Don't Start It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Bunkers Hill
AdBlue in your diesel tank? Then leave your engine off — and the ignition as well. AdBlue is urea mixed in water. As it is water-based, it will not burn and never combines with diesel; damage only starts once the pump starts drawing it. Caught before your motor has run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Bunkers Hill. Nothing comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
Bunkers Hill, AdBlue in the diesel tank: what to do at once
Things to do:
- So no one can switch your ignition on, pull the keys away.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is at all near.
- Hold on to your receipt or the empty bottle, and so you can tell us what went in and about how much.
- Call just where you are. Quote a WV14 6 postcode or the nearest street sign, and no one has to hunt for you.
Do not do these:
- Moving the car just a short way is no reason to fire up your motor.
- The ignition remains off: on lots of diesels, switching it on is enough to start your pump.
- Adding extra diesel doesn't work: AdBlue settles out instead of blending.
- Any driving at all is to be avoided, including a short distance along Castle Croft Road.
- Do not try to drain the vehicle yourself at the kerbside.
The staff working at any Bunkers Hill filling station — the Texaco among them — will usually help pushing it aside if you ask. Stopped on your own driveway? Then it remains just as it is.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
The motor is not what AdBlue is made for; the exhaust is. Kept in a separate tank, it is injected into the exhaust stream to treat the fumes. Neither side fits the other: urea does not belong in an injection pump, and a pump can't take urea.
Fuel mixes; AdBlue, after tipped in, will not. The behaviour is nothing like fuel's. Denser than diesel, it drops and collects underneath it — the very spot the pickup sucks from. When your system runs, the AdBlue is first to be pulled through. Until then it waits beneath your diesel, and that is how a car topped up in The Lunt yesterday and not switched on stays the simple one, as long as nobody touches your key.
From there it causes two kinds of harm. It eats at some metals found in fuel systems, working on any part it reaches till it's removed completely. And once the water evaporates, the urea turns into crystals that block filters and settle in narrow passages. A car left sitting around Bunkers Hill with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue only in its tank isn't. Diesel protects the injection pump and every injector as it passes; water offers no lubrication, which is a separate form of damage.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is regularly more significant than petrol
A problem of thin fuel is what you get after fuelling a diesel with petrol at the Morrisons. It mixes with your diesel, and while it's in that tank it causes no harm; the damage comes from running your engine on it.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the fluid itself is simply the wrong one. It does not burn, so it can't just be run through. Whether your vehicle is in Portobello or the centre of Bunkers Hill, turning it over "to see" does more harm in this case than almost any other error, and the flush counts for more. Why: it will not remain mixed, so diluting it fails; and crystals and corrosion outlast the following tankful.
With AdBlue, the good news is no different from petrol. Wherever in West Midlands the vehicle has stopped, an unstarted motor leaves the AdBlue yet inside the tank: the easiest part of a fuel system to clear.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank around Bunkers Hill?
It's not deliberate. Plenty of cars have the AdBlue cap alongside the diesel inlet, now and then under a single flap, and muddling them up is simple in poor light. Most of the time it occurs with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the drive, not at the forecourt.
It tends to take place in a few familiar ways. Hurrying, outside Field View Primary School, after a warning light flashed on during the school run, a parent refills your car. Close to Holly Close, a driver tips a container in at home in the evening. Or a driver unfamiliar with that flap refills the car after dark, stopped in the car park by White Rose.
Rented motors, brand-new vehicles, company vehicles, or the spare car in a family with both fuels: the least familiar cars get it most. An identical slip, an identical first response — keep it switched off — wherever you happen to be around Bunkers Hill or the remainder of West Midlands.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Bunkers Hill, and the motor started?
Then your tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. The filter and pipework have had it pulled through, and some running takes it on to the injection pump and every injector.
Perhaps coming back from Peascroft Wood, or midway across Bunkers Hill, your engine might go rough, smoke, lose power, flash the dash or stall. No starting it again to check: stop once it is safe, then turn everything off. Each start pulls more of it through.
Leave the M6, under 3 miles from Bunkers Hill, by the first junction and stop safely, rather than driving on.
Each mile pushes the AdBlue further into your system. That is why crossing Bunkers Hill to park beside Peascroft Fever Hospital and a drive of under 3 miles towards Wolverhampton are such different jobs. Roughly how far had it come? Tell us.
Our engineers do all of the rinsing where the car has stopped, and once the motor has been started there is more of it. Caught early, it very rarely leaves long-term damage.
Bunkers Hill: how AdBlue is cleared from a diesel
Anywhere it has come to rest in Bunkers Hill — a filling station, a layby, a driveway, a street by St Chad — our van comes to the car. Three answers decide the work, and so before anything else we ask what got in, roughly what quantity, and if the engine has run.
The contaminated diesel and the urea leave as one after the tank is emptied, right there. The system is flushed thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, because what it leaves behind does not rinse out on its own. The filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. Not run? In that case count on about half an hour on site for most jobs. The equipment is explosion-proof, and so a busy filling station is no problem, and it's quiet enough for a residential street after dark.
Lastly, the fuel system is primed with clean diesel. Starting the engine comes next, and then you head off from where the vehicle is parked, outside Willenhall or on a driveway around Bunkers Hill. We check it runs smoothly on fresh diesel before we leave. The whole job is done where the car is, so it never has to go to a workshop. At the end, there is the paperwork for your insurer: a VAT invoice plus a report from the engineer.
About Bunkers Hill, briefly
Bunkers Hill is a suburban area located near Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, sitting at an elevation of around 140 metres. Bunkers Hill is characterized by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock, which is typical of many suburban areas in the region. Bunkers Hill is situated close to nearby places such as St Chads, Green Lanes, and Stowlawn, and is approximately 2.7 miles from Wolverhampton city centre.
Bunkers Hill and West Midlands: AdBlue drains across the area
Over the WV postcode area, the vans answering AdBlue call-outs around Bunkers Hill serve much of West Midlands as well, St Chads, Green Lanes and Stowlawn among them. If you're close to a border, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask instead of guessing.
A mobile service fits Bunkers Hill, a residential suburb: there's no need to bring the car to us, because our engineers empty it there, on a driveway, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt.
Bunkers Hill: what AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to fix
Not one single figure would be fair, since each job is different. The cost shifts first with how long, if at all, the engine has been running, and next with the quantity of AdBlue that went in. After that it turns on where the car is and whether a van can get to it safely, which is easier on an open drive than in a tight gap behind Bliston Craft Gallery and Library.
What got in, what quantity, and if it ran: every Bunkers Hill enquiry opens by asking precisely those, ahead of any quote, not after. With them, the range shrinks to a single fixed number.
Priced by phone before the engineer heads out, it is paid for that day — card or phone, no deposit. Misfuelling cover comes with plenty of insurance policies, so it pays to look at yours before the van arrives.
Still next to the vehicle in Bunkers Hill?
Leaving your vehicle alone is, right now, the most useful thing you can do. Keys out, motor off, ignition off. Phone 0333 366 0103 then tell us it's AdBlue, about how much, and if it's run. Petrol in Diesel takes it from there, in Bunkers Hill or anywhere in West Midlands.