Avoiding AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Fountainbridge: Why It Occurs
Keep the motor and ignition off then phone 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait when AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. In Fountainbridge, catching it before your motor turns usually means draining and a thorough flush where it stands. Here before the event? Then what follows explains how it happens and how to stop it happening at all.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel motor need its own filler?
Diesel feeds the engine — yet many newer diesels seen about Fountainbridge and Coates hold another liquid as well. Your exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue goes: sprayed into the gas to fresh it, from a separate tank.
Separate tanks, separate fillers. On a lot of motors the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at each filling station call-out, again and again. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes normally fills the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less frequently. That gap is where the error lives.
Fountainbridge: how AdBlue in your diesel tank happens
Carelessness rarely explains it. What does is three things lining up together.
The warning comes first. As AdBlue runs low your car tells you, and if it runs out completely, the car drops into limp mode. So the top-up is done in a hurry: on a drive off Gilmore Park before work, or in the car park outside Common Room on the way home.
Then the car is new. A hire car, a new vehicle or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Nothing stops the pour after it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It takes a few seconds, be it in Tollcross or bang in the centre of Fountainbridge.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A few seconds is all these take — so check them before you tip anything, on a driveway in Churchhill or a forecourt around Fountainbridge.
- Position can mislead; the cap doesn't. AdBlue caps tend to be blue or carry the name "AdBlue" — diesel caps normally do not.
- Check the size: the smaller filler neck is, on many cars, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many cars say there which fuel goes where.
- Can't find it next to the diesel inlet? In that case look beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the handbook says which.
- Whoever had it before knows. Ask when you collect a hire car or fleet car — at Haymarket's car park, say — rather than when the light appears.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
Anywhere in City of Edinburgh the light comes on, this is a routine for the day.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time to spare — not hurried on the side of Fountainbridge.
- Silly as it sounds, speaking "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap works — after you've found your filler and read it.
- The diesel cap remains on. Where both sit under a flap, make sure it is shut before lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, and look again — making sure the diesel filler remained shut the whole time. After that, start the car.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into your diesel side, stop there. Don't carry on to stage five.
Fountainbridge: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Do not start your engine: that's where the short order of things starts. Keep your ignition off too, because on many diesels it by itself starts your pump. Thinning it with more diesel won't work, because AdBlue sinks to the base instead of mixing — and that's where your fuel is pulled from.
Ask the attendants to help push the vehicle away from the pump if you are on a forecourt — the JET, the Sainsbury's or anywhere else. If you're on your own drive around Fountainbridge, leave the vehicle where it stands.
Stop as soon as it is safe and switch off, if your engine has already run. Fountainbridge sits under 5 miles from the M8; there, take the first exit. Tell us about how far it went: a run towards Edinburgh, under 3 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Fountainbridge.
When our technicians turn up around Fountainbridge, what takes place?
Outside the local primary school, near Sean Connery or on your own driveway: wherever the car has stopped, our technicians come to it. The replies settle the work and the price, so our technicians ask what was put in, roughly how much, and if it's run. Nobody sets off before you've heard our quote over the phone.
Next: draining, then a full flush of the entire system. Unlike petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks some fuel-system metals, and none of that clears out unaided. Hence it matters more. Filter flushed or, where needed, swapped; fresh diesel in; then a test of your car. Before we go, our technicians fire it up and check that it's running smoothly.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour once our technicians get there, provided your motor hasn't run — and the pumps we use are safe on a live forecourt and quiet after dark beside a house. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours whilst we're on the way.
About Fountainbridge itself
Fountainbridge is a suburban area in the City of Edinburgh, situated approximately 1.2 miles from Edinburgh's city centre. Fountainbridge sits near the Water of Leith, at an elevation of around 71 metres, and is characterised by its predominantly flat-type housing. Fountainbridge is close to other nearby places such as Tollcross, Dalry, and the West End, and is home to a population of around 22597 people.
AdBlue drains around Fountainbridge, and City of Edinburgh beyond
As a residential suburb, Fountainbridge shares its vans surrounding places — Dalry, West End — right across EH postcodes and the wider area around them. A postcode starting EH3 9 gets the van to you fastest.
No need to move the vehicle. Anywhere it stands — near Catalogue Wall, on a layby en route to Grove at Printmakers, at home — that is where it gets cleared. Tricky to explain, like the back of Edinburgh Printmakers? Close to a county line? Checking beats guessing, so phone.
The short version for Fountainbridge people
Read the cap before you pour. AdBlue in your diesel tank regardless? Leave the car off and ring 0333 366 0103; Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, throughout City of Edinburgh.