Riddings: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Keep your motor and ignition off then call 0333 366 0103 first — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Caught before the motor runs, it is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is in Riddings. Reading before the event? Then what follows covers why it happens and what to prevent it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Many current diesels on the roads around Riddings and Fartown Green carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Many of motors share a single flap for both, whereas some move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, your diesel side is topped up constantly. Seldom topped up, AdBlue normally comes out of a bottle, poured by someone who must stop and think which cap to use. That gap is where the slip lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank occur in Riddings?
Carelessness seldom explains it. Instead is three things lining up together.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from the vehicle, and letting it run out means limp mode — hence a hurried top-up, maybe before work off Riddings Road, perhaps outside White Horse Inn on the way home that evening.
Next, your hand goes for the cap it knew on the old car — because a hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
A spouted bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. So the tip, once begun, carries on. It's seconds, be it out in Deighton or right in the centre of Riddings.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Whether a Riddings forecourt or a driveway out in Brackenhall, spend a few seconds over these before any goes in.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not its position.
- On plenty of cars, the size gives it away: AdBlue gets the smaller filler neck.
- Lift the filler flap and check for a label — many cars mark what goes in each inlet just there.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler is if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — when you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside Deighton.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in West Yorkshire that is.
- Stop on level, engine off, with time to spare — never rushing on the side of Ruskin Grove.
- 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.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start your car, shut the cap and look again that the diesel cap was never opened off.
If at step two or three you find you have already poured into your diesel side, stop there. Skip stage five altogether.
Riddings: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the order of things is short. Don't start the engine. On plenty of diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch it on. Filling up with diesel won't weaken it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of the tank, right where fuel is taken from.
Ask the staff to help push your car away from the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the Shell, the Asda or somewhere else. At home around Riddings? Then the car stays where it is.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. Riddings sits under 3 miles from the M62; on it, take the next junction. Distance counts — a short hop across Riddings makes a smaller job than driving under 10 miles towards Bradford — so tell us roughly how far it went.
Our arrival around Riddings, and what happens next
Outside Christ Church CE Academy, close to The Deighton Sports Arena or on your own drive: wherever your car has stopped, our engineers come to it. Our technicians ask what was put in, about how much, and whether it's run, since the answers settle the work and our quote. Nobody sets off until you have had our price by phone.
After that: a drain, then a thorough flush of the whole system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, so it does not wash out on its own — which is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. The filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. The engine is fired up next and checked to make sure it runs properly, all before our engineers go.
Unrun vehicles usually mean a half-hour job after arrival. The kit is safe on a busy filling station, and hushed enough for a residential street late at night. Paying is on the day, not upfront, and you are given the documents your insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. It is worth checking your policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Riddings
Riddings is a suburban area in West Yorkshire, situated near the River Calder and close to the cities of Bradford and Leeds. Riddings has a mix of terraced housing and local amenities, with nearby places including Deighton, Sheepridge, and Woodhouse Hill. Riddings sits at an elevation of 122 metres, approximately 8 miles from Bradford city centre. Riddings is home to around 3953 residents, according to recent estimates.
AdBlue drains around Riddings and across West Yorkshire
Riddings is a residential suburb, and the teams that cover it also work the towns near it, Sheepridge and Woodhouse Hill among them, across the HD postcode area. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting HD2 1.
No need to move the vehicle. The drain takes place on the spot, be it a drive, a road by Headquarters for Church of God Fellowship, or a lay-by towards The Riddings. Awkward to pin down, like the back of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church? By a border? Checking beats guessing, and so ring.
In short, for Riddings people
Pour no AdBlue until you've read the cap. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Leave the car switched off then call 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, across West Yorkshire.