AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Birnam: How It Occurs and How to Prevent It
Keep the motor and ignition off then ring 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Around Birnam, finding it before the motor turns normally means a drain and a full flush on the spot. Here before the event? Then the rest covers how it happens and how to stop it ever happening.
AdBlue in a diesel motor, and its separate tank
Diesel feeds your motor — yet plenty of current diesels driven about Birnam and Kingswood hold another liquid too. Kept in a tank of its own, AdBlue is fed into the exhaust gas to clean it.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Many of vehicles have a single flap for the two, while others put the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. Diesel gets filled at every filling station visit, week in, week out. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less frequently. The mistake lives in that gap.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank happen around Birnam?
It's seldom carelessness. Three things tend to line up.
On a driveway off Saint Mary's Road before work, or in the car park outside Birnam Inn on the way home: that's where the rushed top-up happens. Why the rush? As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and once it's empty, limp mode follows.
Next, your hand goes for the cap it knew on the old car — since a hire car, a new motor or a company car places the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
Lastly, the bottle goes in: a diesel filler or AdBlue one, it slides in just as readily, and after the pour starts, no part stops it. It's a few seconds, whether in Little Dunkeld or bang in the centre of Birnam.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Birnam forecourt or a driveway over in Middleton, take a couple of seconds on these before anything goes in.
- Blue and marking: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap normally doesn't. Trust the cap, not its position.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many cars say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler is not by your diesel cap, it's in the boot or under the bonnet, and the handbook says which.
- The person who drove the car last. On a hire or company car collected from somewhere like the car park outside Dunkeld & Birnam, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around Perth and Kinross that is.
- Stop on level, motor off, with time to spare — never rushing on the side of A9.
- Daft as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap does the trick — once you have located the filler and read the cap.
- The two behind one flap? Then make sure the cap on your diesel side is still shut before lifting the bottle.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, then check once more — making sure your diesel cap remained closed the whole time. After that, start the car.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Don't go on to stage five.
Birnam: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Brief order, then. First: your motor remains unstarted. Keep the ignition off too, since on plenty of diesels it alone runs your pump. Don't top up with diesel to thin it: AdBlue doesn't mix with diesel, it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where your fuel is drawn from.
On a forecourt — Pace, another forecourt nearby or another — the attendants will normally help push the vehicle away, when you ask. At home around Birnam? So your car stays where it is.
Where your motor has run by now, stop safely then switch the car off. The next junction is where to leave when you are on the M90, under 15 miles from Birnam. Mileage matters — a short hop across Birnam makes a smaller job than heading under 15 miles to Perth — so say about how far it went.
What takes place when our technicians turn up in Birnam
Our van reaches the car wherever it stopped — your own driveway, beside Platinum Jubilee Picnic Table, or outside the local primary school. Those answers determine the work and our quote, so our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. No one heads out until you have heard the quote by phone.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, after the tank is cleared. More than with petrol, it counts with AdBlue: the crystals form, some metals corrode, and none of that washes away on its own, however long it is left. A test comes at the end: before that, clean diesel is added, and the filter is cleaned or changed if necessary. Before leaving, our engineers start the engine and check that it's running correctly.
If the motor hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night. Payment happens on the day, not upfront, and you receive the paperwork an insurer wants: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Misfuelling cover is part of many insurance policies — so use the wait to check yours.
About Birnam and where it is
Birnam is a small village situated on the banks of the River Tay in Perth and Kinross, with a population of around 545 people. Birnam sits at an elevation of 64 metres, close to the nearby villages of Little Dunkeld and Dunkeld. Birnam is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its rural setting. Birnam is located near the city of Perth, approximately 12 miles away.
Birnam and Perth and Kinross: AdBlue drains across the area
Dunkeld and Inver are among the places near Birnam, a village, that the same teams cover, over PH postcodes. Give a postcode beginning PH8 0, and the van arrives fastest.
Shifting your car is not necessary. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Torwood Park, a side street near St Columba's: we drain it where it is. If you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain like the back of Anne Isabella Wood Memorial, ring and ask instead of guessing.
For Birnam people, the short version
Read the cap before you pour. AdBlue in the diesel tank regardless? Keep the vehicle off then phone 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, throughout Perth and Kinross.