Blackwells End Green: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
AdBlue in your diesel tank? Then leave the motor off — and your ignition too. Urea mixed in water is all AdBlue is. It does not burn, it doesn't mix with diesel, and the harm it does begins when the fuel system draws it in. A drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is around Blackwells End Green, is usually what AdBlue in a diesel tank needs — if it's caught before the engine has run. Nothing comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
What to do right now, Blackwells End Green: AdBlue in the diesel tank
Do these:
- So no one can turn the ignition on, pull the keys out.
- If you are anywhere close to moving traffic, put the hazard lights on.
- The empty bottle or your receipt shows us the fluid and the amount, and so do not bin it out.
- Our van locates you quickest with a postcode starting GL19 3, or just the name of a street nearby, and so phone from the car.
Never:
- Shifting your vehicle even a few yards is no reason to start your motor.
- Do not switch your ignition on. On many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- No more fuel on top. The AdBlue won't mix, so it's pointless.
- Never drive the vehicle anywhere, not even a short stretch up Blackwells End.
- No emptying it yourself, at all, at the roadside.
On a forecourt around Blackwells End Green, whether it is the BP or another one, ask the staff to help you push the car away from the pump. On your own driveway, do not touch it at all.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
Meant for the exhaust, AdBlue has no business in your engine. From a dedicated reservoir it goes straight to the exhaust, treating what the engine emits. Nothing in it is supposed to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is designed to handle it.
Inside a diesel tank it acts very differently from fuel. It doesn't mix in. Denser than diesel, it drops and pools below it — the same place the pickup sucks from. A vehicle filled on a driveway in Highleadon yesterday evening and not started since counts as the simple case. No pump has pulled the AdBlue up so far — though once your engine turns, that's what goes first, straight from the bottom of your tank.
From there it does two kinds of damage. Crystals and corrosion. As the water dries, it strands urea that crystallises in filter elements and narrow passages; meanwhile, since it eats at some metals, each part it reaches suffers for as long as it stays inside. By daybreak, a car sitting in Blackwells End Green with AdBlue in its lines gets worse; where it's just inside the tank, it doesn't. The water in it does harm of its own: your high-pressure pump and the injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel regularly the bigger problem?
Top up a diesel with petrol in error at the Texaco, and this problem is thinned fuel. No damage comes while it stays unused, blended into your diesel — only once the motor runs on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is a problem of the wrong substance altogether. It cannot simply be run through, since it does not burn. Whether the car sits in Moor End or the centre of Blackwells End Green, turning it over "to see" costs more in this case than nearly any other slip, and the flush counts more. Why: it won't stay blended, and so diluting it is impossible; and deposits and corrosion outlast the following fill.
As with petrol, there is good news. If the engine hasn't run, the AdBlue is still in the tank, and the tank is the easiest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever around Gloucestershire the car is sitting.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Blackwells End Green: how it ends up there
It is not deliberate. Plenty of vehicles have the AdBlue inlet beside the diesel inlet, now and then behind one flap, and muddling them up is easy after dark. Mostly it is never the filling station: someone picks up a bottle heading home and tips it in at home.
Mostly, it happens in one of a few familiar ways. Halfway through the morning drop-off, the dashboard warns, and outside Hartpury Church of England Primary School the top-up is rushed. Someone pours the bottle in at home, just off Buttersend Lane, as the day ends. Or the car is topped up in the car park outside Watersmeet, in poor light, by a person who has never opened that flap before.
Rented cars, new cars, fleet vehicles, or the spare car in a home with one of each: the least familiar cars see it the most. An identical mistake, an identical first response — keep it switched off — wherever you happen to be in Blackwells End Green or the rest of Gloucestershire.
Already started the motor with AdBlue in your diesel tank in Blackwells End Green?
Then the AdBlue has left your tank. Given any running, it goes on to the high-pressure pump and every injector, having passed through the filter and pipework.
Rough running, smoke from the exhaust, lost power, dashboard warnings or stalling: any might appear, maybe part way across Blackwells End Green or returning from Mount Oliver Wood. Stop when it is safe. Switch off. Leave the car off instead of restarting it to check. Each start pulls more of it through.
Leave the M50, under 5 miles from Blackwells End Green, at the next junction and stop safely, rather than carrying on.
How far it went matters. A couple of hundred yards across Blackwells End Green to the car park by Corse Court Farm is a very different job from a run towards Gloucester, under 10 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the fuel system with every mile. Approximately how far had it come? Tell us.
Our engineers do all of the rinsing where the vehicle has ended up, and once your engine has run there is more of it. If it's caught soon, permanent damage is very uncommon.
What draining AdBlue from a diesel involves in Blackwells End Green
We come to the car, wherever it has stopped around Blackwells End Green: a side street close to Saint Margaret, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. The work depends on three answers, which our engineers get before all else — which fluid got in, the amount, and if your engine has turned over.
The polluted diesel and the urea leave together when your tank is emptied, right there. With AdBlue, more so than with petrol, the flush matters: the whole system is flushed right through since residue will not wash out unaided. After that, the filter: flushed, or changed if it has to be. Then fresh diesel, and then a test of your car. If your engine has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once our engineers are there. The pumps are explosion-proof, safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night.
Clean diesel goes in to bleed the system, and that's the final step. Firing it up comes next, and then you set off from where the car is parked, at Gloucester or on a drive in Blackwells End Green. Our engineers check it runs smoothly on fresh diesel before we leave. As the job is done in its entirety where the vehicle is, a garage never comes into it. You get a VAT invoice and an engineer report after that, which is what insurers want.
About Blackwells End Green
Blackwells End Green is a small hamlet situated on the riverside in Gloucestershire, with a low elevation of 29 metres. Blackwells End Green lies near the city of Gloucester, approximately 5 miles away, and is close to other nearby places such as Hartpury and Upleadon Court. Blackwells End Green has a population of around 1168 people, predominantly living in detached houses.
AdBlue drains around Blackwells End Green and across Gloucestershire
AdBlue jobs around Blackwells End Green go to vans that cover the places near it — Hartpury, Oridge Street plus Upleadon Court — and most of Gloucestershire beyond, across GL postcodes. Assuming won't help close to a border or somewhere hard to describe; ring and check.
Wherever the car stands — your driveway at home, a residential street, a car park, a filling station — our technicians drain it on the spot, with no need to bring it to us; that suits Blackwells End Green, a rural hamlet, well.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Blackwells End Green: the cost of fixing it
Each job differs, so not one single price is honest. The price changes first with how long, if at all, your engine has been running, and next with the amount of AdBlue that went in. After that it depends on where the car is and whether a van can get to it safely, which is simpler on an open drive than in a tight gap behind Hartpury Village Hall.
That's why each call from Blackwells End Green starts with the same three questions, asked before giving a figure, not after: what was put in, how much, and if it's run. Those answers narrow a range right down to a single number.
Before anyone sets off, you are told the quote on the phone. And payment is on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Check your insurance while we are on the way: plenty include misfuelling cover.
Still next to the car around Blackwells End Green?
Right now, the most helpful thing to do with your car is to leave it. Ignition off, engine off, keys out. Say it was AdBlue, about what quantity, and whether it ran, on 0333 366 0103. After that Petrol in Diesel takes over, in Blackwells End Green or wherever within Gloucestershire.