How It Occurs and How to Avoid It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Parkfoot
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your motor and your ignition off and ring 0333 366 0103. Around Parkfoot, finding it before your engine turns normally means a drain and a thorough flush on the spot. If you are reading before it has happened, the rest of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
No single fluid but two: that is how plenty of newer diesels around Parkfoot and Milnquarter carry, with diesel feeding your engine. Stored in a tank of its own, AdBlue is sprayed into the exhaust gas to clean it.
Each tank has one filler of its own. On a lot of vehicles the two sit side by side under the same flap; on others the AdBlue filler is in the boot or under the bonnet. Topping up your diesel side at the pump happens constantly. The AdBlue side is filled far less commonly, usually from a bottle, and usually by somebody who has to stop and think where it goes. The error lives in that gap.
How AdBlue in the diesel tank happens in Parkfoot
Rarely is it carelessness: normally three things coincide.
First, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a warning from your car, and running out leads to limp mode — so a rushed top-up, maybe before work off Lind Place, perhaps outside The Railway Inn on the way home that evening.
Next, the hand goes for the cap it would have used on the old vehicle — because a rental car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers somewhere your last one did not.
No part stops the tip after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Parkfoot or out in Dennyloanhead.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Before you pour anything, whether on a driveway in Allandale or a forecourt around Parkfoot, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- Colour and lettering: an AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually does not. Go by the cap, not its position.
- Plenty of motors give AdBlue the smaller filler of the two.
- Lift the flap and check for a label — many vehicles mark which belongs in each inlet just there.
- The handbook shows where it lives when the filler isn't next to your diesel cap: your boot, or under the bonnet.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park at Larbert? Check with whoever drove the car last before leaving, not when the light comes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of the diesel tank when you top up
When the light comes on, wherever around Falkirk, use this routine.
- Switch off once parked — level ground, motor off, and never in a rush beside Glasgow Road on the verge.
- Find the AdBlue filler and read the cap. Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew it. It sounds silly and it works.
- Both under one flap? So confirm the cap on the diesel filler stays closed ahead of lifting the bottle.
- Using the bottle's own spout, pour slowly — and stop when it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Shut the cap, and look again — confirm the diesel cap stayed closed the whole time. After that, start the vehicle.
Find at step two or three that it has already gone into your diesel side? Then stop just there. Stage five is out.
AdBlue in your diesel tank already, in Parkfoot?
The short order of things, beginning with not starting your motor. Do not switch your ignition on; on many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel won't thin it: instead, AdBlue sinks to the base of your tank, right where the fuel is taken from.
Ask the attendants to help roll your car clear of the petrol pump if you're on a forecourt — the JET, the Esso or anywhere else. If you're on your own driveway around Parkfoot, leave the vehicle where it sits.
When the motor has run already, pull over somewhere safe then switch the vehicle off. On the M80, under a mile from Parkfoot, that means the next exit. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Stirling, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Parkfoot.
What occurs when our technicians turn up in Parkfoot
Outside the local primary school, close to Muirhead Memorial Hall or on your own drive: wherever the vehicle has stopped, our technicians come to it. Those answers settle this work and the price, so our technicians ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether it has run. That quote comes on the call, before any van leaves.
Emptying the tank comes next, then a thorough flush of the system. With AdBlue that counts more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own. Testing comes last: before that, clean diesel is added, and the fuel filter is cleaned or replaced if necessary. We don't leave until it has been started and is running correctly.
Most jobs are done in roughly half an hour after our technicians arrive, as long as your motor hasn't run — and the pumps our engineers use are fine on a live forecourt yet 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. It's worth looking at your policy as the van travels to you: misfuelling cover is included with plenty of policies.
About Parkfoot and where it is
Parkfoot is a suburban area situated on the riverside in Falkirk, with a mix of detached housing and a relatively low elevation of 45 metres. Parkfoot lies near several smaller communities, including Dennyloanhead, Bankhead, and Longcroft, and is approximately 8 miles from the city of Stirling. Parkfoot is home to around 1002 residents and is characterized by its detached homes. Parkfoot is located in a scenic area, with the nearby river providing a tranquil setting.
AdBlue drains across Falkirk, Parkfoot included
Throughout FK postcodes, our teams covering Parkfoot — a residential suburb — work the surrounding spots too, Longcroft and Bankhead among them. Fastest of all: quote a FK4 1 postcode to the van.
Moving your car is not needed. The drain happens right there, whether a drive, a street by Seabegs Wood Roman Fortlet, or a layby towards Bonnyfield Local Nature Reserve. Ring and ask instead of assuming if you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe, like the back of War Memorial.
In short, for Parkfoot drivers
First, the cap; then, the tip. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere across Falkirk, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank regardless — and so leave the car off then phone 0333 366 0103.