AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Sandylands: How It Happens and How to Prevent It
Keep your motor and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in the diesel tank. Usually, when your engine hasn't run, it's emptied and thoroughly flushed where the car sits in Sandylands. Here before the event? Then what follows covers how it happens and what to prevent it ever happening.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Many newer diesels on the roads around Sandylands and Lower Heysham carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the motor. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to the exhaust, and there spraying cleans the fumes.
Separate tanks, separate fillers. Under one flap, side by side: that's the layout on a lot of cars. On others, AdBlue's filler is beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the petrol pump all the time. Much less regularly, the AdBlue side is filled — mostly from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. The mistake grows in the gap between them.
Sandylands: how AdBlue in the diesel tank happens
Seldom is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from the car, and running dry leads to limp mode — hence a hurried top-up, maybe before work off King's Crescent, or outside Cumberland View on the way home that evening.
Then the car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car 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.
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. It takes seconds, whether in West End or right in the centre of Sandylands.
Telling the AdBlue filler from the diesel filler
Be it a Sandylands forecourt or a driveway over in White Lund, take a few seconds on these before anything goes in.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue ones are commonly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones usually aren't.
- On many cars, size tells: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- A label inside the fuel flap often shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of vehicles. Check for it.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by the diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at Morecambe.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around Lancashire that is.
- Stop on level, motor off, with time in hand — not hurried on the side of Balmoral Road.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you have located your filler and read it.
- The diesel cap stays on. When both sit under a flap, make sure it's shut before the bottle comes up.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before starting your car, close the cap and check again that the diesel cap never came off.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into your diesel side. Do not go on to step five.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Sandylands already?
Do not start the motor: that's where the short order of things starts. Don't switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where your fuel is drawn from — so do not top up with diesel to dilute it.
Ask the attendants to help roll the car clear of the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the BP, the Texaco or anywhere else. Your own driveway around Sandylands is the place it should stay.
Where the motor has been run already, stop somewhere safe and switch it off. On the Lune Valley Interchange, under 5 miles from Sandylands, that means the next junction. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Lancaster, under 5 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Sandylands.
What occurs when our engineers arrive around Sandylands
Wherever the vehicle has stopped, whether by Morecambe and Heysham Sandylands Community Primary School, beside Stanley Road Baptist Church or on your own drive, our van comes to it. What liquid got in, the amount, and if it ran: our technicians ask because the replies decide both work and quote. No one heads out until you've had the quote by phone.
Emptying that tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and neither clears out by itself. That is why it matters more. The filter flushed or, where needed, replaced; fresh diesel in; then a check of the vehicle. We do not go until it has been fired up and is running smoothly.
Unrun vehicles mostly need a half-hour visit after the moment we arrive. The equipment is fine on a busy filling station, and hushed enough for a residential street after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. While we travel, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Sandylands, briefly
Sandylands is a coastal suburban area in Lancashire, situated near the city of Lancaster and close to the nearby places of West End, Heysham, and Morecambe. Sandylands has a relatively low elevation of around 8 metres above sea level, reflecting its coastal setting. Sandylands is characterised by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock, which is typical of many suburban areas in the region.
AdBlue drains round Sandylands, and Lancashire beyond
Throughout LA postcodes, our vans covering Sandylands — a residential suburb — work the surrounding locations too, Morecambe and Heysham included. Give a postcode beginning LA3 1, and our van gets there quickest.
The vehicle stays where it is. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to King George's Field, a side street near Sefton Road URC: our engineers drain it where it sits. If you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of St John's Church Hall, ring and ask instead of guessing.
Sandylands drivers: the short version
Pour no AdBlue till you have read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, anywhere around Lancashire, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless — and so leave it off then phone 0333 366 0103.