Crail: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and the ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Around Crail, finding it before the engine turns normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush on the spot. Here in advance? In that case what follows explains how it comes about and what to prevent it happening at all.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Many current diesels on the roads about Crail and Anstruther carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. The exhaust, not your motor, is where AdBlue ends up: sprayed into the fumes to clean it, from a separate tank.
Every tank comes with a filler of its own. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is topped up at the pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less commonly. It is in the gap that the slip lives.
How does AdBlue in your diesel tank take place in Crail?
Carelessness rarely causes it. What does is three things coming up at once.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it runs out altogether, the car drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a driveway off High Street before work, or in the car park at The Shoregate on the way home.
The old car's filler is where your hand reaches — yet a hire car, a new car or a company car keeps the fillers elsewhere. That is a second thing: a strange vehicle.
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 after it has started. Whether it happens in Kingsbarns or the middle of Crail, it's the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A few seconds is all these take — so run through them before you tip anything, on a drive in Upper Kenley or a forecourt around Crail.
- Blue and lettering: an AdBlue cap is often blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- Look at the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- Open the filler flap and check for a label — many cars show which goes in which inlet just there.
- The handbook says which it is if the filler isn't next to the diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park outside the nearest station? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before you set off, rather than once the light goes on.
Topping up AdBlue without it reaching the diesel tank
For the day the warning appears — anywhere it is in Fife — a routine to follow.
- Not in a rush on the side of Castle Street, not on a slope, not with your motor running: park then switch off properly.
- Find the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and say the name "AdBlue" out loud as unscrewing it. It seems daft. It works.
- Leave the diesel cap on. If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle.
- Finish once the tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; before that, pour slowly through its built-in spout.
- Close the cap and check once more. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the vehicle.
Spot at step two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? So stop just there. Leave out stage five altogether.
AdBlue in the diesel tank already, in Crail?
Don't start the motor: that is where the short order of things begins. Don't switch your ignition on; on plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel won't weaken it: instead, AdBlue drops to the bottom of the tank, just where fuel is taken from.
If you are at a forecourt, whether it's the the nearest petrol station or the another forecourt nearby, ask the attendants to help roll your car away from the petrol pump. If you're on your own drive in Crail, leave the car where it stands.
When your motor has been run by now, pull over safely then turn the car off. Crail lies under 50 miles from the M90; there, take the first junction. A short hop across Crail is a smaller job than a run towards Dundee, under 25 miles away, and so tell us roughly how far it went.
Crail: what occurs when our engineers turn up
We come to the car wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside the local primary school, close to Crail Museum and Heritage Centre or on your own drive. We ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it's run, since the replies determine this work and our price. The price is given on the call, ahead of any van leaving.
Your system is then purged thoroughly, once the tank is drained. More than with petrol, it counts here: crystals build up, some metals corrode, and none of it washes away on its own, however long it sits. Once the filter is cleaned — or renewed, if required — clean diesel is added, and finally the car is tested. Before leaving, our technicians fire it up and check that it is running smoothly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour once our engineers get there, provided your engine hasn't run — and the pumps our technicians use are fine on a live forecourt and quiet after dark outside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Misfuelling cover is part of plenty of insurance policies — so make use of the wait to look at yours.
About Crail itself
Crail is a small coastal town in Fife, situated on the eastern coast of Scotland, with a population of around 1630 people. Crail sits at an elevation of 31 metres, looking out over the North Sea, and is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock. Crail is located near the towns of Kingsbarns, Kilrenny, and Cellardyke, and is approximately 19 miles from the city of Dundee. Crail remains a quiet residential community with a strong sense of local identity.
AdBlue drains around Crail and across Fife
Being a coastal town, Crail has the same vans as nearby places — Kilrenny, Cellardyke — all the way across KY postcodes and the wider area beyond. Fastest of all: give a KY10 3 postcode for the van.
No need to move the vehicle. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Victoria Gardens, a side street close to Crail Town Hall: our engineers drain it where it sits. Tricky to pin down, like the back of Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Water Fountain? By a border? Asking is better than assuming, and so ring.
Crail motorists: the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. Even so AdBlue in your diesel tank? Petrol in Diesel will drain it where it stands, anywhere around Fife: keep the vehicle off and call 0333 366 0103.