AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Hanham? Don't Start It
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, your ignition remains off and so does the motor. Urea dissolved in water is all AdBlue is. Unlike fuel, it neither ignites nor blends, and no harm happens till the engine pulls it round. A drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Hanham, is generally what AdBlue in a diesel tank takes — if it is caught before your engine has run. Nothing comes before ringing 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Hanham: the first few minutes
Do:
- Take your keys out, so no one switches your ignition on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is anywhere near.
- The empty bottle or the receipt shows us the product and the amount, and so do not bin it out.
- Call right where you are. Say a BS15 3 postcode or the closest street name, and no one has to hunt for you.
Don't do these:
- Not even for a second, and not to shift the car: the engine stays off.
- Your ignition stays off: on many diesels, turning it on is enough to run your fuel pump.
- AdBlue doesn't mix in diesel — it separates out — so adding more fuel won't thin it.
- Any driving at all is best avoided, including a short way up Chapel Road.
- Draining the tank on your own by the road is not one to try.
On a forecourt around Hanham, whether it is the Saintsbury's or another one, ask the attendants to help you push your car away from the petrol pump. If you are on your own drive, leave the vehicle just where it stands.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
Made for the exhaust, AdBlue has no place in your motor. Kept in a separate tank, it is squirted into the exhaust to clean the gases. Nothing in an injection pump is made for this liquid — and no part of it was intended to travel through one.
Inside a diesel tank it acts really differently from fuel. It does not mix in. It drops, since it is denser than diesel, and settles low where the intake takes its supply from. A vehicle topped up on a drive in Potterswood yesterday evening and left unstarted counts as the simple one. Nothing has sucked the AdBlue up so far — but when your motor turns, that is what goes first, straight from the bottom of your tank.
Once it is sucked in, the harm takes two forms. It attacks some metals found in fuel systems, attacking any part it reaches till it is removed from your system. And once the water goes, the urea forms crystals that block filters and settle in narrow channels. Where the AdBlue is in the pipework, waiting till morning in Hanham makes things worse. In the tank alone, time costs nothing. Water protects nothing. The injection pump and each injector need diesel flowing past them, so the water content harms them in its own right.
Petrol or AdBlue in a diesel: why AdBlue is regularly worse
A problem of thin fuel is what you end up with after filling a diesel with petrol from the Asda. Mixed through the diesel and sitting still, it is no threat at that stage; using your engine is the harm.
AdBlue in a diesel is a problem of the wrong substance altogether. It doesn't burn, so it cannot just be run through. It does not stay mixed, so it cannot be weakened. And crystals and corrosion don't wash out with the next tank of fuel. That is why the flush matters more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting the motor "to see" costs more here than almost anywhere else, whether the vehicle is in Stone Hill or the middle of Hanham.
The same good news applies as with petrol. Wherever across Gloucestershire the car has come to rest, an unrun engine leaves the AdBlue yet in the reservoir: the easiest bit of any fuel system to empty.
Hanham: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
Many motors place the AdBlue cap alongside the diesel cap, occasionally under a single flap, and after dark the two can look identical. No one means it. Usually it is not the filling station: a driver buys a bottle heading home and pours it in at home.
Usually, it takes place in one of a couple of familiar ways. Halfway through the morning drop-off, the dashboard flags it up, and outside Samuel White's Infant School the top-up is rushed. A bottle is poured in at the end of the day on a drive just off High Street. Another pattern: darkness, the car park outside The Jolly Sailor, and someone using that flap for the first time.
It occurs most in the motors drivers know least: a hire car, a new vehicle, a company car, or the second car of a household with one diesel and one petrol. An identical slip, an identical first step — leave it off — wherever you are in Hanham or the rest of Gloucestershire.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Hanham, and your engine started?
Then the tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. Your filter and pipework have had it sucked through, and some running takes it on to the injection pump and every injector.
You may see your engine running roughly, smoking, losing power, showing warning lights or cutting out, perhaps on the way back from Magpie Bottom Nature Reserve or halfway across Hanham. No starting it again to test: stop when safe, then switch it off. With each start, more of that is pulled through.
Exit the M32, under 3 miles from Hanham, at the first junction and stop safely, not driving on.
How far it went counts. A couple of hundred yards across Hanham to the car park by Hanham Methodist Church is a very different job from a run towards Bristol, under 5 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the fuel system with every mile. Tell us roughly how far it had come.
Once the engine has run, the flush takes in more, and all of it is done where your car has come to a stop. Very seldom does it leave lasting damage if it's spotted quickly.
Draining AdBlue in a diesel around Hanham: what it takes
Our engineers come to the car, wherever it has stopped around Hanham: a side street near Hanham Community Centre, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. Which fluid got in, about the quantity, plus whether the engine has been run: our engineers check before all else, because those decide the work.
On the spot, the tank is then emptied, and all of the polluted diesel and the urea leave at once. The system is cleaned thoroughly, which matters more with AdBlue than with petrol, because what it leaves behind does not rinse out on its own. Next, the fuel filter: cleaned, or changed when it must be. After that clean diesel, then a test of the vehicle. Roughly half an hour once we arrive is usual for most jobs when the engine hasn't run. Our equipment is explosion-proof, and so a busy forecourt is no fault, and it's hushed enough for a residential street late at night.
Last, your system is primed with new diesel. After that our engineers start the engine and you head off, whether from a parking bay at Lawrence Hill or a driveway around Hanham. The test before our engineers head off is that it runs properly on new diesel. Since the job is done in full where the car is, a workshop never comes into it. Afterwards, there is the paperwork for the insurer: a VAT invoice plus a written report from the engineer.
About Hanham itself
Hanham is a suburban area located near Bristol in Gloucestershire, sitting at an elevation of 73 metres in the inland landscape of the South West region. Hanham is characterized by its semi-detached housing stock and is situated close to nearby places such as Jeffries Hill and Kingswood. Hanham has a population of approximately 7465 residents and is within easy reach of Bristol, being only 3.7 miles away from the city centre. Hanham is also relatively distant from London, at a distance of 102.8 miles.
AdBlue drains around Hanham and across Gloucestershire
The teams that answer AdBlue call-outs around Hanham also cover the spots round it, Jeffries Hill, Kingswood and Mount Hill among them, and most of Gloucestershire beyond, across the BS postcode area. Phone and check rather than guess if you're by a county line, or somewhere tricky to explain.
A van that comes to you fits Hanham, a residential suburb: there's no need to take your car to us, since our technicians empty it on the spot, in a drive, a side street, a parking area or a forecourt.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Hanham: the cost of fixing it
Not one flat figure would be honest, since each job is different. What moves the cost is, firstly, whether the engine has run and for how long; then how much AdBlue went in; and then where the car is and whether our van can reach it safely, which is simpler on an open driveway than in a tight space behind Hanham Youth Club.
Before any quote, never afterwards, every call from Hanham begins with three questions: the fuel, the amount, plus if the engine ran. Those answers turn a range into a straight price.
You get that quote by phone, before anybody sets off, and you pay on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours while we're on the way.
In Hanham and still alongside the vehicle?
Then the most helpful thing you can do is nothing to the car. Keys out, motor off, ignition off. Say it's AdBlue, roughly what quantity, and if the engine ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel handles it, across Hanham or wherever in Gloucestershire.