Garelochhead: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
AdBlue already in the diesel tank? In that case set this page down a moment, keep the ignition and motor off, and call 0333 366 0103. Normally, if the engine hasn't run, it is drained and fully purged where your vehicle is in Garelochhead. Nothing happened yet? Further down, the rest of the page covers the why it takes place and the ways to prevent it altogether.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel vehicle
Many modern diesels on the roads around Garelochhead and Portincaple carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your engine. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it goes to the exhaust, where a spray cleans the gas.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the arrangement on a lot of vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is topped up at the pump all the time. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes normally tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. The slip lives in that gap.
Garelochhead: how AdBlue in the diesel tank takes place
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things line up.
Hurry follows from the warning. Your car warns you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts the vehicle into limp mode — so the top-up happens quickly, before work on a driveway off Station Road, or on the way home in the car park at the pub in the village.
New-to-you vehicles are next, as well. Hire cars, new cars and company vehicles place their fillers in new places, and habit goes for the cap used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no resistance at a diesel filler no more than at an AdBlue one. And so the tip, once started, carries on. Whether it takes place in Faslane Port or the middle of Garelochhead, 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 driveway in Rahane or a forecourt around Garelochhead.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue ones are regularly blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps usually aren't.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- The flap. Look inside the fuel flap for a label. Plenty of cars say there which fuel goes where.
- The handbook says which it is if your filler is not next to your diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- Ask the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you pick up a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park at the nearest station.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
Wherever around Argyll and Bute the light comes on, this is a routine for that day.
- Turn off once parked — flat ground, engine off, and never rushed beside Fairway at the roadside.
- Silly as it sounds, saying "AdBlue" aloud while you unscrew the cap works — once you've located your filler and read the cap.
- The two under one flap? Then make sure the cap on the diesel side stays shut ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Stop once your tank is topped up or the bottle runs dry; before that, tip slowly using its built-in spout.
- Before you start the car, shut the cap and look a second time that your diesel cap never opened off.
Find during the second or third stage that the bottle went into the diesel filler? That's where you stop. Leave out stage five altogether.
Already put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Garelochhead?
Don't start the engine: that is how the short order of things begins. Keep the ignition off as well, because on many diesels it by itself runs the pump. Filling up with diesel will not dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue drops to the base of that tank, just where the fuel is drawn from.
The staff at Faslane Fuel Depot, another forecourt nearby or another forecourt will normally help to push your car clear when asked. At home in Garelochhead? So the vehicle stays put.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the motor has already run. Come off the M8 — under 25 miles out of Garelochhead — at the next exit. A short hop across Garelochhead is a smaller job than a run towards Glasgow, under 50 miles away, so tell us roughly how far it went.
Garelochhead: what takes place when our engineers turn up
Our technicians come to your car wherever it has stopped, whether that is outside the local primary school, near War Memorial or on your own drive. Those answers determine the work and our price, so our engineers ask what was put in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. During the call itself, you hear our price — ahead of anything else.
Then that tank is cleared and your system purged thoroughly. More than with petrol, it counts here: crystals build up, certain metals corrode, and nothing washes out on its own, however long it sits. The filter flushed or, where it must be, swapped; clean diesel in; then a check of your car. Next our technicians fire it up and check it runs smoothly before leaving.
If the motor has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. The insurer usually wants the engineer's report and the VAT invoice, and both are yours at the end. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it's worth checking yours while we're on the way.
About Garelochhead itself
Garelochhead is a small coastal village in Argyll and Bute, situated on the shores of Gare Loch. Garelochhead has a population of around 677 people and is characterized by its terraced housing. Garelochhead is located near Faslane Port and Whistlefield, and is approximately 27 miles from Glasgow. Garelochhead sits at a low elevation of 21 metres above sea level, overlooking the loch.
AdBlue drains around Garelochhead and across Argyll and Bute
Throughout G postcodes, our vans that cover Garelochhead — a coastal village — work the nearby places too, Mambeg and Whistlefield among them. A postcode starting G84 0 gets the van to you fastest.
The vehicle does not need to move. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Greenfield Wood, a side street close to Gibson Hall: our engineers drain the vehicle where it is. If you are near a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of H.M. Submarine K13 Memorial, ring and ask rather than guessing.
For Garelochhead drivers, the short version
Before you pour, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere in Argyll and Bute, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless — so leave the vehicle off and phone 0333 366 0103.