Brookend: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, the ignition remains off and so does the engine. Urea mixed in water is what AdBlue is. The trouble starts once it is pulled through the lines — it will not ignite, and it won't combine with diesel. If your motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally drained and thoroughly rinsed where your car sits around Brookend. Phone 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in your diesel tank around Brookend
To do:
- Remove the keys, which stops someone turning the power on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is anywhere near.
- Which fluid, and about how much amount? Save the bottle or the till receipt, and we will see.
- Give us a postcode starting GL15 6, or whichever street is nearest, and the van reaches you straight — so ring wherever you stand.
Not to do:
- Shifting the vehicle even a short way is no reason to fire up the motor.
- Switching the key to ignition alone sets the pump going on plenty of diesels. Avoid it.
- Pouring in extra diesel doesn't work: AdBlue separates out rather than thinning.
- Never drive it anywhere, not even a short way up Station Road.
- By the road, don't try draining it yourself.
Ask the attendants to help you move the vehicle away from the pumps if you're at a forecourt in Brookend, whether it's the BP or elsewhere. At your own driveway, don't touch it at all.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
Not your engine but your exhaust is where AdBlue belongs. Stored in a separate tank, it is squirted into the exhaust stream to treat the fumes. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is built to handle it.
Fuel blends; AdBlue, after poured in, will not. Its behaviour is not at all like fuel's. Heavier than diesel, it drops and pools underneath it — the same place the intake sucks from. A car filled on a driveway in Smallbrook overnight and not started since is the straightforward one. Nothing has sucked the AdBlue up so far — though when the motor turns, that's what goes first, directly from the bottom of the tank.
From there it causes two kinds of damage. What is left when the water evaporates is urea, which forms crystals: they lodge in narrow passages and clog filters. Worse, it eats at some metals in a fuel system, and carries on till it's flushed out. Overnight, a car parked around Brookend with AdBlue in its lines grows worse; where it is only inside your tank, it doesn't. The water in it causes damage of its own: the high-pressure pump and the injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water offers them nothing.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it's regularly worse than petrol
Put petrol in a diesel at the Tesco and you have a problem of thin fuel. Harm only comes from driving on it. Mixed into the diesel and left inside that tank, it causes nothing.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the liquid as such is plainly the wrong one. It can't simply be run through, since it doesn't burn. It doesn't stay mixed, and 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 counts 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 High Woolaston or the middle of Brookend.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Emptying a tank is the simplest job on a fuel system, and with no start-up, the AdBlue stays in it — anywhere in Gloucestershire your vehicle sits.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Brookend: how it ends up there
No one means to do it. The AdBlue filler on plenty of motors waits right next to your diesel filler, at times under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. A container picked up when heading home and poured in outside the house, instead of at the filling station, is the usual route.
A couple of familiar ways cover the majority of them. Rushing, outside Woolaston Primary School, after a warning light flashed on during the school run, someone tops up the vehicle. Near A48, someone pours a bottle in on that drive in the evening. Otherwise, after dark outside Netherend Inn, your vehicle gets topped up by someone using that flap for the first time.
Hired vehicles, new vehicles, fleet vehicles, or the second vehicle in a family with both fuels: the least familiar cars see it most. An identical slip, same first step — leave it switched off — wherever you are in Brookend or the remainder of Gloucestershire.
Started the engine with AdBlue in your diesel tank in Brookend?
The AdBlue has left your tank, then. It's been pulled through the fuel filter and the fuel lines, and if your motor ran for any time, it has got to the high-pressure fuel pump and your injectors.
Expect rough running, smoke, falling power, lights on your dash, or a cut-out — coming back from Sandtumps, perhaps, or part way across Brookend. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and don't restart the vehicle to check. With each start, more of it is pulled through.
Exit the Wye Bridge, under 10 miles from Brookend, at the first junction and park somewhere safe, rather than carrying on.
Hopping across Brookend to the car park by Saint Andrew is one matter; driving towards Bristol, under 25 miles away, is another, since every mile pushes the AdBlue deeper in. So distance matters. Let us know roughly how far it had come.
Once the motor has been started, the flush takes in more, and all of it is done where the car has come to a stop. Noticed soon, it very rarely leaves permanent damage.
Emptying AdBlue in a diesel in Brookend: what it takes
We come to the vehicle, wherever it has stopped around Brookend: a side street near St Andrew, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. The work depends on three answers, and we get before all else — what was put in, the amount, and if your engine has run.
Next, emptying that tank right there takes out the polluted diesel along with the AdBlue together. The fuel system is rinsed thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, since what it leaves behind doesn't rinse out on its own. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and your car is tested. If your motor has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once our technicians arrive. Low-noise enough for use outside a house at night, and fine on a working forecourt, our pumps are explosion-proof.
Priming the system with clean diesel comes last. Starting the engine comes next, and then you drive off from where the car is parked, by Lydney or on a drive in Brookend. It is tested on new diesel to confirm it runs correctly before our engineers go. Since the job is done in full where the car is, a garage never comes into it. You receive a VAT invoice and an engineer report afterwards, which is what insurers ask for.
About Brookend and where it is
Brookend is a small suburban area in Gloucestershire, situated near the coast and approximately 16.7 miles from Bristol. Brookend has a relatively low elevation of 27 metres and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Brookend is one of several nearby places, including Plusterwine, Netherend, and Woolaston, that make up the local community.
Brookend and Gloucestershire: AdBlue drains across the area
AdBlue jobs in Brookend go to teams that serve the places near it — Plusterwine, Netherend plus Woolaston — and much of Gloucestershire beyond, across GL postcodes. Near a border, or anywhere awkward to explain? Checking beats assuming, so phone.
Brookend is a residential suburb, and a mobile drain suits it: whether the car is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, our technicians drain it where it is, and so it never needs to be moved to us.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right in Brookend
Since each callouts vary, a flat figure wouldn't be honest. Whether the motor has been running, and for how long, comes first in what shifts the cost. How much AdBlue went in comes next, and then the location of the vehicle, since an open drive is easier for a van to get to safely than a tight gap behind Mission Church.
Which fluid got in, how much, plus if the engine ran: each Brookend call opens with exactly that, before any quote, never afterwards. Those replies turn a range into a straight quote.
You get that quote by phone, before anyone sets off, and you pay on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours while we're on the way.
Next to your car in Brookend, still?
Not touching the car is, then, the best move open to you. Ignition off, motor off, keys out. Tell us it was AdBlue, roughly what quantity, and whether it ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel takes over, in Brookend or wherever in Gloucestershire.