How It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Firs Lane
AdBlue already in your diesel tank? In that case set this page aside for now, keep your ignition and engine off, then phone 0333 366 0103. Caught before your engine runs, it is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Firs Lane. Here before the event? Then what follows covers why it happens and how to prevent it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads about Firs Lane and Tamer Lane End carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas and cleans it.
Each tank has its own filler. On a lot of motors the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in on each filling station call-out, week in, week out. The AdBlue side is filled far less commonly, normally from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. The mistake lives in that gap.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place in Firs Lane
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
On a driveway off Barker Street before work, or in the car park at The Fir Tree heading home: that is where the rushed top-up happens. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it's gone, limp mode follows.
The old car's cap is where your hand reaches — yet a hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers elsewhere. That is a second factor: a new motor.
No part stops the pour after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Firs Lane or out in Plank Lane.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Whether a Firs Lane forecourt or a drive out in Siddow Common, spend a few seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not its position.
- On many motors, size gives it away: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Look inside the fuel flap: plenty of cars carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- Cannot see it beside your diesel filler? In that case check beneath the bonnet or inside your boot — the handbook says which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Daisy Hill.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
Wherever in Greater Manchester the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Turn off once parked — flat ground, motor off, and never rushed by Malham Close at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" aloud as unscrewing it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish once the tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; until then, pour gently using its own spout.
- Before starting the car, close the cap and check a second time that the diesel cap never came off.
Discover during the second or third stage that the bottle went into the diesel filler? That is where you stop. Leave out stage five entirely.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Firs Lane?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your engine. Leave your ignition off as well, because on plenty of diesels switching it on by itself starts your fuel pump. Do not top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where your fuel is drawn from.
At a forecourt — Pace, Texaco or any other — the attendants will usually help roll the car away, if you ask. If you are on your own driveway around Firs Lane, leave the car where it sits.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the motor has already run. Firs Lane sits under 5 miles from the M6; on it, take the next junction. A short hop across Firs Lane is a smaller job than a run towards Salford, under 15 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
Firs Lane: what takes place when we turn up
Anywhere the vehicle has stopped, be it outside Leigh St Peter's CofE Primary School, beside War Memorial or on your own drive, the van comes to it. What liquid got in, the quantity, and whether it ran: we ask since those answers set both work and quote. Nobody heads out until you've had our quote over the phone.
Emptying that tank comes next, followed by a thorough flush of the fuel system. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and none of that clears away by itself. That is why it counts more. Filter flushed or, if it must be, swapped; clean diesel in; and then a test of your car. After that we fire it up and check it runs correctly before we leave.
If the engine hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. Paying is on the day, not upfront, and you receive the documents your insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Misfuelling cover is included in many insurance policies — and so use the wait to look at yours.
About Firs Lane, for a moment
Firs Lane is a suburban area situated near the lakeside in Greater Manchester, with a mix of semi-detached housing and local amenities. Firs Lane sits at an elevation of 34 metres, close to the nearby settlements of Plank Lane, Leigh, and Westleigh. Firs Lane is located approximately 10 miles from the city of Salford, and its residents have access to the surrounding countryside and urban areas. Firs Lane has a population of around 5313 people, according to recent estimates.
AdBlue drains in Firs Lane and across Greater Manchester
Firs Lane is a residential suburb, and the teams that cover it also work the towns near it, Leigh and Westleigh among them, across the WN postcode area. Give a postcode that starts WN7 4, and our van gets there quickest.
Your car does not need to shift. The drain takes place on the spot, be it a driveway, a road near St Peter's, or a layby on the way to Firs Park. Awkward to explain, like the back of Site of Westleigh Hall? By a county line? Checking beats assuming, so phone.
In short, for Firs Lane motorists
First, the cap; then, the tip. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere across Greater Manchester, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — and so leave the car off and call 0333 366 0103.