Lostock Hall: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Leave your motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Around Lostock Hall, finding it before your engine runs normally means a drain and a thorough flush on the spot. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Many newer diesels on the roads about Lostock Hall and Penwortham Lane carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust gas to clean it.
Every tank comes with a filler of its own. Plenty of motors share a single flap for the two, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at each filling station visit, week in, week out. The AdBlue side is topped up far less commonly, normally from a bottle, and usually by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between them.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Lostock Hall: how it occurs
Carelessness seldom causes it. Instead is three things coming up together.
Hurry comes from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done quickly, before work on a drive off Victoria Street, or heading home in the car park outside Victoria.
Then your car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new vehicle 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 stops the tip after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It's seconds, whether out in Tardy Gate or right in the heart of Lostock Hall.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A few seconds is all the checks take — so check them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Farington or a forecourt around Lostock Hall.
- Where it sits can mislead; the cap does not. AdBlue caps tend to be blue or bear the name "AdBlue" — diesel ones usually don't.
- The size. On many vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Lift the filler flap and check for a label — many motors mark which goes in which filler just there.
- Can't see it beside the diesel filler? Then check beneath the bonnet or inside your boot — the owner's manual says where.
- The previous driver knows. Check when you pick up a rental or company car — at the nearest station's car park, say — rather than once the light appears.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach the diesel tank
On the day the light appears — anywhere you are in Lancashire — a routine to use.
- Stop on level, engine off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Barnfield.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It works.
- Both under one flap? Then confirm the cap on the diesel side stays shut before lifting the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, then check once more — confirm the diesel filler stayed shut throughout. Only then, start the vehicle.
Find during the second or third stage that AdBlue went into the wrong tank? That is where you stop. Skip step five altogether.
Lostock Hall: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the engine. On many diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch the car on. Topping up with diesel will not thin it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of your tank, right where fuel is taken from.
At a forecourt — Shell, Sainsbury's or another — the staff will usually help push the vehicle away, when you ask. If you are on your own drive around Lostock Hall, leave the car where it sits.
Already started? Pull over when it's safe, then switch off. The next junction is the place to leave if you're on the M65, under a mile from Lostock Hall. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Preston, under 3 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Lostock Hall.
Our arrival around Lostock Hall, and what occurs next
By Our Lady and St Gerard's Roman Catholic Primary School, Lostock Hall, near Parish Church of St James or on your own drive: wherever the car has stopped, our engineers come to it. Both the work and the quote depend on three replies — which fluid, what amount, and if it's run — so our engineers ask. No one sets off before you've had our quote by phone.
Emptying the tank comes next, followed by a full flush of your system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and neither clears away by itself. Hence it counts more. A test is at the end: before that, fresh diesel is added, and the filter is flushed or changed if necessary. Before we go, our technicians start the car and make sure that it's running correctly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour once our technicians get there, as long as your motor hasn't run — and the pumps our technicians use are fine on a live forecourt yet quiet at night outside a house. Your insurer will ask for an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and both are yours at the end. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. It is worth looking at your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About Lostock Hall
Lostock Hall is a locality situated on the banks of the River Lostock in Lancashire, with a mix of semi-detached housing and local amenities. Lostock Hall lies close to the city of Preston, approximately 2.6 miles away, and is part of the wider North West region. Lostock Hall has a population of around 3849 people and is near other local places such as Tardy Gate and Farington Moss. Lostock Hall's riverside setting and relatively low elevation of 41 metres contribute to its geographical character.
AdBlue drains around Lostock Hall and across Lancashire
Throughout PR postcodes, the teams covering Lostock Hall — a neighbourhood — work the surrounding locations too, Cuerden Green and Farington Moss included. Give a postcode beginning PR5 5, and the van gets there fastest.
There's no need to shift the car. The drain takes place on the spot, whether a drive, a street near St James Church Hall, or a lay-by on the way to Tardy Gate Recreation Ground. Awkward to pin down, like the back of Lostock Hall Library? By a border? Checking beats guessing, and so ring.
For Lostock Hall people, the short version
Pour nothing until you've read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere around Lancashire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless — so leave the car off then ring 0333 366 0103.