Why It Happens and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Dalry
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and the ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. Around Dalry, finding it before your engine turns normally means a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. If you're reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it doesn't.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Diesel feeds the motor — yet plenty of current diesels driven around Dalry and Dalgarven carry a second liquid as well. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
There's a filler on every tank. Other motors keep the AdBlue filler in your boot or under the bonnet; plenty more place the two together behind one flap. Topping up your diesel side at the petrol pump happens all the time. The AdBlue side is topped up far less often, normally from a bottle, and usually by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between them.
Dalry: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
Carelessness seldom causes it. What does is three things coming up at once.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car 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 drive off New Street before work, or in the car park at the pub in the village on the way home.
New-to-you motors come second, too. Rentals, new vehicles and company motors place their fillers in new places, and the hand goes for the cap it used on the old one.
Nothing stops the tip after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Whether it happens in Blairland or the middle of Dalry, it's the same few seconds.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
Look at these first, on a forecourt in Dalry or a drive out in The Den. A few seconds, that's all.
- Check the cap rather than going by where it sits: AdBlue ones are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel ones normally are not.
- On many motors, the size gives it away: AdBlue has the smaller filler neck.
- Check inside your fuel flap: many vehicles have a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook. If the filler isn't by the diesel cap, it is 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 picked up from somewhere like the car park at the nearest station, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in North Ayrshire that is.
- Not in a rush on the side of Aitken Street, not on a slope, not with your engine running: park and switch off first.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew the cap works — once you've located the filler and read it.
- Both behind a single flap? Then confirm the cap on the diesel side stays shut before raising the bottle.
- Slowly is best, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the car, close the cap and look a second time that the diesel cap was never came off.
Spot at step two or three that it's already gone into the diesel side? Then stop just there. Never go on to stage five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Dalry already?
What follows is a short order of things, beginning with no starting the motor. The fuel pump runs on many diesels the moment your ignition goes on — and so leave it off. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of that tank, where your fuel is drawn from — so don't top up with diesel to dilute it.
The staff at JET, Tesco or another forecourt will normally help to push the car clear if you ask. At home around Dalry? Then the vehicle remains where it is.
Where the motor has been run already, pull over somewhere safe then switch it off. Dalry sits under 15 miles from the M77; on it, take the next junction. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Glasgow, under 25 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Dalry.
When we get there in Dalry, what occurs?
Our van reaches the vehicle wherever it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Dalry Library, or outside the local primary school. Our technicians ask what went in, about how much, and whether it's run, since the replies settle the work and the quote. That price is given over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
Draining the tank comes next, followed by a thorough flush of the fuel system. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own. After the fuel filter has been flushed — or replaced, if required — clean diesel is added, and then the car is tested. Then our engineers fire it up and make sure it runs correctly before we go.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour once we get there, provided the motor has not run — and the pumps our technicians use are fine on a live forecourt and quiet at night outside a house. Your insurer usually wants an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and both are yours at the end. Payment is on the day, with no money upfront. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
About Dalry and where it is
Dalry is a village situated on the banks of a river in North Ayrshire, with a relatively low elevation of 45 metres. Dalry lies near several smaller communities, including Blairland, Drakemyre, and Highfield, and is approximately 21 miles from Glasgow. Dalry has a mix of housing types, but flat accommodation is predominant. Dalry is located in a scenic area, with the city of Glasgow and its amenities within reach.
AdBlue drains about Dalry, and North Ayrshire beyond
Throughout KA postcodes, the vans that cover Dalry — a village — work the nearby spots too, Highfield and Drakemyre included. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting KA24 5.
The car stays put. Anywhere it stands — beside St. Palladius RC Church, in a lay-by heading to Dalry Public Park, at home — that is where it gets emptied. Ring and ask rather than guessing if you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of St Margaret's Parish Church.
For Dalry people, the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it where it stands, anywhere in North Ayrshire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank all the same — so leave it off then call 0333 366 0103.