Hale Barns: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep your engine and ignition off and call 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Around Hale Barns, finding it before your motor turns normally leaves a drain and a full flush where it stands. The rest of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it does not — handy if you are reading ahead of time.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Diesel goes to the engine — but many current diesels seen about Hale Barns and Well Green hold a second fluid too. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust stream and cleans it.
Every tank comes with a filler of its own. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less regularly. The mistake lives in that gap.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank occur in Hale Barns?
Seldom is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
On a driveway off High Elm Road before work, or in the car park at The Bull's Head on the way home: that is where the rushed top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it is empty, limp mode kicks in.
Then the car 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.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the pour once it has started. Warburton Green or the middle of Hale Barns: it is the same few seconds either way.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Hale Barns forecourt or a driveway over in Ashley Heath, spend a couple of seconds on these before anything goes in.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue ones are frequently blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- The size. On plenty of cars the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- A label inside your fuel flap often says which fuel goes where, on many cars. Look for it.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by your diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Ashley.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Greater Manchester that is.
- Switch off after you park — level ground, engine stopped, and not in a rush by Tithebarn Road on the verge.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew it. It sounds silly. It works.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, and check again — making sure your diesel filler remained closed the whole time. After that, start the vehicle.
If at step two or three you find you have already poured into your diesel side, stop there. Never go on to step five.
Hale Barns: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your motor. Do not switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel won't thin it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of the tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
The staff at BP, Warburton Service Station or another forecourt will normally help to push the car clear if you ask. Your own driveway in Hale Barns is where it should stay.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Come off the M56 — under a mile out of Hale Barns — at the next exit. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Salford, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Hale Barns.
What happens when our engineers arrive around Hale Barns
Our van reaches the car anywhere it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Hale Barns Tennis Club, or by Elmridge Primary School. Those replies determine this work and our price, so we ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it has run. You hear that price by phone, before anybody sets off.
The fuel system is then purged thoroughly, once your tank is cleared. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why the flush matters more here than with petrol. A test comes at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and the fuel filter is flushed or replaced as needed. Before we leave, our technicians start it and make sure that it's running smoothly.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour after our technicians arrive, as long as the motor hasn't run — and the pumps we use are fine on a busy forecourt and quiet at night outside a house. Nothing in advance; you settle up that day. At the end, a VAT invoice and the report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. It's worth looking at your policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Hale Barns, briefly
Hale Barns is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated approximately 7.9 miles from Salford and 158.1 miles from London. Hale Barns lies at an elevation of around 60 metres, characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock. Hale Barns is surrounded by nearby places such as Warburton Green, Davenport Green, and Thorns Green, and has a population of around 3171 residents.
Hale Barns and Greater Manchester: AdBlue drains across the area
Over WA postcodes, the teams that cover Hale Barns — a residential suburb — work the nearby spots too, Thorns Green and Davenport Green included. A postcode starting WA15 0 gets our van to you fastest.
Shifting the vehicle is not needed. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Ringway Golf Club, a side street near All Saints: our technicians drain the car where it stands. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Holy Angels Parish Hall? By a border? Checking is better than assuming, and so ring.
For Hale Barns motorists, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. Still AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it where it is, wherever around Greater Manchester: switch the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103.