Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Littlemoss: Why It Happens
Leave your engine and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Caught before your motor runs, it's normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is in Littlemoss. Not happened yet? Below, the page explains the reasons it takes place and the ways to avoid it for good.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of current diesels on the roads around Littlemoss and Bottom of Woodhouses carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank has a filler of its own. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in the boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less frequently, usually from a bottle, and normally by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. It's in that gap that the mistake happens.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank happen around Littlemoss?
Carelessness rarely explains it. What does is three things coming up at once.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out altogether, your vehicle goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off Meadow View before work, or in the car park outside The Bush Inn on the way home.
Then your car is strange. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part halts the pour once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Daisy Nook or the heart of Littlemoss: it is the same few seconds either way.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so check them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Crowhill or a forecourt around Littlemoss.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- On many cars, the size gives it away: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Many cars say there which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler is if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before knows. Ask as you collect a rental or company car — from Ashton-Under-Lyne's car park, perhaps — not when the light appears.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Greater Manchester that is.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time in hand — not hurried on the side of Andrew Street.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where the two share a flap, confirm it's shut before the bottle comes up.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Shut the cap, and look again — making sure the diesel filler stayed closed the whole time. Only then, start the vehicle.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Leave out step five altogether.
Littlemoss: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Brief order, then. First: the motor remains unstarted. Do not switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel will not weaken it: instead, AdBlue drops to the base of the tank, right where fuel is taken from.
The attendants at Sainsbury's, BP or any forecourt will normally help pushing the vehicle clear if asked. On your own drive in Littlemoss? Then the car remains put.
Where the motor has been run already, pull over somewhere safe and turn the vehicle off. Come off the M60 — under a mile out of Littlemoss — at the next junction. Roughly how far did it go? Hopping across Littlemoss is smaller work than a run of under 10 miles to Manchester, so say.
Our arrival in Littlemoss, and what occurs next
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Woodhouses Voluntary Primary School, near Littlemoss War Memorial Garden or on your own driveway. Which liquid went in, the quantity, and if it ran: we ask since the answers set both work and price. That quote comes on the call, ahead of any van leaving.
The system is then purged thoroughly, after the tank is drained. More than with petrol, it matters with AdBlue: crystals form, some metals are attacked, and nothing clears away on its own, no matter how long it is left. After the fuel filter is cleaned — or replaced, where required — clean diesel goes in, and then your vehicle is tested. Your engine is fired up next and tested to make sure it runs correctly, all before we head off.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour once we arrive, provided your engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a busy forecourt yet quiet after dark beside a house. No money upfront; you settle up on the day. Afterwards, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer go to you for the insurer. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
About Littlemoss itself
Littlemoss is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated near the River Medlock and close to the city of Manchester. Littlemoss has a mix of housing types, but detached homes are particularly prevalent in the area. Littlemoss is located near several other local places, including Daisy Nook and Woodhouses, and is about 5 miles from Manchester city centre.
AdBlue drains in Littlemoss and across Greater Manchester
Being a residential suburb, Littlemoss has the same vans as nearby places — Taunton, Woodhouses — all the way through M postcodes and the wider area beyond. Our van reaches you fastest with a postcode starting M43 7.
The car doesn't need to move. Wherever it sits — near Tameside Stadium, on a layby en route to Brookdale Golf Club, on a drive — that's where it is emptied. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Roy Oldham Sports Village, ring and ask rather than guessing.
For Littlemoss people, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. Even so AdBlue in the diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will drain it wherever it is, wherever around Greater Manchester: keep the car off and ring 0333 366 0103.