Fivecrosses: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and your ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103. In Fivecrosses, finding it before your engine turns normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. The remainder of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you are reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Diesel feeds the motor — yet many newer diesels seen round Fivecrosses and Netherton carry another fluid as well. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank comes with one filler of its own. Many of cars share a single flap for both, whereas others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, the diesel side is topped up constantly. Much less often, the AdBlue side gets topped up — normally from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. That gap is where the slip lives.
Fivecrosses: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from your car, and letting it run dry means limp mode — so a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Top Road, or at Belle Monte Hotel on the way home that evening.
Then your car is new. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spouted bottle meets no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the tip, after started, keeps on. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Fivecrosses or out in Bradley.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Be it a Fivecrosses forecourt or a driveway out in Newtown, take a couple of seconds over these before anything is poured in.
- Read the cap rather than going by position: AdBlue ones are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on plenty of vehicles. Look for it.
- The handbook says where it is when the filler is not next to the 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 Frodsham, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
The day the light comes on, anywhere around Cheshire, use this routine.
- Pull in on level, engine off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of Kingsley Road.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, after you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Daft, yes, but it works.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish once the tank fills or the bottle is empty; before that, pour gently using its own spout.
- Shut the cap, and look again — confirm the diesel filler stayed closed throughout. Only then, start your car.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Don't go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Fivecrosses already?
Short order, then. Top of it: your motor remains off. Do not switch the ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with more diesel fails, since AdBlue settles to the bottom instead of mixing — and that's where the fuel is pulled from.
On a forecourt — Wharton Lake Garage, Texaco or any other — the staff will normally help push your car clear, when you ask. Your own driveway around Fivecrosses is the place it stays.
Already run? Stop when it's safe, then turn off. Leave the M56 — under 3 miles out of Fivecrosses — at the first junction. About how far did it go? Hopping across Fivecrosses is less work than a trip of under 10 miles to Chester, and so tell us.
Fivecrosses: what occurs when our engineers turn up
The van reaches the vehicle wherever it stopped — your own drive, near Lady Heyes Craft Centre, or outside Frodsham CofE Primary School. The answers determine this work and the quote, and so our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. No one heads out before you have had the quote over the phone.
Then your tank is drained and the system purged thoroughly. More than with petrol, it counts here: the crystals build up, certain metals corrode, and none of it washes away unaided, no matter how long it is left. After your filter is flushed — or replaced, where needed — clean diesel is added, and finally your vehicle gets tested. Before we go, we fire it up and check that it is running properly.
Using pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where the motor hasn't run take roughly half an hour after we arrive. No money upfront; you settle up that day. Afterwards, the VAT invoice and the report from the engineer are handed to you for your insurer. It's worth checking your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with many policies.
About Fivecrosses, briefly
Fivecrosses is a small suburban area in Cheshire, situated near the coast and approximately 9.9 miles from Chester. Fivecrosses has a relatively low elevation of 99 metres and is characterised by detached housing. Fivecrosses is close to other nearby places such as Bradley, Overton, and Newton, and is about 163.8 miles from London.
AdBlue drains around Fivecrosses and across Cheshire
Fivecrosses is a residential suburb, and the teams that cover it also work the places near it, Overton and Newton among them, across the WA postcode area. Our van reaches you fastest with a postcode starting WA6 6.
The car does not need to shift. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street near Frodsham Methodist Church, a lay-by on the way to Frodsham Woods, a drive. Guessing doesn't help behind Bradley Hill Fort, close to a border, or anywhere hard to pin down; ring and ask.
Fivecrosses drivers: the short version
Tip no AdBlue till you have read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, anywhere in Cheshire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless — and so leave the car off and ring 0333 366 0103.