How It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Hurst Brook
Pause here a minute when your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, then ring 0333 366 0103. Caught before your motor runs, it is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Hurst Brook. 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 does not.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Many modern diesels on the roads round Hurst Brook and Cockbrook carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, where spraying treats the fumes.
Each tank has its own filler. Many of cars share a single flap for both, while some move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in on each forecourt call-out, week in, week out. The AdBlue side is topped up far less frequently, usually from a bottle, and normally by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. That gap is where the slip lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank happen in Hurst Brook?
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
On a driveway off Whiteacre Road before work, or in the car park outside New Inn on the way home: that's where the rushed top-up happens. Why the rush? As AdBlue gets low your car warns you, and once it is empty, limp mode follows.
Unfamiliar motors are next, too. Rentals, new motors and company cars put their fillers differently, and the hand goes for the cap used on the old one.
Nothing halts the tip after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Hurst Brook or out in Hurst Knoll.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Be it a Hurst Brook forecourt or a drive out in Stamford Park, take a couple of seconds on these before any is poured in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap usually is not. Read it instead of going by position.
- The size. On many vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Open the filler flap and look for a label — plenty of cars show what belongs in which filler just there.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler sits if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park at Ashton-Under-Lyne? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before leaving, rather than when the light goes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Greater Manchester that is.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with your motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Hague Street.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap works — after you've located your filler and read it.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — then leave it on.
- Finish once that tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; before that, tip gently using the built-in spout.
- Only after that, start the vehicle: close the cap, check once more, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Do not go on to stage five.
Hurst Brook: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Don't start the motor: that's where the short order of things starts. Do not switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel is pulled from.
The staff at Texaco, another forecourt nearby or any forecourt will usually lend a hand to push your car away if you ask. If you're on your own drive around Hurst Brook, leave the car where it is.
Where your engine has been run by now, stop safely and switch the vehicle off. Hurst Brook sits under 3 miles from the M60; on it, take the next junction. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Manchester, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Hurst Brook.
When our engineers turn up in Hurst Brook, what occurs?
By Our Lady of Mount Carmel RC Primary School, Ashton-under-Lyne, near Ashton Central Mosque or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our engineers come to it. Our engineers ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has run, since the replies decide the work and the price. The price comes over the phone, before any van leaves.
Draining that tank comes next, followed by a full flush of the system. Unlike petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears away unaided. Hence it matters more. The filter flushed or, if needed, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a test of your vehicle. We don't leave until it has been started and is running properly.
With pumps fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough for use outside a house at night, most jobs in which your motor has not run need about half an hour after our technicians are there. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Hurst Brook
Hurst Brook is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated approximately 6.7 miles east of Manchester city centre. Hurst Brook sits at an elevation of around 134 metres, in a region of predominantly terraced housing. Hurst Brook is close to nearby places such as Hurst Knoll, Ashton-under-Lyne, and Hurst, and is home to a population of around 10,096 people.
AdBlue drains across Greater Manchester, Hurst Brook included
Over OL postcodes, the vans that cover Hurst Brook — a residential suburb — work the nearby places too, Hurst and Ashton-under-Lyne included. A postcode starting OL6 9 gets our van to you fastest.
Shifting the car isn't needed. Anywhere it sits — beside St James, on a layby heading to Memorial Gardens, on a drive — that is where it gets drained. Tricky to explain, like the back of Albion Church? By a border? Checking is better than assuming, and so phone.
In short, for Hurst Brook drivers
Tip nothing till you have read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same, leave the car off then ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it stands, anywhere across Greater Manchester.