Aberlady: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Leave your motor and ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103 now — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Around Aberlady, catching it before your motor runs usually means draining and a thorough flush where it stands. The remainder of this page explains why it occurs and how to ensure it does not — handy if you are reading ahead of time.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle: two tanks, two fillers
Diesel goes to your motor — yet many current diesels driven around Aberlady and Spittal carry another fluid as well. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank has its own filler. Plenty of cars share a single flap for both, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Filling your diesel side at the pump goes on all the time. Far less regularly, the AdBlue side is filled — normally from a bottle, by someone thinking about where it goes. It's in the gap that the error happens.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank occurs in Aberlady
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from the car, and running out means limp mode — hence a rushed top-up, perhaps before work off Sea Wynd, perhaps at the pub in the village on the way home after work.
Unfamiliar vehicles come second, as well. Rentals, new motors and company cars place their fillers in new places, and the hand goes for the cap used on the old one.
Nothing stops the tip 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 Aberlady or out in Haddington Place.
The AdBlue filler and your diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Aberlady forecourt or a driveway out in Saltcoats Steading, spend a couple of seconds over these before anything is poured in.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is often blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap usually is not. Read it rather than going by position.
- Look at the size: the smaller filler neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Plenty of motors say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook says which it lives if your filler isn't next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park at Longniddry? Ask the person who drove the vehicle last before you set off, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
For the day the warning appears — wherever it is around East Lothian — a simple routine to use.
- Not in a rush on the side of High Street, not on a slope, not with the motor running: park then switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and speak the word "AdBlue" out loud as unscrewing it. It seems silly. It works.
- The diesel cap stays on. Where both sit under a flap, confirm it's closed before lifting the bottle.
- Tip slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Before starting your car, shut the cap and check again that your diesel cap never opened off.
Find at stage two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? Then stop right there. Leave out stage five entirely.
Already put AdBlue in the diesel tank around Aberlady?
Short order, then. First: your engine remains unstarted. The fuel pump runs on plenty of diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — so keep it off. Filling up with diesel won't weaken it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of the tank, just where the fuel is taken from.
The staff at BP, Shell or another forecourt will normally lend a hand pushing your car away if asked. If you're on your own driveway in Aberlady, leave it where it sits.
Already started? Pull over when it is safe, then switch off. The next junction means the place to leave if you are on the M8, under 25 miles from Aberlady. Mileage counts — a short hop across Aberlady is a smaller job than heading under 15 miles towards Edinburgh — so tell us about how far it went.
Our arrival around Aberlady, and what occurs next
Our van reaches your car anywhere it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Aberlady Village Hall, or by the local primary school. Our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it's run, since those answers settle this work and our quote. You get that quote by phone, before anybody sets off.
The system is then cleaned thoroughly, after that tank is cleared. With AdBlue that matters 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. After your filter has been cleaned — or replaced, if required — clean diesel is added, and finally your vehicle is tested. Next our technicians start it and check it runs smoothly before leaving.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once our technicians arrive, provided the motor has not run — and the pumps our technicians use are safe on a live forecourt yet quiet at night outside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. It's worth checking your insurance while we travel to you: misfuelling cover comes with plenty of policies.
About Aberlady and where it is
Aberlady is a small coastal village in East Lothian, situated near the Firth of Forth and approximately 13 miles from Edinburgh. Aberlady has a population of around 1107 people and is characterised by semi-detached housing. Aberlady sits at a low elevation of 11 metres above sea level, looking out towards the North Sea. Aberlady is close to nearby places such as Haddington, Craigielaw, and Ballencrieff.
AdBlue drains around Aberlady and across East Lothian
As a coastal village, Aberlady has the same vans as surrounding areas — Craigielaw, Ballencrieff — right through EH postcodes and the surrounding area around them. Quote a postcode beginning EH32 0, and the van arrives quickest.
The vehicle doesn't need to move. Anywhere it stands — near Mercat Cross, in a layby en route to Loany Wood, at home — that is where it gets cleared. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Aberlady Parish Church, ring and ask instead of assuming.
For Aberlady motorists, the short version
Tip no AdBlue until you've read the cap. Still AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will empty it wherever it stands, anywhere around East Lothian: keep it off then call 0333 366 0103.