Preventing AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Oaken Bottom: Why It Happens
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and your ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103. Normally, when your engine has not run, it is emptied and fully purged where the car sits in Oaken Bottom. The remainder of this page explains why it happens and how to ensure it doesn't — handy if you are reading before it has happened.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
No single liquid but two: that is what plenty of modern diesels around Oaken Bottom and Mill Hill carry, with diesel for the engine. Its own tank holds it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, where a spray cleans the gas.
Each tank has its own filler. Some cars put the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; plenty more have the two side by side behind one flap. Filling the diesel side at the pump goes on constantly. Seldom filled, AdBlue normally goes in from a bottle, tipped by someone who must stop and think what filler it needs. The error lives in that gap.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur in Oaken Bottom?
It is seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the car goes into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Oakenbottom Road before work, or in the car park outside The Black Horse on the way home.
Then the vehicle is strange. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand gets to for the cap it would have used on the old one.
A spout-topped bottle meets no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, after started, carries on. It takes seconds, be it in Tonge Fold or right in the centre of Oaken Bottom.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Check these first, at a forecourt in Oaken Bottom or a drive out in Springfield. A few seconds, that's all.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap usually is not. Read it instead of going by where it sits.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- Lift the flap and look for a label — plenty of motors mark which belongs in which inlet just there.
- The handbook. If your filler is not by your diesel cap, it's in your boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver knows. Check as you collect a rental or company car — from Bolton's car park, perhaps — not once the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever across Greater Manchester that is.
- Pull in somewhere level, engine off, with time to spare — not rushing on the side of High Bank Street.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" out loud while you unscrew the cap does the trick — after you have found the filler and read it.
- Leave your diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish when your tank fills or the bottle is empty; until then, pour gently using the built-in spout.
- Before you start the vehicle, close the cap and check a second time that the diesel cap was never opened off.
Find at the second or third step that AdBlue went in the diesel filler? That is where you stop. Don't go on to step five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Oaken Bottom already?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start your engine. Do not switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where the fuel is sucked from — so don't top up with diesel to thin it.
At a forecourt — Esso, BP or another — the attendants will normally help roll your car away, when you ask. Your own drive in Oaken Bottom is where it stays.
When your engine has been run already, stop somewhere safe then turn it off. Oaken Bottom lies under 3 miles from the St. Peter's Way; on it, take the next exit. Mileage counts — a quick hop across Oaken Bottom makes a smaller job than heading under 10 miles to Salford — so tell us roughly how far it went.
What happens when we get there in Oaken Bottom
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside St Stephen and All Martyrs' CofE School, Lever Bridge, near Trinity Methodist Church or on your own drive. Which liquid got in, the amount, and whether it ran: our engineers ask since the replies set both work and quote. During the call itself, you hear our price — before anything else.
Next: draining, then a full flush of the entire system. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own. Once your filter has been flushed — or replaced, where required — fresh diesel is added, and then your vehicle is tested. We do not go until it has been started and is running properly.
Most jobs are done in about half an hour once our technicians get there, provided your engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a busy forecourt yet quiet at night outside a house. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork your insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Wrong-fuel cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Oaken Bottom, for a moment
Oaken Bottom is a suburban area in Greater Manchester, situated near the River Irwell and characterised by its terraced housing. Oaken Bottom sits at an elevation of 68 metres, approximately 7.9 miles from Salford and part of the wider North West England region. Oaken Bottom is close to nearby places such as Tonge Fold, Darcy Lever, and Tonge Moor, and has a population of around 4707 residents.
Oaken Bottom and Greater Manchester: AdBlue drains across the area
Throughout BL postcodes, the vans covering Oaken Bottom — a residential suburb — work the nearby places too, Tonge Moor and Darcy Lever among them. Quickest of all: quote a BL2 6 postcode for the van.
The car remains where it is. We drain it where it is — a side street close to Leverhulme Athletics Stadium, a lay-by on the way to Leverhulme Park, a drive. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Leverhulme Centre, ring and ask instead of assuming.
For Oaken Bottom people, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. AdBlue in the diesel tank after all? Leave the vehicle switched off and call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, across Greater Manchester.