Green: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, your ignition stays off and so does your engine. Water with urea dissolved in it: that is AdBlue. Not like fuel, it neither ignites nor blends, and no harm starts until the engine pulls it through. If your engine hasn't run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally emptied and carefully flushed where your car stands around Green. Call 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in the diesel tank around Green
Things to do:
- Remove the keys, and that stops anyone switching the power on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is anywhere near.
- The empty bottle or your receipt shows us the fluid and the amount, and so don't throw it away.
- Give us a postcode starting SA71 4, or whatever street is closest, and our van reaches you directly — so ring from wherever you are.
Never do these:
- Do not start your motor, even for a moment to move your car.
- Your ignition stays off: on many diesels, turning it on is enough to run your pump.
- No more fuel on top. The AdBlue won't mix, so it's pointless.
- Keep the car where it is instead of driving it anywhere, even a short stretch up Green Meadow Avenue.
- Don't try to drain the vehicle yourself by the kerbside.
At a forecourt around Green, whether it is the Tesco or another one, ask the staff to help you roll the vehicle clear of the petrol pump. On your own driveway, do not move it at all.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
The motor is not what AdBlue is made for; your exhaust is. Kept in a dedicated tank, it is injected into the exhaust stream to treat the gases. Not one side fits the other: urea doesn't belong in a pump, and a pump can't deal with urea.
It doesn't combine. After it's tipped into a tank of diesel, AdBlue behaves nothing like diesel. Heavier than diesel, it drops and collects underneath it — the very place the intake sucks from. A motor topped up on a drive in Monkton overnight and left unstarted counts as the simple case. Nothing has sucked the AdBlue up so far — but when the engine turns, that is what is pulled first, directly from the bottom of the tank.
It causes two kinds of damage from there. Crystals and corrosion. As the water evaporates, it strands urea that hardens in filters and narrow passages; meanwhile, since it eats at some metals, each part it reaches keeps suffering for as long as it stays inside. If the AdBlue has reached the pipework, waiting overnight in Green makes things worse. Inside your tank only, time costs nothing. Diesel protects the high-pressure pump and each injector as it flows; water offers none of that, which is a separate form of harm.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it's regularly worse than petrol
A fault of thinned fuel is what you get from filling a diesel with petrol from the Asda. No harm comes as long as it stays put, blended into the diesel — only when the motor runs on it.
The issue with AdBlue in a diesel is a totally unsuitable liquid. Not burning, it can't just be run through. Crystals and corrosion stay after the following fill, and AdBlue separates again out of your diesel, and so watering it won't help. Hence the flush matters so much, and turning the key "to see" does more harm here than almost any other mistake — in Kingsbridge or the heart of Green equally.
With AdBlue, the good news is no separate from petrol. If the engine hasn't run, the AdBlue is still in the tank, and the tank is the simplest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever in Pembrokeshire the vehicle is standing.
How AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank around Green
In dim light, two caps together — the AdBlue cap and the diesel cap, occasionally behind a single flap — can look the same. Nobody intends it; plenty of layouts invite it. A bottle picked up while driving home and tipped in outside the house, instead of at the filling station, is the usual story.
The ways it takes place are few and familiar. The top-up is hurried outside the local primary school, after the dash lit up with a warning as the children were dropped off. A driver pours the bottle in outside their house, just off Elm Grove, as the day ends. Or your car is topped up in the car park outside Watermans Arms, in poor light, by a person who has never opened that flap before.
The least familiar vehicles get it most — hire cars, brand-new cars, company ones, and the other vehicle of a home with one of each fuel types. Leave it off: that's the first step to an identical slip, wherever in Green or the rest of Pembrokeshire you happen to be.
Started the engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank in Green?
Then your tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. Through the filter, along the pipework, and — given any running time — on to the high-pressure pump and every injector: that's where it has gone.
You may notice the engine running unevenly, smoking, losing power, showing warning lights or cutting out, possibly on the way back from King's Wood or halfway across Green. Pull over when it is safe. Switch off. Leave it off instead of restarting it to check. With each start, more of it is pulled through.
Leave the M4, under 50 miles from Green, by the next junction and park somewhere safe, not carrying on.
Mileage matters: each mile pushes the AdBlue deeper in, so heading for St Davids, under 25 miles away, gives a far bigger job than hopping across Green to the car park by St Mary's Church. Let us know about how far it had come.
Wherever the vehicle came to a halt is where all of it gets done, even with more to clean out after the engine has been started. Very rarely does it leave permanent damage when it's caught soon.
Green: how AdBlue is drained from a diesel
Anywhere it has stopped around Green — a forecourt, a lay-by, a drive, a street beside Pembroke Town Hall — the van comes to your car. The job rests on three answers, which we get before all else — what was put in, the quantity, and if your engine has run.
Right there, the tank is then drained, and both the contaminated diesel and the urea leave at once. A careful flush matters far more with AdBlue than after petrol, because what remains won't clear out on its own. Clean diesel goes in after your filter is flushed — or swapped, when it needs to be — and after that the car is tested. About half an hour on site is usual for most jobs when your engine has not run. Quiet enough for use outside a house at night, and safe on a busy forecourt, the pumps are explosion-proof.
New diesel goes in to bleed your system, and that's the last step. Whether it's a parking bay by Pembroke or a driveway in Green, that is where we start the car and you drive off. It is tested on fresh diesel to make sure it runs correctly before our technicians go. No workshop is required at any point, with the whole job done on the spot. The insurer is likely to want an engineer's report and the VAT invoice — each handed over once the job is done.
About Green itself
Green is a coastal suburban area in Pembrokeshire, situated near the cities of St Davids and Pembroke. Green sits at a low elevation of 18 metres, overlooking the coastline of Wales. Green is characterized by its semi-detached housing and is located near other suburban areas such as Golden Hill and Orange Gardens.
AdBlue drains across Green and Pembrokeshire
The teams that answer AdBlue call-outs around Green also cover the locations round it, Golden Hill, Pembroke and Orange Gardens among them, and most of Pembrokeshire beyond, across the SA postcode area. Close to a boundary, or somewhere tricky to pin down? Asking beats guessing, so phone.
Wherever the car sits — your drive at home, a residential street, a car park, a filling station — our engineers empty it there, and there's no need to bring it to us; that suits Green, a residential suburb, well.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Green: the cost of fixing it
Every job is different, and so not one fixed price is fair. What shifts the price is, first, whether your engine has run and for how long; then how much AdBlue went in; and after that where the vehicle is and whether our van can reach it safely, which is simpler on an open drive than in a tight spot behind Pembroke Museum.
What went in, how much, plus whether it ran: each Green call begins by asking exactly those, ahead of any figure, never after. Given those replies, a range shrinks to one fixed number.
The quote is given during the call, before anyone leaves; payment happens 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.
Still alongside your car around Green?
Then the most useful thing you can do is nothing to the vehicle. Keys out; engine and ignition off. Say it's AdBlue, about what quantity, and whether it ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel handles it, in Green or wherever in Pembrokeshire.