replaced, where needed — fresh diesel is added, and then the vehicle is tested. Before we leave, we fire it up and check that it is running properly.
With pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the engine hasn't run take roughly half an hour after we arrive. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Wrong-fuel cover is included in many insurance policies — so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Eastham and where it is
Eastham is a suburban area on the Wirral Peninsula in Merseyside, situated near the coast at an elevation of around 33 metres. Eastham lies approximately 6 miles south of Liverpool and is close to nearby places such as Eastham Ferry, Brookhurst, and Bebington. Eastham has a population of around 3291 people and is characterised by predominantly semi-detached housing. Eastham is located within the North West region of England, about 173 miles northwest of London.
AdBlue drains around Eastham, and Merseyside beyond
Eastham is a residential suburb, and the teams that cover it also work the places around it, Brookhurst and Bebington among them, across the CH postcode area. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting CH62 0.
The car does not need to move. Wherever it sits — beside Eastham Library, in a layby en route to Torr Park, on a drive — that's where it gets emptied. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of St David's United Reformed Church, ring and ask rather than guessing.
The short version for Eastham drivers
Before you tip, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere across Merseyside, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — so leave the car off and ring 0333 366 0103.