AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Springwood: Why It Occurs and How to Avoid It
Keep the engine and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 now — reading can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Normally, if your motor hasn't turned, it is emptied and thoroughly purged where your vehicle is in Springwood. Here before the event? Then the rest explains how it happens and how to stop it happening at all.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
Diesel goes to the engine — but many current diesels driven around Springwood and Chesterton hold a second liquid too. AdBlue's own tank keeps it, and from there it is sent to the exhaust, and there spraying cleans the gas.
There is a filler for each tank. Many of cars share a single flap for both, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is topped up at the pump all the time. Seldom topped up, AdBlue normally goes in out of a bottle, tipped by someone who must stop and think what cap it needs. It is in that gap that the error happens.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank happens around Springwood
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out altogether, your vehicle drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Springwood Road before work, or in the car park outside The Red Lion on the way home.
Then, your hand goes for the cap it knew on the old vehicle — because a rental car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one didn't.
A spouted bottle finds no resistance at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. And so the pour, after begun, keeps on. It takes seconds, be it out in Crackley or bang in the centre of Springwood.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Apedale or a forecourt in Springwood, check these. They take a few seconds.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- Open the filler flap and look for a label — many cars mark which belongs in which inlet just there.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that is where your filler sits if it is not by your 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 Longport.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
The day the light comes on, wherever around Staffordshire, follow this routine.
- Turn off after you park — flat ground, engine stopped, and never rushed by Audley Road on the verge.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you've found your 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 that tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; before that, tip slowly using its own spout.
- Only after that, start the vehicle: close the cap, check once more, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
Spot at stage two or three that it has already gone into the diesel side? So stop just there. Leave out step five altogether.
Springwood: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
The short order of things, starting with not starting your motor. The fuel pump starts on many diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — and so keep it off. Topping up with diesel won't weaken it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the bottom of the tank, right where fuel is drawn from.
Ask the staff to help roll the car away from the petrol pump if you are on a forecourt — the Shell, the Esso or somewhere else. At home in Springwood? So the vehicle stays where it is.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Leave the M6 — under 3 miles out of Springwood — at the next exit. A short hop across Springwood is a smaller job than a run towards Stoke-on-Trent, under 5 miles away, and so tell us about how far it went.
Our arrival in Springwood, and what occurs next
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside Crackley Bank Primary School, close to Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses or on your own driveway. Both the work and the price depend on three answers — which liquid, what quantity, and if it's run — so we ask. No one sets off before you've had our quote by phone.
Then that tank is cleared and your system rinsed thoroughly. 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. The filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. We do not leave until it has been fired up and is running correctly.
Unrun vehicles usually need a half-hour job after the moment we arrive. The kit is fine on a busy filling station, and hushed enough for a driveway late at night. The insurer usually wants an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both at the end. Payment is on the day, with no deposit. It's worth looking at your policy while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with many policies.
About Springwood
Springwood is a suburban area in Staffordshire, situated approximately 4.2 miles from Stoke-on-Trent, and is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock. Springwood sits inland, at an elevation of around 173 metres, and is surrounded by nearby places such as Crackley and Butters Green. Springwood is located in the West Midlands region, about 139.6 miles from London, and has a population of around 1857 residents. Springwood forms part of the wider Stoke-on-Trent urban area, with Wood Lane also nearby.
AdBlue drains across Staffordshire, Springwood included
As a residential suburb, Springwood shares its vans nearby places — Butters Green, Wood Lane — all the way through ST postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. Quickest of all: give a ST5 6 postcode to our van.
No need to shift the vehicle. A driveway, a lay-by on the way to Wood Lane Cricket Club, a side street near Holy Trinity: our engineers drain the vehicle where it is. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, like the back of United Reform Church.
Springwood drivers: the short version
Tip nothing till you've read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, anywhere around Staffordshire, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless — so leave it off then phone 0333 366 0103.