Cheltenham: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
AdBlue in the diesel tank? Then keep your motor off — and your ignition as well. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water. It does not burn, it does not mix with diesel, and the harm it does starts when your fuel system draws it in. Caught before your engine has run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Cheltenham. Before you do anything else, phone 0333 366 0103.
Cheltenham, AdBlue in your diesel tank: what to do straight away
Things to do:
- Keys out — then no one can power anything on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is at all near.
- So you can tell us which liquid it was and roughly what quantity, keep your receipt or the empty bottle.
- Ring us from where you are. A postcode starting GL50 3, or the name of the nearest street, brings our van to you without a search.
Never do these:
- Not even for a second, and not to roll your vehicle: your engine remains off.
- Don't switch your ignition on. On plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- Don't top up with diesel to dilute it. AdBlue doesn't dilute in diesel; it separates out.
- Never drive the vehicle anywhere, not even a short distance down Clarence Street.
- Draining the tank on your own by the road is not one to try.
The attendants on duty at any Cheltenham forecourt — the Shell among them — will normally lend a hand rolling it clear if you ask. If you are on your own drive, leave the car exactly where it sits.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
The engine is not what AdBlue is made for; your exhaust is. From a separate tank it is fed straight to your exhaust, cleaning what the engine emits. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is designed to handle it.
Inside a diesel tank it acts really differently from fuel. It does not mix in. It sinks, since it is heavier than diesel, and pools down where the pickup takes its supply from. The first thing the system pulls through, once it runs, is the AdBlue. So a motor that had AdBlue poured in on a drive in Fairview last night, and hasn't been started since, is still the simple case: the AdBlue is lying at the bottom of your tank, and nothing has pulled it in.
It does two kinds of harm from there. As its water goes, the urea left behind crystallises, and the crystals block filters and settle in fine passages. And it is corrosive to some of the metals a fuel system is made from, and so it keeps labouring on the parts it gets to for as long as it remains there. If the AdBlue has reached the lines, leaving it overnight around Cheltenham makes things worse. In your tank alone, waiting does nothing. And there's the water: it offers no protection to the parts that rely on it the most — the high-pressure pump and every injector.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it's frequently worse than petrol
A fault of thin fuel is what you get after filling a diesel with petrol from the Tesco. It mixes with the diesel, and whilst it is inside your tank it causes no harm; the harm comes from running your motor on it.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the liquid itself is simply the wrong one. It does not burn, and so it can't just be run through. Whether the car sits in Overton Park or the heart of Cheltenham, turning it over "to see" costs more in this case than nearly any other error, and the flush matters more. Why: it won't stay blended, so diluting it is impossible; and crystals and corrosion survive the following tankful.
With AdBlue, the good news is no distinct from petrol. If the engine has not run, the AdBlue is still in the tank, and that tank is the simplest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever across Gloucestershire your car is sitting.
How AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank around Cheltenham
Plenty of cars put the AdBlue cap beside the diesel one, occasionally behind one flap, and in dim light the two may look the same. Nobody intends it. Mostly it's not the forecourt: someone buys a bottle heading home and tips it in outside the house.
Usually, it happens in one of a couple of familiar ways. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up happens in a hurry outside The Catholic School of Saint Gregory the Great. A bottle is poured in at the end of the day on a drive just off Post Office Lane. Or the vehicle is topped up in the car park at The Bank House, in poor light, by someone who has never opened that flap before.
The least known cars see it the most — rentals, brand-new ones, fleet ones, and the spare motor in a family with both fuel types. Wherever you are around Cheltenham or the remainder of Gloucestershire, it is the same slip and the same first answer: leave the car off.
Started the engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank around Cheltenham?
Then your tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. Through the fuel filter, through the pipework, and — with any running time — into the injection pump and every injector: that is where it travels.
Maybe returning from Royal Well Open Space, or midway across Cheltenham, the engine may run lumpy, smoke, drop power, flash the dash or stall. Stop when it is safe. Switch off. Leave it off rather than testing it again. Each start pulls more of that through.
On the M5, under 5 miles from Cheltenham, the first junction is where to exit, and somewhere sensible is where to park — not driving on.
How far it went matters. A few hundred yards across Cheltenham to the car park by Themes and Variations is a very different job from a run towards Gloucester, under 10 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the system with every mile. Roughly how far it had come is worth telling us.
Wherever your car came to a halt is where all of it gets done, even with more to clean out after the motor has been running. When it is noticed quickly, long-term damage is very uncommon.
What emptying AdBlue from a diesel involves in Cheltenham
The vehicle stays put, whether that is a street beside Cheltenham Minster, a driveway, a lay-by or a filling station around Cheltenham, and the van comes to it. Three replies decide the job, and so first our technicians ask which fluid went in, about what quantity, plus whether your motor has turned over.
Right there, the tank is then emptied, and both the polluted diesel and the urea come out at once. The fuel system is flushed thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, because what it leaves behind doesn't rinse out on its own. Fresh diesel goes in after your filter is flushed — or swapped, when it needs to be — and then the car is tested. Most of these jobs are a half-hour visit once our technicians arrive, provided the motor has not run. The pumps are explosion-proof, fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night.
The final step is to prime the system on new diesel. You set off as soon as we have started it, and it makes no difference whether the vehicle is on a drive around Cheltenham or in a bay by Cheltenham Spa. Before we go, our engineers make sure it's running smoothly with fresh diesel in. As the job is done in its entirety where the vehicle is, a garage never comes into it. Insurers ask for a VAT invoice and an engineer report, and both come at the end.
About Cheltenham itself
Cheltenham is a town situated in the county of Gloucestershire, England, with a riverside setting and an elevation of 65 metres. Cheltenham lies close to the city of Gloucester, approximately 7.7 miles away, and is surrounded by nearby places such as Bays Hill, St Pauls, and Montpellier. Cheltenham has a population of around 37,630 people and predominantly consists of flat housing. Cheltenham is located about 87.8 miles west of London, in the South West region of England.
AdBlue drains across Cheltenham and Gloucestershire
AdBlue call-outs around Cheltenham are passed to teams that serve the towns around it — Bays Hill, St Pauls as well as Montpellier — and most of Gloucestershire further out, across GL postcodes. If you're near a border, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask rather than assuming.
A mobile service suits Cheltenham, a spa town: you have no need to take your car to us, since our technicians empty it on the spot, in a driveway, a side street, a parking area or a filling station.
Cheltenham: what AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to fix
There's no honest single price, because the jobs are not the same. Three things change the cost: whether the engine has run and for how long, how much AdBlue went in, and where the vehicle is. That last one comes down to whether our van can get to it safely, and an open drive is simpler than a tight spot behind Minotaur and Hare.
Before any quote, not after, every enquiry from Cheltenham opens with three questions: the fuel, the quantity, and if it ran. The replies turn a range into a straight price.
Our price is quoted on the call, before a van sets off; settling up comes on the day, by card or over the phone, and nothing upfront. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
In Cheltenham and still next to the car?
Leaving the vehicle alone is, right now, the best move open to you. Ignition off, motor off, keys out. Ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us it is AdBlue, about how much, and whether it has run. Petrol in Diesel takes it from there, around Cheltenham or anywhere across Gloucestershire.