How It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Ness
Stop reading a minute when your diesel tank already holds AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, and ring 0333 366 0103. Usually, when the motor hasn't run, it's drained and thoroughly purged where your vehicle is in Ness. If you're reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it doesn't.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Diesel goes to the engine — but plenty of current diesels driven round Ness and Neston carry another liquid as well. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust stream and cleans it.
Different tanks, different fillers. Under one flap, side by side: that's the layout on many motors. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in the boot instead. At the petrol pump, your diesel side gets filled all the time. Much less commonly, the AdBlue side is filled — mostly from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. That gap is where the mistake lives.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank take place around Ness?
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the vehicle, and letting it run dry leads to limp mode — so a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off Laburnum Farm Close, or outside The Royal Oak on the way home that evening.
New-to-you vehicles come next, too. Rentals, new cars and company cars put their fillers differently, and habit goes for the cap it used on the old one.
A spout-topped bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, once begun, keeps on. It's a few seconds, whether in Ness Holt or bang in the centre of Ness.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Check these before pouring, at a forecourt around Ness or a drive over in Hinderton. Seconds, no more.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Go by the cap, not its position.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many cars, the AdBlue one.
- Check inside the fuel flap: plenty of cars have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows which it lives if the filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove it last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Neston, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
For the day the warning appears — wherever it is across Cheshire — a routine to follow.
- Not in a rush on the side of Shones Croft, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park and switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft and it does the trick.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the vehicle on.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it is full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the vehicle, close the cap and check again that your diesel cap was never came off.
Discover at the second or third step that the bottle went in the wrong tank? That is where you stop. Don't go on to stage five.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Ness?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the motor. Leave your ignition off too, since on many diesels switching it on alone runs the pump. Don't top up with diesel to dilute it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from.
Ask the attendants to help roll your car clear of the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the Shell, the Gordale Petrol Station or somewhere else. Leave it where it is if you are on your own driveway around Ness.
Already run? Stop when it is safe, then turn off. Leave the M53 — under 3 miles out of Ness — at the first junction. Roughly how far did it go? Crossing Ness is smaller a job than a trip of under 10 miles towards Chester, and so say.
What takes place when our engineers arrive around Ness
The van reaches your car wherever it has come to rest — your own drive, near Roman Coin found 1930, or by Woodfall Primary and Nursery School. Our technicians ask what went in, about how much, and whether it's run, since those answers decide the work and the quote. No one sets off before you have heard our price by phone.
Draining your tank comes next, followed by a thorough flush of your system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it doesn't wash out on its own — which is why the flush counts more here than with petrol. Filter flushed or, if needed, swapped; clean diesel in; then a test of your car. Before we leave, our technicians start the engine and confirm that it is running correctly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour after our technicians get there, as long as your engine hasn't run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a busy forecourt yet quiet after dark outside a house. 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 Ness
Ness is a small suburban area on the coast of Cheshire, situated near the Dee Estuary at an elevation of 51 metres. Ness lies within commuting distance of Chester, which is approximately 8.8 miles away. Ness is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its residential nature. Ness is close to nearby places such as Ness Holt, Little Neston, and Burton, and is around 173.5 miles from London.
Ness and Cheshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Ness is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the towns near it, Little Neston and Burton among them, across the CH postcode area. A postcode starting CH64 4 gets the van to you fastest.
There's no need to shift the car. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Woodfall Lane Playground, a side street near Church of Michael and All Angels: our technicians drain the car where it sits. Ring and ask instead of assuming if you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of Ness Colliery Mineshaft.
The short version for Ness people
First, the cap; then, the pour. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Leave the car switched off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, throughout Cheshire.