Egremont: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Pause reading a minute when your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, and ring 0333 366 0103. In Egremont, finding it before the motor turns usually means draining and a thorough flush where it stands. Reading before the event? In that case the rest covers why it comes about and how to stop it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel vehicle need its own filler?
Many modern diesels on the roads around Egremont and New Brighton carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. The exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the fumes to clean it, from a separate tank.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on a lot of cars. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is under the bonnet or in the boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less regularly. The mistake grows in the gap between them.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Egremont: how it occurs
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
On a driveway off Church Gardens before work, or in the car park at Egremont Ferry heading home: that's where the rushed top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the car warns you, and once it's empty, limp mode follows.
Next, your hand goes for the cap it knew on the old vehicle — since a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not.
Nothing halts the tip after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Seacombe or the heart of Egremont: it takes the same few seconds either way.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Be it a Egremont forecourt or a driveway out in Vauxhall, spend a few seconds on these before anything goes in.
- Read the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue caps are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on many motors, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently shows which fuel goes where, on many vehicles. Check for it.
- The handbook shows where it lives if the filler isn't next to your diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Birkenhead Park, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
When the light goes on, anywhere around Merseyside, follow this routine.
- Park then switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Darlington Street.
- Daft as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you've found the filler and read the cap.
- Both under a single flap? Then confirm the lid on the diesel filler stays shut before raising the bottle.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Shut the cap, then check again — confirm your diesel cap remained shut the whole time. Only then, start your car.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Do not go on to step five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Egremont already?
Short order, then. First: the motor stays off. The fuel pump starts on many diesels the moment your ignition is switched on — so keep it off. Diluting it with extra diesel won't work, because AdBlue sinks to the base rather than blending — and that's where the fuel is drawn from.
The attendants at Texaco, Shell or any forecourt will usually help pushing the vehicle clear if asked. Your own driveway in Egremont is where it stays.
When the engine has been run by now, stop safely then turn it off. On the Kingsway, under 3 miles from Egremont, that means the next exit. Mileage counts — a short hop across Egremont is a smaller job than driving under 3 miles to Liverpool — so say roughly how far it went.
Our arrival around Egremont, and what takes place next
Outside Egremont Primary School, near The Heart of Egremont or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our engineers come to it. Which liquid went in, the amount, and if it ran: our engineers ask because those replies decide both work and price. That price is given on the call, before any van leaves.
Next: a drain, then a full flush of the whole system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own — which is why that counts more here than with petrol. A test is at the end: before that, clean diesel goes in, and your filter is flushed or replaced if necessary. Next we fire it up and confirm it runs correctly before we leave.
Unrun cars mostly mean a half-hour visit from arrival. The equipment is fine on a live forecourt, and quiet enough for a driveway late at night. Your insurer will ask for the engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and both are yours once the job is done. Payment is on the day, with no money upfront. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it's worth checking yours whilst we're on the way.
About Egremont, for a moment
Egremont is a suburban area on the Wirral Peninsula in Merseyside, situated near the coast and approximately 2 miles from Liverpool. Egremont is characterised by its predominantly terraced housing stock, reflecting the typical residential architecture of the North West region. Egremont sits at a relatively low elevation of 29 metres, close to the shores of the River Mersey and the Irish Sea. Egremont is part of the larger Liverpool urban area, with nearby places including Seacombe, Liscard, and Poulton.
Egremont and Merseyside: AdBlue drains across the area
Egremont is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the places around it, Liscard and Poulton among them, across the CH postcode area. Give a postcode that starts CH44 8, and our van gets there quickest.
The car does not need to shift. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street close to Wallasey Town Hall, a lay-by on the way to Central Park, a driveway. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Serpentine Road Family Church? Close to a border? Asking beats guessing, so phone.
The short version for Egremont motorists
Tip nothing until you've read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank anyway, leave the car off then call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it waits, anywhere across Merseyside.