Great Malvern: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
With AdBlue in the diesel tank, the ignition stays off and so does your engine. Water with urea mixed in it: that is AdBlue. It does not burn, it doesn't mix with diesel, and the damage it does begins when the system pulls it in. If the motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally emptied and carefully rinsed where the car sits in Great Malvern. No step comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Great Malvern: the first few minutes
Do these:
- Remove the keys, which prevents someone turning the electrics on.
- Close to moving traffic? Then put the hazards on.
- So you can tell us which liquid it was and roughly what quantity, save your receipt or the empty bottle.
- Call just where you are. Say a WR14 3 postcode or the closest street name, and no one has to search for you.
Never do these:
- Shifting your vehicle even a few yards is no reason to start the motor.
- The ignition stays off: on lots of diesels, switching it on is enough to run your fuel pump.
- Adding extra diesel doesn't work: AdBlue settles out instead of blending.
- Even a short distance up Church Street is too far to drive the vehicle.
- No draining it yourself, at all, at the verge.
On a forecourt around Great Malvern, whether it's the Gulf or another one, ask the attendants to help you push the vehicle clear of the petrol pump. At home, your car stays just where it is.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
Meant for the exhaust, AdBlue has no place in the engine. It goes into its own tank and is sprayed into your exhaust gas to fresh it. A fuel pump isn't made to cope with it, and AdBlue was never supposed to travel through one.
Poured in with the diesel, it stays separate instead of mixing — entirely unlike fuel. It's heavier than diesel, so it sinks and gathers at the bottom of your tank, which is where the pickup draws fuel from. Easiest of all: a vehicle that got AdBlue in Lower Wyche overnight and has not turned since. The AdBlue waits at the foot of the tank, undrawn — though it will be the first thing through once the motor starts, before any diesel at all.
From there it does two kinds of damage. What remains once the water evaporates is urea, which turns into crystals: they settle in tiny passages and block filters. On top of that, it attacks certain metals in a fuel system, and carries on until it is flushed out. By daybreak, a vehicle sitting around Great Malvern with AdBlue through its pipework grows worse; if it's only inside your tank, it doesn't. Diesel protects the high-pressure pump and each injector as it passes; water offers no lubrication, which is a second kind of damage.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it is regularly worse than petrol
A fault of thin fuel is what you get after filling a diesel with petrol at the Texaco. Blended through the diesel and left unused, it is harmless at that stage; running the engine is the damage.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the liquid itself is simply the wrong one. It can't just be run through, since it does not burn. Whether the vehicle is in Pound Bank or the heart of Great Malvern, turning it over "to see" costs more with AdBlue than almost any other slip, and the flush matters for more. Why: it won't remain mixed, and so watering it down fails; and deposits and corrosion outlast the following fill.
The same good news holds as with petrol. Wherever across Worcestershire your car has come to rest, an unrun motor means the AdBlue still inside the tank: the easiest bit of a fuel system to empty.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Great Malvern: how it ends up there
In dim light, two caps side by side — the AdBlue one and the diesel one, now and then behind a single flap — can appear the same. Nobody means it; many designs allow it. Mostly it's never the filling station: someone picks up a bottle heading home and tips it in outside the house.
Mostly, it occurs in one of a couple of familiar ways. Halfway through the morning drop-off, the dashboard flags it up, and outside Malvern Parish CofE Primary School the top-up is rushed. A bottle is poured in at the end of the day on a drive just off Belle Vue Terrace. One more version: darkness, a pub car park outside The Old Royal Library, and a driver opening that flap the first time.
It takes place most in the vehicles drivers know least: a hire car, a new car, a company car, or the second vehicle of a household with one diesel and one petrol. An identical slip, an identical first step — leave it off — wherever you are in Great Malvern or the remainder of Worcestershire.
Great Malvern: started your engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the AdBlue has left that tank. With any running time, it goes on to the injection pump and every injector, having passed via your filter and pipework.
You may notice the engine running roughly, smoking, losing power, showing warning lights or cutting out, perhaps on the way back from Priory Garden or halfway across Great Malvern. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and do not restart the vehicle to check. Every start pulls more of that through.
If you were on the M5, under 10 miles from Great Malvern, come off at the next junction and stop somewhere sensible rather than pressing on.
How far it went counts. A few hundred yards across Great Malvern to the car park by Edward Elgar is a very different job from a run towards Worcester, under 10 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the system with each mile. Approximately how far had it come? Tell us.
Once the engine has been started, the flush takes in more, and all of it is done where the vehicle has stopped. Long-term damage is very rare when it is spotted soon.
Great Malvern: how AdBlue is emptied from a diesel
A street beside Gordon Smith, a driveway, a lay-by or a filling station: anywhere the car has come to rest in Great Malvern, our engineers come to it. Before anything else our technicians ask what was put in, about how much, and if the engine has been run, because those answers decide the work.
Next, emptying that tank on the spot removes the polluted diesel and the AdBlue in one go. A full flush matters much more after AdBlue than after petrol, since residue will not wash out by itself. Your filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. The majority of these jobs are a half-hour visit once we get there, if the engine hasn't run. The pumps are explosion-proof, safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night.
Clean diesel goes in to prime the fuel system, and that is the last step. After that our engineers start the engine and you set off, whether from a parking space outside the nearest station or a driveway around Great Malvern. The test before our technicians head off is that it runs smoothly on new diesel. No workshop is needed at any stage, with the entire job done on the spot. You receive a VAT invoice and an engineer report afterwards, which is what insurers want.
About Great Malvern itself
Great Malvern is a town situated on the River Severn in Worcestershire, with a mix of detached housing and other types of accommodation. Great Malvern sits at an elevation of around 145 metres, looking out over the surrounding countryside and the nearby Malvern Hills. Great Malvern is located near several other communities, including Link Top, Barnards Green, and West Malvern, and is close to the city of Worcester. Great Malvern has a population of approximately 10,441 people and is about 103 miles west of London.
AdBlue drains in Great Malvern and across Worcestershire
Throughout the WR postcode area, the vans taking AdBlue call-outs around Great Malvern reach most of Worcestershire as well, Link Top, Barnards Green and West Malvern among them. Close to a boundary, or anywhere awkward to pin down? Asking is better than guessing, so ring.
Great Malvern is a spa town, and a mobile drain suits it: whether the vehicle is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, our technicians drain it where it sits, and so it never needs to be moved to us.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Great Malvern: the cost of fixing it
No flat figure would be fair, since each job is different. Whether the engine has been running, and for how long, comes first in what changes the price. How much AdBlue was put in comes next, and then the position of the car, because an open driveway is simpler for our van to get to safely than a tight gap behind Standing Cross.
With that reason, every call from Great Malvern opens with the same trio — which fluid went in, what quantity, whether the engine ran — before a quote. Once they are known, a range turns into one firm number.
You hear that price on the phone, before anyone heads out, and you pay on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Misfuelling cover comes with plenty of insurance policies, so it is worth looking at yours before the van gets there.
In Great Malvern and still next to the vehicle?
Then the most useful thing you can do is nothing to the car. Keys out; motor and ignition off. Ring 0333 366 0103 and tell us it is AdBlue, about how much, and if it has run. Petrol in Diesel takes it from there, in Great Malvern or anywhere in Worcestershire.