Merchant City: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
If AdBlue has gone into your diesel tank, leave your motor off and keep the ignition off. Water with urea mixed in it: that is AdBlue. As it is water-based, it will not burn and won't blend with diesel; damage just comes when the pump starts drawing it. Caught before the engine has been run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is usually a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in Merchant City. First, ring us on 0333 366 0103.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in the diesel tank around Merchant City
Things to do:
- So nobody can switch your ignition on, take your keys away.
- Put the hazards on if you are anywhere close to moving traffic.
- So you can tell us which fluid it was and roughly how much, save your receipt or the empty bottle.
- Our van locates you quickest with a postcode starting G1 1, or simply the name of a street close by, so phone from the spot.
Don't:
- No starting your motor — not for a second, not to reposition the vehicle.
- Your ignition remains off: on many diesels, switching it on is enough to start the fuel pump.
- No extra fuel on top. The AdBlue will not blend, and so it's pointless.
- Even a short stretch along Ingram Street is too far to drive it.
- No draining it yourself, either, at the roadside.
Get the attendants to help you move your car off the island if you're on a forecourt around Merchant City, whether it's the BP or somewhere else. On your own driveway, don't move it at all.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
AdBlue is made for the exhaust, not your engine. It goes into its own tank and is sprayed into your exhaust gas to fresh it. Nothing in a fuel pump is designed for this liquid — and none of it was intended to travel through one.
Poured in with the diesel, it keeps apart rather than blending — entirely different from fuel. It drops, since it's heavier than diesel, and pools down where the pickup draws its fuel from. A car topped up on a drive in Calton yesterday evening and left unstarted is the simple case. Nothing has pulled the AdBlue up so far — though once the motor turns, that is what goes first, directly from the bottom of the tank.
From there it does two kinds of damage. What remains once the water evaporates is urea, which forms crystals: they lodge in narrow channels and clog filters. Worse, it eats at some metals in a fuel system, and keeps going till it is flushed out. A vehicle left standing around Merchant City with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue only in its tank is not. The water in it causes damage of its own: the high-pressure fuel pump and the injectors rely on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel commonly the bigger problem?
Petrol put into a diesel on Shell's forecourt leaves the fuel thin — that is the main issue. Harm only comes from running on it. Mixed into your diesel and sitting in that tank, it causes none.
AdBlue in a diesel is an issue of the wrong substance altogether. Since it doesn't burn, running it through isn't an option. Nor can it be thinned, because it splits back out — and the following tankful will not clear away crystals or corrosion. So the flush matters more with AdBlue, and turning your key "to see", in the centre of Merchant City or out in Blythswood New Town, costs more than almost any other mistake.
The same good news applies as with petrol. Emptying a tank is the easiest part on a fuel system, and without start-up, the AdBlue stays in it — wherever in Glasgow City your vehicle has stopped.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Merchant City: how it ends up there
No one means to do it. The AdBlue filler on plenty of cars sits right next to your diesel filler, occasionally under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. Mostly it occurs with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the driveway, not at the forecourt.
It tends to occur in a few familiar ways. The top-up gets rushed outside the local primary school, because your dash flashed with a warning as the kids were dropped in. Close to Montrose Street, a driver tips a container in at home in the evening. Otherwise, after dark by Committee Room No.9, the vehicle is refilled by someone opening that flap for the first time.
The least familiar vehicles see it most — rentals, new cars, fleet ones, and the other car of a family with both fuels. Same slip, an identical first step — keep it off — anywhere you are in Merchant City or the rest of Glasgow City.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Merchant City, and your engine started?
Then that tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. Via the fuel filter, through the lines, and — given any running — into the injection pump and each injector: that is how far it has gone.
Perhaps coming back from Rottenrow Gardens, or midway across Merchant City, the engine might go rough, smoke, drop power, flash the dash or cut out. Stop when it is safe. Switch off. Keep it off instead of restarting it to check. Each start pulls more of that through.
On the M8, under a mile from Merchant City, the next junction is where to leave, and somewhere sensible is where to stop — not carrying on.
How far it went counts. A couple of hundred yards across Merchant City to the car park by National Youth Theatre of Scotland is a very different job from a run towards Glasgow, under a mile away, with the AdBlue reaching further into your system with each mile. Tell us about how far it had come.
Our engineers do all of the flushing where your car has stopped, and once the motor has run there is more of it. When it is spotted early, lasting damage is very uncommon.
Merchant City: how AdBlue is drained from a diesel
The vehicle remains where it is, whether that is a street near Thomas Hutcheson Statue, a drive, a layby or a filling station in Merchant City, and our van comes to it. The job depends on three answers, and we get before all else — which fluid went in, the quantity, and if the motor has run.
Right there, that tank is then drained, and both the polluted diesel and the urea leave as one. Residue from AdBlue won't flush out unaided, so the whole system gets a careful flush, which matters far more here than for petrol. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and your car is tested. Not run? Then count on roughly half an hour once we are there for most jobs. Explosion-proof pumps make a live forecourt sensible to work on, and they're quiet enough not to disturb the street at night.
Bleeding your system with new diesel comes last. Whether it is a parking bay outside High Street or a driveway around Merchant City, that is where our engineers start the engine and you drive off. The check before our technicians leave is that it runs smoothly on clean diesel. As the job is done in its entirety where the vehicle is, a workshop never comes into it. At the end, you are given the paperwork for the insurer: a VAT invoice and a written report from the engineer.
About Merchant City, for a moment
Merchant City is a riverside suburban area in Glasgow, situated near the city centre and close to the River Clyde. Merchant City sits at a relatively low elevation of around 20 metres, with many of its residents living in flats. Merchant City is part of the larger Glasgow urban area, with nearby places including St Enochs and Townhead.
Merchant City and Glasgow City: AdBlue drains across the area
The vans that answer AdBlue call-outs in Merchant City also cover the places round it, St Enochs, Townhead and Glasgow among them, and most of Glasgow City beyond, across the G postcode area. Ring and check rather than guess if you are close to a border, or somewhere awkward to pin down.
Merchant City is a residential suburb, and a mobile drain suits it: whether the vehicle is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, our technicians drain it where it stands, and so it never needs to be shifted to us.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Merchant City: the cost of fixing it
Since the callouts differ, a flat figure would not be fair. What moves the cost is, first, whether the engine has run and for how long; then how much AdBlue got in; and then where the car is and whether a technician can get to it safely, which is simpler on an open drive than in a tight spot behind Fellow Glasgow Residents.
With that reason, each enquiry from Merchant City begins by asking the same trio — what was put in, how much, if it ran — ahead of a quote. The answers turn a range into a straight quote.
Quoted by phone before the engineer heads out, it is paid for on the day — card or phone, no deposit. Misfuelling cover comes with plenty of insurance policies, so it is worth looking at yours before the van gets there.
Still beside the vehicle in Merchant City?
Leaving your vehicle alone is, right now, the most useful thing open to you. Ignition off, motor off, keys out. Ring 0333 366 0103: AdBlue, the amount, and if the engine ran are everything our engineers need. Petrol in Diesel takes over the remainder throughout Glasgow City, Merchant City too.