Summit: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Stop here for a moment if your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, engine off, then call 0333 366 0103. In Summit, catching it before the motor turns normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush on the spot. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it takes place and how to make sure it does not.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
Plenty of newer diesels on the roads round Summit and Clough carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to the engine. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank has a filler of its own. On a lot of cars the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the petrol pump goes on constantly. Far less frequently, the AdBlue side is filled — normally from a bottle, by someone working out where it goes. That gap is where the error lives.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank take place around Summit?
It is hardly ever carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
Haste comes from the warning. Your car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and a dry tank sends it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a driveway off Temple Lane, or heading home in the car park at The Summit.
Unfamiliar motors are next, too. Rentals, new vehicles and company motors place their fillers in new places, and habit goes for the cap it used on the old one.
No part halts the pour after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Summit or out in Calderbrook.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Summit forecourt or a drive out in Warland, spend a couple of seconds over these before anything is poured in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap usually isn't. Read it rather than going by position.
- The size. On plenty of motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Lift the flap and look for a label — many cars mark what belongs in which filler just there.
- 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.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park at Littleborough, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
On the day the light appears — wherever it is around Greater Manchester — a simple routine to use.
- Switch off once parked — level ground, motor off, and not rushed beside Todmorden Road on the verge.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, perhaps, yet it works.
- The two behind a single flap? Then confirm the lid on your diesel filler is still closed before raising the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start your car, shut the cap and check a second time that your diesel cap never came off.
If at step two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Leave out step five altogether.
Summit: already put AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Do not start your engine: that's how the short order of things starts. The fuel pump starts on many diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — and so keep it off. Topping up with diesel will not thin it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of that tank, right where the fuel is taken from.
On a forecourt — Texaco, Shell or any other — the attendants will normally help roll the car away, if you ask. Your own driveway in Summit is the place it should stay.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your motor has already run. The next junction means where to come off when you're on the M62, under 3 miles from Summit. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Manchester, under 15 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Summit.
When our engineers get there in Summit, what happens?
By Stansfield Hall Church of England / Methodist Church Primary School, near St James or on your own drive: wherever the car has stopped, our technicians come to it. Both the work and the quote depend on three replies — what fluid, what amount, and whether it has run — so our engineers ask. You hear that quote by phone, before anybody heads out.
Then your tank is emptied and the system flushed thoroughly. Much more than with petrol, it counts here: crystals form, some metals corrode, and none of that washes out on its own, however long it is left. Once the filter has been flushed — or replaced, where required — fresh diesel is added, and then your vehicle is tested. After that our engineers start the engine and check it runs correctly before we go.
Unrun cars usually mean a half-hour job after arrival. The kit is fine on a busy filling station, and quiet enough for a driveway late at night. Paying is on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. While we travel, take a look at your policy; many carry cover for misfuelling.
About Summit itself
Summit is a village in Greater Manchester, situated on the shores of a lake at an elevation of 185 metres. Summit sits near the towns of Calderbrook and Rochdale, and is close to other small villages like Timbercliffe and Gale. Summit remains a relatively small community with a mix of housing types, although terraced houses are predominant. Summit is located 14 miles from Manchester and 170 miles from London.
AdBlue drains across Greater Manchester, Summit included
As a village, Summit has the same vans as nearby places — Timbercliffe, Gale — right through OL postcodes and the surrounding area beyond. Quote a postcode that starts OL15 9, and our van gets there fastest.
There's no need to move the car. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Pasture House Plantation, a side street near Rain Stone: our engineers drain the vehicle where it sits. Awkward to pin down, like the back of Holy Trinity? Close to a border? Asking is better than guessing, and so phone.
Summit drivers: the short version
Tip no AdBlue till you have read the cap. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank anyway, leave the car off then ring 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it waits, anywhere in Greater Manchester.