Harlow Green: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
If AdBlue has got into the diesel tank, leave your motor off and leave the ignition off. Urea mixed in water is what AdBlue is. It does not burn, it does not mix with diesel, and the harm it does begins when your fuel system pulls it in. If the motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is usually drained and carefully flushed where your car stands around Harlow Green. No step comes before ringing 0333 366 0103.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in the diesel tank around Harlow Green
Things to do:
- Take your keys out, and so no one switches the ignition on.
- If you are at all close to moving traffic, put the hazard lights on.
- Hold on to the till receipt or the empty bottle, so you can tell us what got in and roughly how much.
- The van finds you quickest with a postcode starting NE9 6, or simply the name of a street close by, so call from the spot.
Never do these:
- No starting your motor — not for a second, not to shift your car.
- Many diesels run their fuel pump the moment the ignition goes on, so leave the car off.
- Adding extra diesel does not work: AdBlue separates out instead of thinning.
- Even a short distance down Harlow Green Lane is too far to drive the car.
- No emptying it yourself, at all, at the verge.
The staff working at any Harlow Green forecourt — the JET among them — will normally help pushing it aside if you ask. Parked on your own driveway? Then it remains just where it is.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
Made for your exhaust, AdBlue has no business in the engine. Its own tank holds it, and from there it's sprayed into the exhaust, and there it cleans the gas. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is designed to handle it.
Poured in with your diesel, it keeps separate instead of mixing — quite different from fuel. The intake sucks fuel from the lowest part of the tank, and that's precisely where AdBlue ends up: as it is denser than diesel, it sinks. A car topped up on a drive in Chowdene overnight and not started since is the straightforward case. Nothing has pulled the AdBlue up so far — though once the motor turns, that is what goes first, directly from the bottom of that tank.
From there it does two kinds of harm. It eats at certain metals used in fuel systems, working on any part it touches until it's removed completely. And once the water goes, the urea forms crystals that block filters and settle in tiny passages. Pipes holding AdBlue mean harm overnight for a car sitting in Harlow Green. Only in that tank, it stays the same. Diesel protects the high-pressure pump and every injector as it flows; water offers none of that, which is a separate kind of damage.
Petrol or AdBlue in a diesel: why AdBlue is regularly worse
Put petrol in a diesel at the Sainsbury's and you have a problem of thin fuel. Damage only comes from driving on it. Blended into the diesel and left inside your tank, it does nothing.
The issue with AdBlue in a diesel is a totally wrong liquid. Not burning, it can't just be run through. Deposits and corrosion stay after the next fill, and AdBlue separates again from the diesel, and so thinning it can't work. Hence the flush counts more, and turning your key "to see" costs more with AdBlue than nearly any other slip — in Low Eighton or the centre of Harlow Green equally.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Wherever across Tyne and Wear your vehicle has come to rest, an unrun motor means the AdBlue still in the tank: the easiest bit of a fuel system to clear.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Harlow Green: how it ends up there
After dark, two caps together — the AdBlue one and the diesel one, occasionally behind a single flap — can look the same. Nobody means it; plenty of layouts invite it. Usually it's not the filling station: a driver buys a bottle heading home and pours it in outside the house.
The ways it takes place are few and familiar. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up happens in a hurry outside St Anne's Catholic Primary School, Harlow Green. Someone tips the container in outside their house, just off Ivanhoe View, as the day ends. Or someone unfamiliar with that flap tops up the vehicle after dark, stopped in the car park by A1 Allerdene Social Club.
It crops up the most in a rental, a new car, a company car, or the other car of a family with one of each fuel types — the cars people know the least. Leave it off: that's the first step to an identical mistake, wherever around Harlow Green or the rest of Tyne and Wear you are.
Harlow Green: started your engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
If so, the AdBlue is no longer in that tank. With any running, it goes on to the injection pump and every injector, having passed through the fuel filter and lines.
Watch for rough running, exhaust smoke, lost power, lights on the dash, or a cut-out — coming back from Ravensworth Golf Club, say, or part way across Harlow Green. No restarting to test: pull over once it is safe, then turn everything off. Each start pulls more of that through.
Harlow Green lies under 3 miles from the A1(M); if you were on it, exit by the next junction and pull up somewhere safe instead of carrying on.
Each mile carries the AdBlue further into the system. That's why crossing Harlow Green to park beside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a drive of under 5 miles towards Newcastle upon Tyne are such distinct jobs. About how far it had come is worth telling us.
Wherever your car came to a stop is where all of it gets done, even with more to clean out once your engine has been started. Permanent damage is very rare if it's caught early.
What draining AdBlue from a diesel involves in Harlow Green
Our engineers come to the vehicle, wherever it has stopped around Harlow Green: a side street near Saint Anne's, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. The job depends on three answers, which our technicians ask for first — what got in, the amount, and if your engine has turned over.
Next, draining your tank right there removes the polluted diesel along with the AdBlue in one go. What remains from AdBlue won't flush away unaided, so the fuel system gets a full flush, which counts far more here than for petrol. Testing the vehicle comes at the end, once clean diesel goes in and the filter gets flushed or, where needed, swapped. Roughly half an hour on site is typical for most jobs where your engine hasn't run. The pumps are explosion-proof, fine on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night.
The final step is to prime the fuel system on new diesel. Firing it up comes next, and then you head off from where the vehicle is parked, at Heworth or on a driveway in Harlow Green. Before leaving, our engineers confirm it is running properly with clean diesel in. No garage is needed at any point, with the entire job done then and there. At the end, you are given the paperwork for your insurer: a VAT invoice plus a report from the engineer.
About Harlow Green, briefly
Harlow Green is a suburban area located inland in Tyne and Wear, sitting at an elevation of 102 metres and approximately 3.9 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne. Harlow Green is characterized by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock and is situated near other local places such as Lyndhurst and Allerdene. Harlow Green forms part of the wider urban area surrounding Newcastle upon Tyne, with the city centre being a short distance away. Harlow Green is also relatively distant from London, being around 243.6 miles away.
AdBlue drains across Tyne and Wear, Harlow Green included
Lyndhurst, Allerdene and Eighton Banks are among the towns around Harlow Green that the same teams serve, together with most of Tyne and Wear further out, over the NE postcode area. Phone and check instead of guessing if you're close to a border, or somewhere tricky to pin down.
Wherever your car stands — a driveway at home, a side street, a car park, a forecourt — we drain it there, with no need to take it to us; that suits Harlow Green, a residential suburb, well.
What does AdBlue in a diesel tank cost to sort out around Harlow Green?
Not one single figure would be honest, because each job is different. The cost changes first with how long, if at all, the engine has been running, and next with the amount of AdBlue that was put in. After that it rests on where the car is and whether our van can reach it safely, which is easier on an open driveway than in a tight space behind Eighton Banks Village Hall.
For that reason, each call from Harlow Green opens with the identical trio — which fluid got in, what quantity, whether the engine ran — ahead of a quote. With them, the range shrinks to one firm number.
Priced by phone before the engineer heads out, the job is settled that day — card or phone, no deposit. As the van is travelling, dig out your insurance: plenty cover misfuelling.
Harlow Green: still next to your car?
Then the most handy thing you can do is nothing to the car. Motor off, keys out, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel handles the rest, across Harlow Green or anywhere in Tyne and Wear, once you ring 0333 366 0103 to say it was AdBlue, about what quantity, and if the engine ran.