AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Linthouse: How It Happens and How to Avoid It
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and your ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. A drain and a thorough flush, carried out right where the vehicle sits around Linthouse, is normally what it takes when found before your engine runs. Here before the event? In that case the rest covers how it happens and how to prevent it ever happening.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel car need its own filler?
Not one liquid but two: that is what plenty of modern diesels around Linthouse and Whiteinch carry, with diesel for your motor. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into your exhaust gas and cleans it.
Every tank has a filler of its own. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the layout on a lot of cars. Elsewhere, AdBlue's filler sits under the bonnet or in your boot instead. The diesel side is filled at the petrol pump all the time. Someone who has to stop and work out where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and much less often. That gap is where the error lives.
Linthouse: how AdBlue in your diesel tank occurs
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
Haste comes from the warning. Your car tells you as AdBlue runs low, and an empty tank puts it into limp mode — so the top-up gets done in a rush, before work on a driveway off Govan Road, or on the way home in the car park at The Amethyst.
New-to-you motors are second, as well. Rentals, new motors and company motors put their fillers in new places, and the hand reaches for the cap it used on the old one.
A spouted bottle finds no obstacle at a diesel filler any more than at an AdBlue one. So the pour, once started, keeps on. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Linthouse or out in Drumoyne.
Telling the AdBlue filler from your diesel filler
A few seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you pour anything, on a driveway in West Drumoyne or a forecourt around Linthouse.
- Blue and lettering: an AdBlue cap is commonly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on many vehicles, the AdBlue one.
- Check inside the fuel flap: many vehicles carry a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- In your boot or under the bonnet: that is where the filler sits if it is not by the diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Picking up a hire or company car, say at the car park at Cardonald? Ask whoever drove the vehicle last before leaving, rather than when the light comes on.
How to top up without AdBlue in the diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever in Glasgow City that is.
- Switch off after you park — flat ground, engine off, and not in a rush by Linthouse Buildings at the roadside.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it does the trick.
- Both behind one flap? So make sure the lid on your diesel side is still closed before lifting the bottle.
- Finish when your tank is topped up or the bottle is empty; before that, pour slowly through the own spout.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start the car.
Stop there if you find, at stage two or three, that you've already poured into the diesel side. Skip stage five entirely.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, around Linthouse?
Then the order of things is short. Do not start the motor. Don't switch the ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Thinning it with extra diesel fails, since AdBlue sinks to the bottom instead of blending — and that is where the fuel is sucked from.
Ask the attendants to help push your car away from the pump if you're on a forecourt — the Esso, the BP or somewhere else. Leave it where it is if you are on your own driveway in Linthouse.
Already run? Stop once it is safe, then turn off. On the M8, under a mile from Linthouse, that means the next junction. Mileage matters — a short hop across Linthouse is a smaller job than driving under 5 miles to Glasgow — so say about how far it went.
Our arrival in Linthouse, and what happens next
Wherever your car came to rest, whether outside the local primary school, beside Royal Oak Hall or on your own drive, our van travels to it. The answers decide the work and the price, and so our technicians ask what got in, roughly how much, and if it has run. You hear that quote on the phone, before anybody sets off.
The system is then rinsed thoroughly, after your tank is drained. 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 the flush matters more with AdBlue than with petrol. Filter flushed or, if it must be, replaced; clean diesel in; and then a test of the car. Before leaving, our technicians start it and make sure that it's running correctly.
With pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs in which your motor hasn't run need roughly half an hour once we are there. 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 many insurance policies — and so make use of the wait to check yours.
About Linthouse and where it is
Linthouse is a riverside suburban area in Glasgow City, situated near the River Clyde at an elevation of around 7 metres. Linthouse is located approximately 3.7 miles from Glasgow city centre and is close to nearby places such as Drumoyne, Shieldhall, and Govan. Linthouse has a population of around 3480 people and is predominantly composed of flat-type housing.
AdBlue drains round Linthouse, and Glasgow City beyond
Over G postcodes, our teams covering Linthouse — a residential suburb — work the surrounding locations too, Govan and Shieldhall among them. Quote a postcode beginning G51 4, and the van arrives quickest.
There's no need to shift the car. Wherever it stands — near Elder Park, on a lay-by heading to Elder Park Community Garden, at home — that's where it gets drained. Guessing won't help at the back of Linthouse Bowling Club, on a boundary, or anywhere awkward to pin down; ring and ask.
For Linthouse drivers, the short version
First, the cap; after that, the pour. If AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless, leave the vehicle off then call 0333 366 0103. Petrol in Diesel clears it where it sits, anywhere around Glasgow City.