AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Alltwen? Keep It Switched Off
With AdBlue in the diesel tank, the ignition remains off and so does your engine. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water. As it is water-based, it won't ignite and never combines with diesel; damage just starts when the pump starts drawing it. If the motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is usually emptied and carefully purged where the vehicle sits around Alltwen. Before you do anything else, call 0333 366 0103.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in your diesel tank in Alltwen
To do:
- Keys out — then nobody can power anything on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is anywhere close.
- Which product, and roughly how much volume? Save the bottle or the till receipt, and our technicians will know.
- Ring just where you are. Quote a SA8 3 postcode or the nearest street name, and no one has to search for you.
Do not:
- Shifting your car just a short way is no reason to fire up the engine.
- Do not switch your ignition on. On plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- Do not top up with diesel to dilute it. AdBlue does not dilute in diesel; it separates out.
- Any driving at all is best avoided, even a short stretch down Gwyn's Place.
- Don't try to drain it yourself by the roadside.
Rolling the vehicle off the pumps is a job for staff to help with, whichever Alltwen forecourt you are on, the Tesco or any other. If you are on your own drive, leave it just where it stands.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
The engine is not what AdBlue is made for; your exhaust is. Stored in a separate tank, it's squirted into the exhaust stream to clean the gases. Nothing in it is supposed to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is designed to handle it.
It doesn't blend. After it is poured into the tank, AdBlue behaves nothing like fuel. It is heavier than diesel, and so it sinks and collects at the bottom of your tank, which is where the pickup draws fuel from. Once your pump runs, the AdBlue is top of the list to be pulled through. Until then it sits underneath your diesel, and that is why a vehicle topped up in Gellygron yesterday and never started remains the simple one, provided no one touches the key.
From there it does two kinds of harm. What remains when the water goes is urea, which forms crystals: they settle in narrow passages and clog filters. On top of that, it eats at some metals in the fuel system, and keeps going till it is flushed out. By daybreak, a car parked in Alltwen with AdBlue through its pipework grows worse; if it is just in your tank, it doesn't. And there is the water: it offers no lubrication to the parts that rely on it the most — the high-pressure pump and each injector.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is frequently more major than petrol
Put petrol in a diesel at the another forecourt nearby and you have a fault of thin fuel. Harm only comes from driving on it. Blended into your diesel and sitting in the tank, it does none.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the fluid itself is simply the wrong one. Since it doesn't burn, running it through is not an option. It does not stay mixed, so it can't be thinned. And crystals and corrosion do not wash out with the next tank of fuel. That's why the flush matters more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting the engine "to see" costs more here than almost anywhere else, whether the car is in Trebanos or the middle of Alltwen.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Never run? Then the AdBlue sits only in the tank, the easiest section of the entire system to empty, anywhere the vehicle has stopped around Neath Port Talbot.
Alltwen: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
In dim light, two caps side by side — the AdBlue one and the diesel one, now and then under a single flap — can look the same. Nobody intends it; many layouts allow it. It mostly takes place at home, from a container grabbed en route home, rather than at the forecourt.
It tends to happen in a couple of familiar ways. The top-up gets rushed outside the local primary school, after your dash lit up with a warning while the kids were taken off. Someone pours the bottle in outside their house, just off High Street, as the day ends. Another version: darkness, the car park by The Butchers Arms, and someone using that flap for the first time.
It comes up most in a hire car, a new car, a fleet car, or the other vehicle in a family with both fuel types — the cars drivers know the least. An identical slip, same first response — leave it off — anywhere you happen to be in Alltwen or the rest of Neath Port Talbot.
Alltwen: started the motor with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
The AdBlue has left your tank, then. The fuel filter and pipework have had it sucked through, and some running time takes it on to the high-pressure pump and each injector.
You may see the motor running unevenly, smoking, losing power, showing warning lights or cutting out, maybe on the way back from Alltwen Park or halfway across Alltwen. When you safely can, stop and turn it off — without restarting to test. Each start pulls more of it through.
On the M4, under 5 miles from Alltwen, the first junction is where to leave, and somewhere sensible is where to stop — not carrying on.
Every mile carries the AdBlue deeper in. That's why a hop across Alltwen to park near Pontardawe Library and a drive of under 10 miles for Swansea are such distinct jobs. About how far it had come is worth telling us.
Our technicians do all of the flushing where your car has stopped, and once your engine has been started there is more of it. Lasting damage is very unusual when it is spotted early.
What clearing AdBlue from a diesel involves in Alltwen
Our technicians come to the vehicle, wherever it has stopped around Alltwen: a side street close to Pontardawe Arts Centre, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. The work rests on three answers, which our engineers get first — which fluid went in, the amount, and if your engine has run.
Next, emptying the tank on the spot removes the polluted diesel and the AdBlue together. A full flush matters far more after AdBlue than after petrol, since what remains won't clear away on its own. Next, the filter: flushed, or changed when it has to be. After that fresh diesel, and then a test of the car. If your engine hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once our engineers are there. Quiet enough for use outside a house at night, and fine on a busy forecourt, the pumps are explosion-proof.
Bleeding the fuel system with clean diesel comes last. You head off as soon as we have fired it up, and it makes no difference whether your car is on a driveway around Alltwen or in a bay outside Skewen. The test before we go is that it runs correctly on new diesel. No garage is required at any point, with the entire job done on the spot. The insurer is likely to want an engineer's report and the VAT invoice — both yours once the job is done.
About Alltwen and where it is
Alltwen is a village situated on the banks of a river in Neath Port Talbot, with a mix of semi-detached housing and other residential properties. Alltwen sits at an elevation of 86 metres, close to the nearby towns of Pontardawe and Rhos. Alltwen is located near the city of Swansea, which is approximately 7.7 miles away. Alltwen has a population of around 1601 people, making it a small but distinct community in the area.
AdBlue drains around Alltwen and across Neath Port Talbot
Pontardawe, Rhos and Gellinudd are among the towns around Alltwen that the same vans reach, together with most of Neath Port Talbot beyond, throughout the SA postcode area. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask instead of assuming.
No towing is needed. In Alltwen, a village, a van that comes to you fits: your car is drained where it stands, whether in a driveway, a residential street, a car park or a filling station.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Alltwen: the cost of fixing it
No flat price could be fair, since every job differs. Three things shift the price: whether the engine has been running and for how long, how much AdBlue was put in, and where the vehicle is. That last one rests on whether a van can get to it safely, and an open drive is simpler than a tight spot behind Tŷ'r Gwrhyd.
That is why each call from Alltwen starts with the same three queries, asked before giving a figure, not after: what got in, how much, and whether it's run. Once those are answered, a range becomes one firm figure.
You get that price on the phone, before anybody heads out, and you pay on the day, by card or by phone, with nothing upfront. Look at your insurance whilst we are on the way: many include misfuelling cover.
Beside your car around Alltwen, still?
Right now, the most helpful thing to do with the vehicle is to leave it. Keys out; motor and ignition off. Tell us it was AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and if it ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel takes over, across Alltwen or wherever in Neath Port Talbot.