Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Outwood
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the motor and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a thorough flush, done just where your vehicle sits in Outwood, is normally all it takes when caught before the engine runs. Here before the event? Then what follows covers why it happens and how to prevent it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Diesel goes to the motor — yet plenty of current diesels seen round Outwood and Ringley Fold hold a second liquid as well. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas and cleans it.
Different tanks, different fillers. Some motors put the AdBlue filler in the boot or under the bonnet; a lot more have the two together behind one flap. Filling your diesel side at the petrol pump goes on constantly. A driver who has to stop and work out where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less commonly. The mistake grows in the gap between the two.
How AdBlue in your diesel tank happens around Outwood
Carelessness seldom causes it. What does is three things lining up together.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from the vehicle, and letting it run out leads to limp mode — so a hurried top-up, perhaps before work off Beech Avenue, or at Hare & Hounds on the way home after work.
New-to-you cars come second, as well. Hire cars, new motors and company cars put their fillers differently, and the hand reaches for the cap used on the old one.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, and so nothing stops the pour once it has started. The same few seconds settle it, in the middle of Outwood or out in Outwood Gate.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Be it a Outwood forecourt or a drive over in Stand, spend a couple of seconds on these before any goes in.
- Blue 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 motors fit AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- A label inside the fuel flap often says which fuel goes where, on many cars. Check for it.
- The handbook. If your filler isn't by the diesel cap, it is in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before will know. Check when you collect a rental or fleet car — from Kearsley's car park, say — rather than once the light appears.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
Anywhere across Greater Manchester the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with your motor running, and not in a rush on the side of Ringley Road West.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly. It works.
- The diesel cap remains on. When the two sit under a flap, confirm it's shut before lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before starting the vehicle, close the cap and look again that the diesel cap was never opened off.
Find at the second or third step that the bottle went into the wrong tank? That is where you stop. Skip step five entirely.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Outwood?
Don't start the motor: that is where the short order of things starts. The fuel pump starts on many diesels as soon as the ignition goes on — and so keep it off. Do not top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue does not mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of your tank, where your fuel is pulled from.
Ask the staff to help roll the car clear of the petrol pump if you are on a forecourt — the Asda Pay Desk, the Asda or somewhere else. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway around Outwood.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if the motor has already run. Come off the M60 — under 3 miles out of Outwood — at the next exit. Distance counts — a quick hop across Outwood makes a smaller job than driving under 5 miles towards Salford — so say about how far it went.
Our arrival around Outwood, and what happens next
Outside St John's Church of England Primary School, Radcliffe, close to Trinity or on your own driveway: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our engineers come to it. Both the work and our price rest on three answers — what liquid, what quantity, and whether it's run — so our engineers ask. During the call itself, you hear our price — before anything else.
The fuel system is then rinsed thoroughly, once your tank is emptied. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and eats at certain fuel-system metals, and none of it washes out unaided. That is why it matters more. A test comes at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and the filter is flushed or replaced as needed. Before we go, our engineers fire it up and check that it's running properly.
If the engine has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It's worth looking at your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Outwood itself
Outwood is a village in Greater Manchester, situated lakeside at an elevation of 105 metres, with Outwood being close to the nearby city of Salford. Outwood has a population of around 1151 residents, with Outwood predominantly featuring detached housing. Outwood is located near other local places such as Outwood Gate, Chapel Field, and Radcliffe, with Outwood being around 168.7 miles from London.
AdBlue drains around Outwood and across Greater Manchester
Outwood is a village, and our vans that cover it also work the places near it, Chapel Field and Radcliffe among them, across the M postcode area. A postcode starting M26 1 gets the van to you fastest.
The car doesn't need to move. The drain happens on the spot, be it a drive, a street by Radcliffe Market, or a layby towards Outwood Country Park. Ring and ask instead of assuming if you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of Stand URC Church.
For Outwood motorists, the short version
Tip nothing until you have read the cap. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel can empty it wherever it is, wherever across Greater Manchester: switch it off then phone 0333 366 0103.