Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Elmers Green: Why It Occurs
Pause here a minute if the diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and phone 0333 366 0103. Around Elmers Green, finding it before the engine turns normally means draining and a thorough flush where it stands. If you are reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel car: two tanks, two fillers
Many newer diesels around Skelmersdale, as well as Elmers Green, carry on two fluids; your engine takes only your diesel. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, where a spray cleans the gas.
There is a filler for each tank. Other motors put the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; a lot of others place both side by side behind one flap. Diesel goes in at every forecourt visit, week in, week out. Much less often, the AdBlue side is topped up — mostly from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between the two.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Elmers Green: how it takes place
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things coincide.
On a driveway off Elmers Green before work, or in the car park at Prince William (closed) on the way home: that is where the hurried top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue gets low the vehicle warns you, and if it is gone, limp mode kicks in.
Then the vehicle is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, after started, keeps on. It takes seconds, whether out in Fosters Green or bang in the centre of Elmers Green.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
A few seconds is all these take — so check them before you pour anything, on a drive in Dalton or a forecourt in Elmers Green.
- Colour and lettering: 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.
- Check inside your fuel flap: plenty of vehicles carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler is if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park at Upholland? Ask the person who drove it last before you set off, not when the light goes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
For the day the light comes on — anywhere you are in Lancashire — a routine to use.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time in hand — not rushing on the side of Elmers Wood Road.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — after you have located the filler and read it.
- The diesel cap remains on. When both sit under a flap, confirm it is shut before lifting the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Close the cap, then check once more — confirm your diesel filler stayed shut throughout. After that, start the vehicle.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Never carry on to step five.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Elmers Green?
Short order, then. First: your motor stays unstarted. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so do not switch the car on. Diluting it with extra diesel fails, because AdBlue settles to the base instead of blending — and that is where your fuel is sucked from.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it's the Asda or the Texaco, ask the attendants to help push your car away from the pump. Your own driveway around Elmers Green is the place it should stay.
Already started? Stop once it is sensible, then turn off. Leave the M58 — under 3 miles out of Elmers Green — at the first exit. A short hop across Elmers Green is a smaller job than a run towards Liverpool, under 15 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
What takes place when our engineers arrive in Elmers Green
The van comes to the car anywhere it stopped — your own driveway, beside Birch Green Community Centre, or outside St John's Catholic Primary School, Skelmersdale. We ask what was put in, about how much, and if it has run, because the answers decide the work and the price. The price comes over the phone, before any van leaves.
Then that tank is cleared and your system flushed thoroughly. Unlike petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears out by itself. Hence it counts more. After the fuel filter has been cleaned — or renewed, if needed — fresh diesel goes in, and finally your car is tested. The motor is fired up next and checked to be sure it runs correctly, all before we leave.
Using pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where your engine hasn't run take about half an hour after our technicians are there. 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 plenty of insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Elmers Green, briefly
Elmers Green is a suburban area in Lancashire, situated approximately 13.5 miles from Liverpool and 179.5 miles from London. Elmers Green has a population of around 2651 people and is characterised by predominantly terraced housing. Elmers Green sits at an elevation of 111 metres, inland from the coast, and is near other local places such as Fosters Green and Tanhouse.
AdBlue drains across Lancashire, Elmers Green included
Over WN postcodes, the vans that cover Elmers Green — a residential suburb — work the nearby locations too, Town Centre and Tanhouse among them. Quickest of all: quote a WN8 6 postcode to the van.
There's no need to move the car. Anywhere it sits — near The Oaks, in a layby en route to Former Beacon Golf Course, on a drive — that's where it gets emptied. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Skelmersdale Henge, ring and ask instead of assuming.
For Elmers Green drivers, the short version
Pour nothing till you have read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway, leave the vehicle off then ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it sits, anywhere around Lancashire.