Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Lane Ends: Why It Occurs
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and your ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. In Lane Ends, catching it before the motor turns usually leaves draining and a thorough flush on the spot. Not happened yet? Below, the page covers the why it takes place and the ways to prevent it altogether.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of modern diesels on the roads round Lane Ends and Warmingham carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas to clean it.
Each tank has its own filler. Many of cars share a single flap for both, whereas others put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Topping up your diesel side at the petrol pump happens constantly. The AdBlue side is filled far less often, usually from a bottle, and normally by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. It is in that gap that the slip lives.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Lane Ends: how it occurs
Rarely is it carelessness: usually three things line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the car drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Warmingham Road before work, or in the car park at Eight Farmers on the way home.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part halts the tip once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it occurs in Coppenhall Moss or the middle of Lane Ends, it is the same few seconds.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
Check these first, on a forecourt in Lane Ends or a drive over in Barrows Green. A few seconds, no more.
- Where it sits misleads; the cap does not. AdBlue ones tend to be blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel ones normally don't.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Look for it.
- The handbook shows which it lives when the filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- 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 Sandbach.
How to top up without AdBlue in your diesel tank
For the day the light appears — wherever you are across Cheshire — a simple routine to follow.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Hall Lane.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" aloud as unscrewing it. It sounds daft. It works.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the vehicle on.
- Stop when that tank fills or the bottle is empty; until then, pour gently through the built-in spout.
- Before starting the car, close the cap and look again that the diesel cap was never came off.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Stage five stays out.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, around Lane Ends?
Don't start the engine: that's where the short order of things begins. Don't switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from — so do not top up with diesel to dilute it.
At a forecourt — Shell, Asda Express or another — the attendants will normally help push your car away, when you ask. Your own drive around Lane Ends is where it stays.
Already started? Pull over when it's safe, then switch off. Leave the Congleton Road — under 5 miles out of Lane Ends — at the next junction. Mileage matters — a quick hop across Lane Ends is a smaller job than driving under 15 miles to Stoke-on-Trent — so tell us roughly how far it went.
What happens when we get there in Lane Ends
Anywhere the car has stopped, be it outside Mablins Lane Community Primary School, beside St Leonard's Church or at home, the van comes to it. Our engineers ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it has run, since the answers determine the work and the quote. You get that quote on the phone, before anyone heads out.
Then your tank is drained and the system rinsed thoroughly. Not like petrol, AdBlue forms crystals and eats at some fuel-system metals, and neither washes away by itself. Hence it counts more. Your filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and your car is tested. Before we go, our engineers fire it up and check that it is running correctly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour once our technicians get there, provided your motor hasn't run — and the pumps we use are fine on a live forecourt yet quiet after dark outside a house. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the documents your insurer asks for: an engineer report and a VAT invoice. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it's worth checking yours while we are on the way.
About Lane Ends
Lane Ends is a small hamlet in Cheshire, situated inland at an elevation of around 50 metres. Lane Ends lies near the villages of Coppenhall Moss and Coppenhall, and is close to the larger settlement of Maw Green. Lane Ends is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, and is located approximately 13 miles from Stoke-on-Trent. Lane Ends is a relatively small community, with a population of around 563 people.
AdBlue drains around Lane Ends and across Cheshire
Coppenhall and Maw Green are among the towns around Lane Ends, a rural hamlet, that the same teams cover, throughout CW postcodes. A postcode starting CW1 4 gets our van to you fastest.
No need to move your car. Draining takes place right there, whether a driveway, a street by Minshull Vernon Moated Site, or a layby on the way to Warmingham Wood. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Hopes and Beams? Close to a county line? Asking is better than guessing, and so ring.
Lane Ends people: the short version
Read the cap before you pour. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can drain it where it is, anywhere across Cheshire: keep the vehicle off then call 0333 366 0103.