How It Happens and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Halewood
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a full flush, carried out right where your car stands around Halewood, is usually all it takes when caught before the motor runs. Here before the event? In that case the rest explains why it happens and how to prevent it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel vehicle need its own filler?
Many newer diesels on the roads about Halewood and Speke carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Plenty of motors have a single flap for the two, whereas some move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. At the pump, your diesel side gets filled all the time. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. The mistake grows in that gap between them.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Halewood: how it occurs
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
Hurry comes from the warning. Your car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a driveway off Hertford Close, or heading home in the car park outside The Eagle and Child.
Then your car is new. A hire car, a new vehicle 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, and so nothing stops the pour after it has started. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Halewood or out in Hunts Cross.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Netherley or a forecourt around Halewood.
- Colour and marking: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- On plenty of motors, size tells: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Lift the filler flap and check for a label — plenty of motors mark what belongs in which filler just there.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by your diesel cap, it is in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Collecting a hire or company car, perhaps at the car park outside the nearest station? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before you set off, rather than once the light goes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
When the light comes on, wherever across Merseyside, follow this routine.
- Turn off once parked — flat ground, engine off, and not rushed by Helmsley Road at the roadside.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap works — after you've located the filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Gently is best, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, then check again — making sure the diesel filler stayed shut the whole time. After that, start the vehicle.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you have already poured into the diesel side. Don't carry on to step five.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Halewood already?
Short list, then. Top of it: your motor stays unstarted. The fuel pump runs on plenty of diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — so keep it off. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is drawn from — so do not top up with diesel to dilute it.
On a forecourt — Shell, Morrisons or another — the attendants will normally help roll your car away, when you ask. Your own driveway around Halewood is where it stays.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if your motor has already run. Halewood sits under 3 miles from the M57; on it, use the first junction. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Liverpool, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Halewood.
Our arrival around Halewood, and what occurs next
By Plantation Primary School, near St Mary's Church or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, we come to it. The answers settle the work and our quote, and so our technicians ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. That price is given over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
After that: a drain, then a thorough flush of the whole system. Much more than with petrol, it counts here: the crystals form, some metals corrode, and none of it washes out on its own, no matter how long it sits. A test comes last: before that, fresh diesel goes in, and your filter is cleaned or replaced if necessary. After that our engineers start the car and confirm it runs properly before we leave.
With pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs where the motor hasn't run need about half an hour after our engineers are there. Your insurer will ask for an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both once the job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no deposit. Wrong-fuel cover is part of many insurance policies — so use the wait to check yours.
About Halewood and where it is
Halewood is a suburban area in Merseyside, situated near the coast and approximately 6.8 miles from Liverpool. Halewood has a relatively low elevation of around 25 metres and is characterised by its semi-detached housing stock. Halewood is close to nearby places such as Hunts Cross, Woodlands, and Woolton, and is home to a population of around 7374 people.
AdBlue drains around Halewood and across Merseyside
Over L postcodes, our vans that cover Halewood — a residential suburb — work the nearby locations too, Woolton and Woodlands included. Quickest of all: quote a L26 0 postcode to our van.
Your car stays where it is. Our engineers drain it where it is — a side street close to Halewood Shopping Centre, a lay-by on the way to Grace Park, a drive. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of St Mark's Roman Catholic Church, ring and ask instead of assuming.
For Halewood motorists, the short version
Read the cap before you tip. AdBlue in your diesel tank after all? Keep the vehicle switched off then call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, across Merseyside.