Harleywood: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
AdBlue in your diesel tank? Then leave your motor off — and the ignition as well. Urea dissolved in water is what AdBlue is. It doesn't burn, it does not mix with diesel, and the damage it does starts when the fuel system pulls it in. In Harleywood, AdBlue in a diesel tank found before your engine runs usually means a drain and a thorough flush, just where your car is. Before you do anything else, call 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Harleywood: the first few minutes
To do:
- Keys out — that way nobody can switch anything on.
- Put your hazards on if you're anywhere near moving traffic.
- So you can tell us which liquid it was and roughly how much, save the receipt or the empty bottle.
- Ring right where you are. Say a GL6 0 postcode or the nearest street sign, and no one has to hunt for you.
Never do these:
- Don't start the engine, even for a moment to move the car.
- Don't switch your ignition on. On plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- No more fuel added. The AdBlue will not blend, and so it's pointless.
- Leave it where it is instead of driving it anywhere, even a short stretch down Harleywood.
- Do not try to drain the vehicle yourself at the kerbside.
The staff on duty at any Harleywood filling station — the Shell included — will usually help rolling it clear if you ask. At your own drive, do not touch it at all.
What does AdBlue do in a diesel tank?
AdBlue is made for the exhaust, not the engine. Kept in a dedicated tank, it is squirted into the exhaust stream to clean the fumes. Nothing in it is supposed to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is built to handle it.
Inside a diesel tank it behaves very differently from fuel. It doesn't mix in. Denser than diesel, it sinks and pools below it — the same spot the pickup sucks from. The first thing the system pulls through, once it runs, is the AdBlue. So a vehicle that had AdBlue poured in on a drive in Whiteway last night, and has not been started since, is still the simple case: the AdBlue is lying at the bottom of the tank, and nothing has pulled it in.
After it is drawn in, the harm comes in two forms. What is left once the water evaporates is urea, which turns into crystals: they settle in narrow passages and block filters. Worse, it attacks some metals in the fuel system, and keeps going till it is cleared out. By daybreak, a car parked in Harleywood with AdBlue in its lines gets worse; where it is just inside that tank, it doesn't. Water protects nothing. The high-pressure pump and each injector need diesel flowing past them, and so the water content harms them in its own right.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is regularly more serious than petrol
Petrol pumped into a diesel on BP's forecourt leaves your fuel watery — that's the main problem. Harm just comes from running on it. Blended into the diesel and sitting inside the tank, it does nothing.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the liquid as such is plainly the wrong one. Because it doesn't burn, running it through is not an option. It does not stay mixed, and so it cannot be thinned. And crystals and corrosion don't wash out with the next tank of fuel. That is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting your engine "to see" costs more here than almost anywhere else, whether the vehicle is in Nailsworth or the middle of Harleywood.
As with petrol, there is good news. Not started? Then the AdBlue sits just in that tank, the simplest bit of the whole system to empty, wherever your vehicle has come to rest around Gloucestershire.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Harleywood: how it ends up there
It's not on purpose. Plenty of cars keep the AdBlue inlet beside the diesel inlet, occasionally behind one flap, and muddling them up is simple after dark. It mostly occurs outside the house, from a container bought en route home, not at the forecourt.
Mostly, it occurs in one of a couple of familiar ways. Rushing, outside Horsley Church of England Primary School, after a warning lamp came on during the school run, someone refills the vehicle. A bottle is poured in at the end of the day on a drive just off Bath Road. Or someone new to that flap refills the car in dim light, stopped in the car park outside Britannia Inn.
It takes place most in the cars people know least: a hire car, a new motor, a company car, or the second motor of a household with one diesel and one petrol. Keep it off: that is the first step to an identical mistake, wherever around Harleywood or the remainder of Gloucestershire you happen to be.
Harleywood: started the engine with AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then your tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. With any running, it travels to the high-pressure pump and every injector, having passed through the filter and lines.
Watch for rough running, exhaust smoke, lost power, lights on the dash, or a stall — returning from King George V Playing Fields, perhaps, or midway across Harleywood. Stop when it is safe. Turn off. Leave it off instead of restarting it to check. Each start pulls more of that through.
On the M5, under 10 miles from Harleywood, the first junction is where to leave, and anywhere sensible is where to stop — not driving on.
How far it went matters. A couple of hundred yards across Harleywood to the car park by Nailsworth Town Hall is a very different job from a run towards Gloucester, under 15 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the system with every mile. Roughly how far had it come? Tell us.
We do all of the cleaning where the vehicle has stopped, and once the engine has been run there is more of it. Noticed early, it very seldom leaves long-term damage.
Harleywood: how AdBlue is cleared from a diesel
We come to the car, wherever it has stopped around Harleywood: a side street close to Christ Church, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. The work rests on three replies, which our engineers get first — what got in, the quantity, and whether the engine has turned over.
Next, emptying your tank on the spot takes out the contaminated diesel along with the AdBlue together. The system is rinsed thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, since what it leaves behind doesn't rinse out on its own. A test of the car comes at the end, after clean diesel goes in and your filter is cleaned or, if necessary, swapped. If your engine hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once our engineers arrive. The pumps are explosion-proof, safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night.
Bleeding the system with new diesel comes at the end. Firing it up comes next, and then you head off from where the car is parked, at Stroud or on a driveway around Harleywood. Our technicians make sure it runs properly on clean diesel before we go. Our engineers do it all wherever your car has ended up, and it never needs to be taken to a workshop. At the end, you are given paperwork for your insurer: a VAT invoice and a written report from the engineer.
About Harleywood
Harleywood is a small suburban area situated on the riverside in Gloucestershire, with a mix of detached housing and a population of around 553 residents. Harleywood sits at an elevation of 108 metres, close to nearby places such as Rockness, Millbottom, and Walkleywood. Harleywood is located near the city of Gloucester, approximately 12 miles away, and is about 91 miles west of London. Harleywood remains a quiet residential community with a rural feel.
AdBlue drains around Harleywood and across Gloucestershire
AdBlue call-outs in Harleywood are passed to teams that serve the towns around it — Rockness, Millbottom as well as Walkleywood — and much of Gloucestershire further out, throughout GL postcodes. Phone and ask instead of guessing if you are by a county line, or anywhere awkward to explain.
A mobile service fits Harleywood, a residential suburb: you have no need to bring your vehicle to us, because we drain it there, in a drive, a residential street, a parking area or a filling station.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Harleywood: the cost of fixing it
Not one single price would be fair, since each job differs. Whether the motor has been running, and for how long, comes first in what shifts the price. How much AdBlue got in comes next, and then the position of the car, because an open drive is simpler for our van to get to safely than a tight space behind Quaker Friends Meeting House.
Before a figure, not after, each call from Harleywood opens with three questions: the liquid, the quantity, and if the engine ran. Their replies shrink a range down to a single figure.
Quoted on the call before the van sets out, it is paid for on the day — card or phone, no deposit. Misfuelling cover is part of many insurance policies, so it is worth looking at yours before the van arrives.
Still alongside the vehicle in Harleywood?
Then, the most helpful thing to do with the car is to leave it. Keys out, engine off, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel takes over the remainder, across Harleywood or wherever in Gloucestershire, once you phone 0333 366 0103 saying it was AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and if the engine ran.