AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Greet? Keep It Switched Off
If AdBlue has got into your diesel tank, leave your motor off and leave the ignition off. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water. The harm starts once it is pulled through the lines — it won't ignite, and it won't combine with diesel. In Greet, AdBlue in a diesel tank found before the motor runs usually comes down to a drain and a thorough flush, right where your car is. No step comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Greet: the first few minutes
Do these:
- Pocket your keys, which prevents anyone turning the power on.
- Put the hazard lights on if you're at all near moving traffic.
- So you can tell us which liquid it was and roughly what quantity, save the till receipt or the empty bottle.
- Give us a postcode starting B11 2, or whichever street lies nearest, and our van reaches you directly — so call wherever you are.
Do not do these:
- Shifting the vehicle even a few yards is no reason to start your motor.
- The ignition stays off: on many diesels, turning it on is enough to run your pump.
- AdBlue doesn't mix in diesel — it separates out — so adding more diesel won't weaken it.
- Even a short stretch down Weston Lane is too far to drive the car.
- Beside the road, don't attempt draining it yourself.
Rolling the vehicle off the island is a job for attendants to help with, whichever Greet forecourt you are on, the BP included. Parked on your own drive? Then it remains exactly where it is.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
AdBlue is made for your exhaust, not the engine. Stored in a dedicated tank, it is squirted into the exhaust to clean the gases. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is made to handle it.
Fuel mixes; AdBlue, after poured in, will not. The behaviour is nothing like diesel's. It sinks, since it's denser than diesel, and settles down where the intake takes its fuel from. A car topped up on a driveway in Tyseley yesterday evening and left unstarted counts as the simple one. Nothing has sucked the AdBlue up yet — but when the motor turns, that is what goes first, straight from the bottom of your tank.
It does two kinds of damage from there. What remains once the water evaporates is urea, which turns into crystals: they lodge in tiny passages and block filters. Worse, it eats at some metals in the fuel system, and carries on until it's cleared out. If the AdBlue is in the pipework, waiting overnight around Greet makes things worse. In that tank alone, waiting costs nothing. And there is the water: it offers no lubrication to the parts that rely on it most — the injection pump and every injector.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel commonly the bigger issue?
Put petrol in a diesel at the Esso and you have an issue of thin fuel. No harm comes while it sits unused, blended into the diesel — only once your engine works on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is another problem: not thin fuel, but no fuel at all. It does not burn, and so it cannot just be run through. Crystals and corrosion stay after the next fill, and AdBlue splits again out of your diesel, so thinning it won't help. Hence the flush counts more, and turning the key "to see" costs more with AdBlue than nearly any other mistake — in Hay Mills or the centre of Greet equally.
The same good news holds as with petrol. Emptying a tank is the simplest part on any fuel system, and without running, the AdBlue remains in it — wherever in West Midlands the vehicle has stopped.
Greet: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
Plenty of motors place the AdBlue cap beside the diesel cap, now and then behind one flap, and after dark the two can appear the same. No one means it. Mostly it occurs with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the driveway, not at the pump.
Usually, it happens in one of a few familiar ways. Hurrying, outside Greet Primary School, after a warning light came on during the school run, someone refills your car. Someone pours the container in at home, just off Warwick Road, as the day ends. Else, in dim light by The Bear, the vehicle is refilled by someone using that flap for the first time.
Hired motors, brand-new motors, company motors, or the spare car in a home with both fuels: the least known vehicles get it the most. Leave it off: that is the first response to an identical mistake, wherever around Greet or the rest of West Midlands you are.
Already started your engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank in Greet?
The AdBlue has left the tank, then. With any running time, it travels to the high-pressure pump and every injector, having passed through the filter and lines.
Expect rough running, exhaust smoke, lost power, lights on your dash, or a stall — returning from Burbury Brickworks, perhaps, or midway across Greet. Stop when it is safe. Turn off. Leave the vehicle off instead of restarting it to check. Each start pulls more of that through.
On the Aston Expressway, under 5 miles from Greet, the first junction is where to leave, and anywhere sensible is where to park — not carrying on.
Every mile carries the AdBlue further in. That is why crossing Greet to park beside Hawker Hunter WT723 and a drive of under 3 miles towards Birmingham are such distinct jobs. About how far it had come is worth telling us.
There is more to clean out once your engine has been started, and our technicians do all of it where the car has ended up. If it's caught early, long-term damage is very rare.
Greet: how AdBlue is emptied from a diesel
A street by Birmingham Seventh Day Baptist Church, a driveway, a lay-by or a filling station: wherever the vehicle has come to rest in Greet, our engineers come to it. The job rests on three answers, which our engineers get before all else — what was put in, the quantity, and if your engine has turned over.
Then the tank is cleared where your car stands, and so the polluted fuel and the AdBlue come out together. A full flush matters much more after AdBlue than after petrol, because residue won't clear away by itself. Your filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. Roughly half an hour once we arrive is typical for most jobs when the engine hasn't run. Our pumping gear is explosion-proof, and so a busy filling station is no fault, and it is quiet enough for a residential street late at night.
The final step is to prime the fuel system on new diesel. You head off as soon as our technicians have fired it up, and it makes no difference whether the car is on a drive in Greet or in a space outside Tyseley. The check before we go is that it runs correctly on fresh diesel. Because the job is done in its entirety where your car is, a workshop never comes into it. Insurers want a VAT invoice and an engineer report, and both come afterwards.
About Greet and where it is
Greet is a suburban area in the West Midlands, situated on the River Rea and close to the city of Birmingham. Greet has a mix of old and new housing, with terraced houses being the predominant type, and is located near other suburbs such as Sparkhill and Small Heath. Greet sits at an elevation of around 116 metres, and its riverside setting provides a distinctive character to the area. Greet is also relatively close to the centre of Birmingham, being only 2.8 miles away.
Greet and West Midlands: AdBlue drains across the area
AdBlue jobs in Greet are passed to vans that serve the places around it — Sparkhill, Small Heath as well as Showell Green — and most of West Midlands further out, throughout B postcodes. Assuming won't help close to a county line or anywhere tricky to pin down; ring and check.
A van that comes to you fits Greet, a residential suburb: you have no need to bring the vehicle to us, because we drain it on the spot, in a driveway, a side street, a car park or a filling station.
Greet: what AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to fix
Because each callouts vary, a flat price would not be honest. What shifts the cost is, first, whether the engine has been running and for how long; then how much AdBlue was put in; and finally where the vehicle is and whether a technician can reach it safely, which is simpler on an open driveway than in a tight gap behind Jamia Abdullah Bin Masoud.
That is why every call from Greet starts with the same three queries, asked before giving a figure, not after: what was put in, how much, and whether it's run. When they are known, a range becomes a single fixed number.
You hear that price by phone, before anybody heads out, and you pay on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Misfuelling cover is part of plenty of insurance policies, so it is worth looking at yours before the van arrives.
Beside the car in Greet, right now?
Then, the most helpful thing to do with your car is to not touch it. Keys out; engine and ignition off. Say it was AdBlue, about how big an amount, and whether the engine ran, on 0333 366 0103. After that Petrol in Diesel handles it, across Greet or anywhere within West Midlands.