Moortown: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
Keep your engine and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. In Moortown, finding it before your engine runs normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. Here in advance? Then the rest explains how it comes about and what to stop it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel motor: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of current diesels on the roads around Moortown and Ballyronan carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust gas to clean it.
Every tank has one filler of its own. Under one flap, side by side: that's the layout on many vehicles. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler is under the bonnet or in the boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the pump all the time. Rarely topped up, AdBlue normally comes out of a bottle, tipped by a driver who has to stop and think what cap it needs. The error lives in that gap.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank occur around Moortown?
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from your car, and running dry leads to limp mode — hence a hurried top-up, perhaps before work off B738, or outside the pub in the village on the way home that evening.
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 your hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Third, the spout fits: a diesel filler or AdBlue one, it goes in as readily, and once the pour starts, nothing halts it. Ardboe or the heart of Moortown: it takes the same few seconds either way.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Check these before pouring, on a forecourt in Moortown or a driveway over in Loup. Seconds, no more.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally does not. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- Many cars fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler sits if it's not by the diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park outside the nearest station, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
On the day the warning comes on — anywhere it is in County Tyrone — a simple routine to follow.
- Turn off once parked — level ground, motor off, and not in a rush by Chalet Road on the verge.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Close the cap, then check again — confirm your diesel cap stayed shut the whole time. After that, start your car.
Discover during the second or third step that AdBlue went in the wrong tank? That's where you stop. Skip step five altogether.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Moortown?
Brief list, then. Top of it: the engine remains unstarted. On many diesels the ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so don't switch the car on. Topping up with diesel won't weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the base of your tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
The attendants at the nearest petrol station, another forecourt nearby or another forecourt will usually help to push the car away when you ask. On your own drive around Moortown? Then your car remains put.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if the engine has already run. The next exit is where to come off if you are on the M77, over 50 miles from Moortown. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Armagh, under 25 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Moortown.
When our technicians arrive in Moortown, what happens?
Wherever the vehicle came to rest, whether by the local primary school, beside the centre or at home, our van travels to it. Our engineers ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it has run, because those answers settle this work and our price. You hear that quote by phone, before anybody sets off.
After that: a drain, then a thorough flush of the whole system. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own. The filter flushed or, where it must be, swapped; clean diesel in; then a check of the car. Before we go, we start the car and check that it's running correctly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour after our technicians get there, provided your motor hasn't run — and the pumps we use are safe on a live forecourt and quiet after dark outside a house. No money in advance; you settle up that day. At the end, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer go to you for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is included in many insurance policies — so use the wait to look at yours.
About Moortown, for a moment
Moortown is a small locality in County Tyrone, situated inland at a low elevation of 21 metres. Moortown lies near the villages of Ardboe and Coagh, and is approximately 20 miles from the city of Armagh. Moortown has a population of around 667 people, predominantly living in detached housing. Moortown is also relatively distant from major cities, with London being around 342 miles away.
AdBlue drains across County Tyrone, Moortown included
Moortown is a small village, and our teams that cover it also work the places around it, Derrycrin and Coagh among them, across the BT postcode area. Fastest of all: give a BT80 0 postcode to the van.
Shifting your car is not necessary. Our technicians drain it where it is — a side street near a street just off the centre, a lay-by on the way to the green space at the edge of the village, a drive. Awkward to pin down, like the back of the far end of the built-up part? Close to a county line? Asking beats guessing, so ring.
Moortown motorists: the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere in County Tyrone, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — so leave the vehicle off and ring 0333 366 0103.