Don't Start It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Granish
If AdBlue has gone into your diesel tank, keep the engine off and leave your ignition off. Urea dissolved in water is all AdBlue is. Not like fuel, it neither burns nor mixes, and nothing starts until the motor sucks it round. A drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Granish, is normally what AdBlue in a diesel tank needs — if it is caught before your engine has run. Nothing comes before ringing 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Granish: the first few minutes
Do these:
- Pocket your keys, and that prevents anyone turning the power on.
- Put your hazards on if you're anywhere near moving traffic.
- The empty bottle or the till receipt tells us the product and the amount, so do not bin it away.
- Call us from where you are. A postcode starting PH22 1, or the name of the closest street, gets the van to you without a search.
Not to do:
- Not even briefly, and not to shift your car: the engine stays off.
- The ignition stays off: on lots of diesels, switching it on is enough to start the pump.
- Do not top up with diesel to dilute it. AdBlue does not dilute in diesel; it separates out.
- Any driving at all is to be avoided, even a short way along B9152.
- Do not try to drain the car yourself at the kerbside.
Rolling the vehicle away from the island is a job for attendants to help with, wherever Granish forecourt you are on, the BP or any other. On your own driveway, do not touch it at all.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
The motor isn't what AdBlue is made for; the exhaust is. It goes into its own tank and is sprayed into the exhaust gas to clean it. A fuel pump isn't made to take it, and AdBlue was never supposed to travel through one.
Poured in with the diesel, it keeps separate rather than blending — quite different from fuel. The intake sucks fuel from the deepest part of your tank, and that is exactly where AdBlue ends up: as it is denser than diesel, it sinks. Once your pump runs, the AdBlue is top of the list to be pulled through. Until then it waits beneath your diesel, and that is why a vehicle filled in Dell yesterday and not started remains the straightforward one, provided nobody turns your key.
Two kinds of damage come from there. It eats at some metals used in fuel systems, working on whatever it reaches till it is cleared completely. And when the water goes, the urea turns into crystals that block filters and settle in tiny channels. Lines carrying AdBlue spell harm overnight for a vehicle parked around Granish. Only inside the tank, it stays the same. Water lubricates nothing. The injection pump and every injector need diesel running through them, so the water part damages them by itself.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it is commonly worse than petrol
Fill a diesel with petrol in error over at the another forecourt nearby, and the problem is thinned fuel. Blended into the diesel and sitting still, it is harmless at that stage; running your motor is the damage.
AdBlue in a diesel is a fault of the wrong substance altogether. Because it does not burn, running it through is not an option. It doesn't stay mixed, so it cannot be thinned. And crystals and corrosion do not wash out with the next tank of fuel. That is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting your motor "to see" costs more here than nearly anywhere else, whether the vehicle is in Inverdruie or the middle of Granish.
As with petrol, there is good news. Not run? Then the AdBlue waits only in that tank, the easiest bit of the whole system to clear, anywhere your vehicle has come to rest in Highland.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Granish: how it ends up there
Many vehicles place the AdBlue cap beside the diesel cap, occasionally under one flap, and after dark the two may look the same. No one intends it. It usually happens at home, from a bottle grabbed en route home, not at the filling station.
A few familiar ways account for the majority of them. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up takes place in a hurry outside the local primary school. A driver tips the bottle in at home, right off A9, as the day ends. Or a driver new to that flap tops up the car in dim light, parked in the car park by the pub in the village.
The least known vehicles see it most — hire cars, new ones, company ones, and the spare vehicle of a family with both fuel types. Anywhere around Highland, Granish as well, the mistake does not change, and nor does the first step: keep it off.
Granish: started the motor with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the AdBlue has left your tank. The fuel filter and lines have had it pulled along, and any running time carries it on to the high-pressure pump and every injector.
Expect lumpy running, exhaust smoke, lost power, lights on your dash, or a cut-out — returning from Royal British Legion Memorial Garden, perhaps, or midway across Granish. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and do not restart the vehicle to check. Each start pulls more of it through.
If you were on the M90, over 50 miles from Granish, come off at the next junction and stop somewhere sensible rather than pressing on.
How far it went counts. A couple of hundred yards across Granish to the car park by Aviemore Kart Raceway is a very different job from a run towards Inverness, under 25 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the fuel system with each mile. Let us know roughly how far it had come.
There is more to flush once the engine has run, and we do all of it where the vehicle has ended up. Noticed early, it very seldom leaves permanent damage.
What does an AdBlue drain on a diesel involve around Granish?
Our engineers come to the vehicle, wherever it has stopped in Granish: a side street close to Cairngorm Brewery, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. Three answers shape the work, and so before anything else our technicians ask which fluid was put in, about what quantity, plus whether the motor has run.
Next, draining the tank right there removes the contaminated diesel and the AdBlue in one go. A careful flush counts much more with AdBlue than with petrol, since residue will not wash away on its own. Your filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. If your engine has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we are there. Quiet enough to use outside a house at night, and safe on a working forecourt, our pumps are explosion-proof.
New diesel goes in to prime your system, and that is the final step. Whether it's a parking bay outside Aviemore or a driveway around Granish, that is where we start the car and you drive off. We check it runs smoothly on new diesel before leaving. The entire job is done where the car is, so it never has to be taken to a garage. Afterwards, you are given the paperwork for the insurer: a VAT invoice plus a report from the engineer.
About Granish
Granish is a small suburban area in the Scottish Highlands, situated inland at an elevation of 232 metres. Granish lies near the Cairngorms National Park, close to the villages of Dalfaber and Aviemore. Granish is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its relatively recent development as a residential area. Granish is located approximately 24 miles from Inverness, the capital of the Highlands.
AdBlue drains across Granish and Highland
Dalfaber, Avielochan and Aviemore are among the towns near Granish that the same vans reach, together with most of Highland beyond, throughout the PH postcode area. Phone and ask rather than guess if you are by a county line, or anywhere tricky to pin down.
A mobile service suits Granish, a residential suburb: you have no need to bring the car to us, since our technicians drain it there, on a driveway, a side street, a parking area or a filling station.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right around Granish
There's no honest single quote, because the jobs aren't the same. Three things move the price: whether your engine has run and for how long, how much AdBlue went in, and where the car is. That last one comes down to whether a technician can reach it safely, and an open driveway is simpler than a tight gap behind Ring Cairn of Granish.
With that reason, each enquiry from Granish begins by asking the identical trio — which fluid got in, how much, if the engine ran — ahead of any quote. The answers turn a range into a straight price.
Our price is given during the call, before a van sets off; payment comes on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. While the van is travelling, check your insurance: many cover misfuelling.
Beside the car around Granish, still?
Then, touch nothing — that's the most helpful move there is. Keys out, motor off, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel takes over the rest, across Granish or wherever in Highland, once you phone 0333 366 0103 saying it was AdBlue, about what quantity, and if the engine ran.