AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Greave: How It Happens and How to Avoid It
Stop reading a minute when the diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, then call 0333 366 0103. A drain and a thorough flush, carried out just where the car stands around Greave, is usually what it needs when found before the engine runs. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Diesel feeds the motor — yet plenty of newer diesels driven about Greave and Werneth Low hold another liquid as well. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust stream to clean 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 gets filled at every filling station visit, week in, week out. Much less regularly, the AdBlue side gets filled — mostly from a bottle, by a person working out where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between them.
Greave: how AdBlue in your diesel tank takes place
Carelessness seldom causes it. Instead is three things coming up at once.
On a drive off Aysgarth Avenue before work, or in the car park outside Foresters Arms heading home: that is where the rushed top-up takes place. Why the rush? As AdBlue gets low the car warns you, and if it is gone, limp mode kicks in.
Then the vehicle is new. 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.
Nothing halts the tip once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it occurs in Lane Ends or the middle of Greave, it is the same few seconds.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Whether a Greave forecourt or a driveway over in Romiley, spend a couple of seconds over these before any goes in.
- Blue and lettering: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- The size. On many vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many motors say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by the diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Woodley? Check with whoever drove the vehicle last before leaving, not once the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
Anywhere around Greater Manchester the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Not in a rush on the side of Werneth Low Road, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park and switch off first.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" aloud while unscrewing it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle runs out.
- Before starting the vehicle, close the cap and look a second time that your diesel cap was never came off.
Find at the second or third step that the bottle went into the wrong tank? That is where you stop. Don't carry on to step five.
Greave: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Do not start your engine: that's how the short order of things starts. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch it on. Filling up with diesel won't dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of your tank, right where the fuel is taken from.
If you're at a forecourt, whether it's the Esso or the Shell, ask the staff to help roll the car away from the petrol pump. If you are on your own driveway around Greave, leave the car where it stands.
When the engine has run by now, pull over safely and switch the vehicle off. The next exit means the place to leave when you are on the M60, under 3 miles from Greave. A short hop across Greave is a smaller job than a run towards Manchester, under 10 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
When our engineers turn up in Greave, what occurs?
Outside Greave Primary School, close to Woodley Cricket Club or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, our engineers come to it. Both the work and our quote depend on three answers — which liquid, what quantity, and if it's run — so we ask. You hear that price on the phone, before anybody sets off.
Emptying your tank comes next, then a full flush of the fuel system. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own. Filter cleaned or, where needed, swapped; fresh diesel in; then a check of the vehicle. Before we go, we fire it up and check that it is running correctly.
If the engine has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Before we get there, have a look at your policy; plenty carry cover for misfuelling.
About Greave, briefly
Greave is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated approximately 7.7 miles from Manchester city centre. Greave sits at an elevation of 161 metres, in a region of gently sloping land near the Peak District National Park. Greave is characterised by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock, with nearby neighbourhoods including Lane Ends and Woodley. Greave is also close to other local areas such as Top-o-th Hill.
Greave and Greater Manchester: AdBlue drains across the area
Greave is a residential suburb, and our teams that cover it also work the towns near it, Top-o-th Hill and Woodley among them, across the SK postcode area. Quickest of all: quote a SK6 4 postcode to our van.
Moving the vehicle is not needed. The drain takes place right there, be it a driveway, a road by Romiley Cricket Club, or a lay-by towards Romiley Golf Course. Assuming won't help behind The Scout Association, on a boundary, or anywhere awkward to describe; ring and ask.
The short version for Greave motorists
Always, the cap; after that, the tip. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Leave the vehicle off and phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, across Greater Manchester.