Birley Carr: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
If AdBlue has gone into the diesel tank, leave your engine off then keep the ignition off. Urea dissolved in water is all AdBlue is. It does not burn, it doesn't mix with diesel, and the harm it does starts when the fuel system draws it in. If the motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is usually drained and carefully rinsed where your car stands in Birley Carr. Before you do anything else, ring 0333 366 0103.
Your next steps right now, Birley Carr: AdBlue in the diesel tank
Things to do:
- Pocket your keys, which stops someone turning the electrics on.
- Put the hazard lights on if you are at all close to moving traffic.
- The empty bottle or the till receipt tells us the product and the amount, and so do not bin it away.
- Call just where you are. Say a S6 1 postcode or the nearest street sign, and nobody has to search for you.
Don't do these:
- No starting your engine — not for a second, not to reposition your vehicle.
- The ignition remains off: on many diesels, switching it on is enough to run your pump.
- AdBlue doesn't mix in diesel — it separates out — so adding extra diesel will not weaken it.
- Even a short stretch up Aysgarth Road is too far to drive it.
- Do not try to drain the vehicle yourself by the kerbside.
Get the people behind the counter to help you move your car away from the pumps if you are on a forecourt around Birley Carr, whether it's the BP or elsewhere. Stopped on your own driveway? Then it remains just where it is.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
The motor isn't what AdBlue is made for; the exhaust is. It goes into its own tank and is sprayed into your exhaust gas to fresh it. A fuel pump is not made to cope with it, and AdBlue was never supposed to go through one.
Fuel blends; AdBlue, after tipped in, won't. Its behaviour is not at all like fuel's. It's heavier than diesel, so it sinks and gathers at the bottom of the tank, which is where the pickup draws fuel from. Once your system runs, the AdBlue is first to go through. Until then it waits beneath the diesel, which is why a vehicle topped up in Parson Cross yesterday and not started remains the simple case, as long as no one turns the key.
Two kinds of damage follow from there. As its water goes, the urea left behind crystallises, and the crystals block filters and settle in fine passages. And it's corrosive to some of the metals a fuel system is made from, so it keeps running on the parts it reaches for as long as it remains there. Where the AdBlue has reached the pipework, leaving it overnight around Birley Carr leaves things worse. In your tank only, time does nothing. The water in it causes harm of its own: your high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water offers them nothing.
Petrol or AdBlue in a diesel: why AdBlue is often worse
A fault of thinned fuel is what you end up with from fuelling a diesel with petrol from the Esso. It mixes with the diesel, and whilst it is in your tank it causes no damage; the damage comes from running the engine on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is another matter: not thin fuel, but no fuel at all. Since it does not burn, running it through is not an option. It doesn't stay mixed, so it cannot be diluted. 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 motor "to see" costs more here than almost anywhere else, whether your car is in Owlerton or the middle of Birley Carr.
As with petrol, there's good news. Wherever across South Yorkshire your vehicle has stopped, an unstarted motor means the AdBlue still in the tank: the easiest part of a fuel system to clear.
How AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank in Birley Carr
It's not deliberate. Plenty of vehicles have the AdBlue cap alongside the diesel one, occasionally under one flap, and mixing them up is easy in poor light. Mostly it takes place with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the driveway, not at the forecourt.
A couple of familiar ways cover most cases. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up occurs in a hurry outside Parson Cross Church of England Primary School. Someone tips the container in at home, right off Fox Hill Road, as the day ends. One more pattern: darkness, the car park outside Fox & Hounds, and a driver opening that flap the first time.
The least familiar vehicles get it the most — rentals, brand-new ones, fleet ones, and the other car of a family with both fuels. Same mistake, same first response — leave it off — wherever you are in Birley Carr or the rest of South Yorkshire.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Birley Carr, and the engine started?
The AdBlue has left that tank, then. Via the fuel filter, along the lines, and — with any running time — into the injection pump and every injector: that's where it has gone.
Perhaps returning from Wolfe Road Park, or midway across Birley Carr, your motor may go lumpy, smoke, drop pace, flash the dash or stall. When you safely can, stop and turn it off — without restarting to test. Each start pulls more of it through.
On the M1, under 3 miles from Birley Carr, the next junction is where to leave, and anywhere sensible is where to park — not driving on.
Each mile pushes the AdBlue deeper into the system. That is why a hop across Birley Carr to park beside Fox Hill Whale and a drive of under 5 miles for Sheffield are very different jobs. Tell us about how far it had come.
Once the engine has run, the flush takes in more, and all of it is done where the car has ended up. Noticed quickly, it very rarely leaves long-term damage.
Birley Carr: how AdBlue is drained from a diesel
A road by Christ Church, Hillsborough and Wadsley Bridge, a driveway, a layby or a forecourt: anywhere the vehicle has stopped around Birley Carr, our technicians travel to it. The work rests on three answers, which our engineers ask for before all else — which fluid got in, the amount, and if the motor has run.
On the spot, that tank is then emptied, and all of the polluted diesel and the urea come out as one. What remains from AdBlue will not flush away by itself, so the whole system gets a full flush, which matters much more here than with petrol. A test of the car follows last, once clean diesel is added and your filter is flushed or, where needed, replaced. The majority of these jobs are a half-hour visit once our engineers turn up, if the motor has not run. Quiet enough for use outside a house at night, and safe on a busy forecourt, the pumps are explosion-proof.
Priming your system with new diesel comes at the end. Then our technicians start the car and you set off, whether from a parking space at Chapeltown or a driveway in Birley Carr. Our engineers check it runs correctly on fresh diesel before we go. The whole job is done where the car is, so it never needs to go to a garage. Insurers ask for a VAT invoice and an engineer report, and both come afterwards.
About Birley Carr itself
Birley Carr is a suburban area situated near the River Don in South Yorkshire, with a mix of semi-detached housing and local amenities. Birley Carr sits at an elevation of 119 metres, approximately 3.1 miles from Sheffield city centre. Birley Carr is close to nearby places such as Wadsley Bridge, Birley Edge, and Southey Green, and is home to around 5296 residents. Birley Carr has a relatively low elevation compared to other areas in South Yorkshire, given its riverside setting.
AdBlue drains in Birley Carr and across South Yorkshire
AdBlue jobs in Birley Carr are passed to teams that cover the towns near it — Wadsley Bridge, Birley Edge as well as Southey Green — and much of South Yorkshire beyond, across S postcodes. Phone and check rather than guess if you are by a county line, or somewhere awkward to explain.
A mobile service fits Birley Carr, a residential suburb: there's no need to bring the car to us, because our technicians drain it there, on a drive, a residential street, a parking area or a filling station.
What does AdBlue in a diesel tank cost to sort out in Birley Carr?
There is no fair single price, because the jobs aren't the same. Whether your engine has run, and for how long, comes first in what moves the cost. How much AdBlue was put in comes next, and then the location of the vehicle, since an open driveway is easier for our van to get to safely than a tight spot behind Foxhill Forum.
For that reason, every call from Birley Carr opens with the same trio — what was put in, how much, whether it ran — ahead of a quote. The replies turn a range into a straight quote.
You hear that price by phone, before anybody sets off, and you pay on the day, by card or by phone, with nothing upfront. While our engineer is on the way, dig out your policy: many cover misfuelling.
In Birley Carr and still next to your car?
Not touching your car is, right now, the most useful move you can do. Engine off, keys out, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel handles the remainder, across Birley Carr or anywhere within South Yorkshire, after you ring 0333 366 0103 to say it was AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and if the engine ran.