How It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Grantown-on-Spey
Pause here a minute when your diesel tank already has AdBlue in it: ignition off, motor off, and phone 0333 366 0103. Around Grantown-on-Spey, finding it before your motor turns normally leaves a drain and a thorough flush where it stands. Here in advance? Then the rest explains why it comes about and what to stop it happening at all.
AdBlue in a diesel vehicle, and its separate tank
Plenty of modern diesels on the roads about Grantown-on-Spey and Craggan carry two liquids, not one. Diesel goes to your motor. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Different tanks, separate fillers. Many of cars have a single flap for the two, whereas some put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is fuelled at the petrol pump all the time. Seldom topped up, AdBlue normally goes in from a bottle, tipped by someone who must stop and think which cap it needs. It's in that gap that the error lives.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Grantown-on-Spey: how it happens
Carelessness rarely explains it. What does is three things lining up together.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from your car, and letting it run out means limp mode — hence a hurried top-up, perhaps before work off High Street, perhaps at Claymore Bar on the way home that evening.
Next, the hand goes for the cap it would have used on the old car — since a rental car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't.
And the bottle fits. A bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one, so nothing stops the pour after it has started. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Grantown-on-Spey or out in Dreggie.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
A few seconds is all these take — so check them before you pour anything, on a drive in Gaich or a forecourt around Grantown-on-Spey.
- Position can mislead; the cap doesn't. AdBlue caps are often blue or carry the name "AdBlue" — diesel ones usually do not.
- The size. On many motors the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- The flap. Look inside your fuel flap for a label. Many cars say there which fuel goes where.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where your filler is if it is not by your diesel cap, and the handbook says which.
- The previous driver will know. Check when you collect a hire car or fleet car — at Carrbridge's car park, say — not when the warning appears.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
Anywhere across Highland the light comes on, here is a routine for the day.
- Park and switch off. Not on a slope, not with the engine running, and not in a rush on the side of Forest Road.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the car on.
- Using the bottle's own spout, tip slowly — and stop when it's full or the bottle is empty.
- Only then, start the vehicle: close the cap, check again, and make sure the diesel cap was never opened.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Leave out stage five altogether.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Grantown-on-Spey already?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start your engine. The fuel pump starts on many diesels as soon as your ignition is switched on — so leave it off. Thinning it with more diesel won't work, since AdBlue settles to the base rather than blending — and that is where your fuel is drawn from.
Ask the attendants to help push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the Esso, the another forecourt nearby or somewhere else. Your own driveway around Grantown-on-Spey is the place it stays.
If the motor has already run, stop as soon as it is safe and switch off. The next junction means the place to come off if you are on the M90, over 50 miles from Grantown-on-Spey. Distance counts — a short hop across Grantown-on-Spey is a smaller job than driving under 50 miles to Inverness — so say roughly how far it went.
What happens when our engineers get there around Grantown-on-Spey
The van comes to your car wherever it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Grantown War Memorial, or outside the local primary school. Our engineers ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether it has run, since the answers settle the work and the price. No one sets off before you have heard the price over the phone.
Emptying your tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the system. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own — which is why that counts more here than with petrol. Your filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and your car is tested. Before we leave, our technicians fire it up and check that it's running properly.
Most jobs are finished in roughly half an hour after we arrive, provided the engine has not run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a busy forecourt yet quiet at night outside a house. No money upfront; you settle up on the day. Afterwards, a VAT invoice and a report from the engineer are handed to you for the insurer. Misfuelling cover is part of many insurance policies — so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Grantown-on-Spey, briefly
Grantown-on-Spey is a town situated on the River Spey in the Scottish Highlands, with a population of around 2399 people. Grantown-on-Spey has a mix of housing types, but detached homes are predominant, and the town is surrounded by nearby places such as Dreggie, Anagach, and Speybridge. Grantown-on-Spey sits at an elevation of 224 metres, approximately 25 miles from Inverness, the nearest city. Grantown-on-Spey is located in a scenic riverside setting, with the town's layout reflecting its history and geography.
AdBlue drains around Grantown-on-Spey and across Highland
Over PH postcodes, the teams that cover Grantown-on-Spey — a riverside town — work the surrounding locations too, Speybridge and Anagach among them. Quote a postcode that starts PH26 3, and the van gets there quickest.
Moving the vehicle isn't needed. Draining happens on the spot, be it a drive, a road by Inverallan Church Hall, or a lay-by towards Grantown-On-Spey Golf Club. If you are near a border, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Inverallan Parish Church, ring and ask rather than guessing.
The short version for Grantown-on-Spey people
First, the cap; then, the pour. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere around Highland, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway — so leave it off and ring 0333 366 0103.