Little Earnock: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
Keep your motor and ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103 first — the rest can wait if AdBlue is already in your diesel tank. Usually, if your engine has not turned, it's emptied and fully rinsed where your car is around Little Earnock. If you are reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it happens and how to make sure it does not.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Plenty of modern diesels in Meikle Earnock, as well as Little Earnock, run on two liquids; your engine gets just the diesel. AdBlue goes to your exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to clean it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank comes with a filler of its own. Many of cars have a single flap for both, while others put the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. The diesel side is fuelled at the pump all the time. The AdBlue side is filled far less commonly, usually from a bottle, and normally by a person who has to stop and think where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between the two.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank occur around Little Earnock?
Carelessness rarely causes it. Instead is three things lining up together.
On a drive off Tiree Grange before work, or in the car park outside The Duke Inn heading home: that is where the rushed top-up happens. Why the rush? As AdBlue gets low the vehicle warns you, and once it's empty, limp mode kicks in.
Then the car is new. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and your hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
Nothing halts the tip once it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Earnock or the middle of Little Earnock: it takes the same few seconds either way.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
A couple of seconds is all the checks take — so run through them before you pour anything, on a driveway in Chantinghall or a forecourt in Little Earnock.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or marked "AdBlue". Your diesel cap normally isn't. Read it rather than going by where it sits.
- Plenty of cars fit AdBlue the smaller neck of the two.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently shows which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Look for it.
- The handbook says where it is when your filler is not next to your diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- The person who drove the vehicle last. On a hire or company car picked up from somewhere like the car park at Hamilton West, ask before you leave, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
On the day the warning appears — anywhere you are in South Lanarkshire — a simple routine to follow.
- Pull in somewhere level, motor off, with time to spare — never hurried on the side of Sunart Court.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, check the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It seems silly. It works.
- If both sit under one flap, check the diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave the car on.
- Slowly does it, through the bottle's own spout, till it's full or the bottle runs out.
- Only after that, start the vehicle: close the cap, check a second time, 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. Step five stays out.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Little Earnock already?
Do not start your engine: that's where the short order of things begins. On many diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, so don't switch the vehicle on. AdBlue does not mix with diesel — it sinks to the bottom of the tank, where your fuel is drawn from — so do not top up with diesel to dilute it.
If you're on a forecourt, whether it is the BP or the Esso, ask the attendants to help roll the vehicle away from the petrol pump. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Little Earnock.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Little Earnock lies under 3 miles from the M74; there, take the first junction. Mileage counts — a quick hop across Little Earnock makes a smaller job than heading under 10 miles to Glasgow — so say about how far it went.
Little Earnock: what takes place when we arrive
Wherever the vehicle has stopped, be it by the local primary school, near Earnock Covenanter Memorial or at home, the van comes to it. Our engineers ask what went in, roughly how much, and if it has run, since the answers settle the work and our price. You get that quote on the phone, before anybody sets off.
Next: draining, then a full flush of the whole system. Not like petrol, AdBlue leaves crystals and attacks certain fuel-system metals, and none of it washes away by itself. Hence it matters more. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. Before leaving, we start the car and make sure that it's running smoothly.
With pumps fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs where your motor hasn't run need about half an hour after our technicians arrive. Your insurer usually wants an engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both once this job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no money upfront. It is worth checking your insurance as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with many policies.
About Little Earnock and where it is
Little Earnock is a suburban area situated on the riverside in South Lanarkshire, with a mix of semi-detached housing and local amenities. Little Earnock sits at an elevation of around 125 metres, close to the nearby communities of Earnock, Laighstonehall, and Fairhill. Little Earnock is located near Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, which is approximately 9 miles away. Little Earnock has a population of around 4702 residents.
AdBlue drains around Little Earnock, and South Lanarkshire beyond
Little Earnock is a residential suburb, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Laighstonehall and Fairhill among them, across the ML postcode area. Our van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting ML3 8.
The vehicle stays put. A drive, a lay-by on the way to Iona Ridge Park, a side street near The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: our technicians drain the vehicle where it stands. Guessing won't help at the back of Hillhouse Parish Church, close to a boundary, or anywhere awkward to describe; phone and ask.
The short version for Little Earnock motorists
Read the cap before you pour. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere around South Lanarkshire, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank regardless — so leave it off then ring 0333 366 0103.