AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Nant-y-Pandy? Don't Start It
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, your ignition stays off and so does your motor. Chemically, AdBlue is simply urea in water. Not like fuel, it neither ignites nor blends, and no harm happens until the motor pulls it round. If your motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally drained and thoroughly cleaned where your car stands in Nant-y-Pandy. Before you do anything else, ring 0333 366 0103.
Nant-y-Pandy, AdBlue in the diesel tank: what to do right away
Things to do:
- Remove your keys, which stops anyone switching the power on.
- Near moving traffic? So put the hazard lights on.
- Hold on to the receipt or the empty bottle, so you can tell us what went in and about how much.
- Call us from where you are. A postcode starting LL33 0, or the name of the closest street, gets our van to you without a search.
Things not to do:
- No starting the motor — not briefly, not to shift your car.
- Switching the key to ignition by itself sets your pump running on many diesels. Skip it.
- Do not top up with diesel to thin it. AdBlue does not mix in diesel; it separates out.
- Any driving at all is to be avoided, even a short distance down Nant Y Felin Road.
- No draining it yourself, either, at the roadside.
Moving the car off the island is a job for staff to help with, whichever Nant-y-Pandy forecourt you are on, the Shell or any other. On your own drive, do not touch it at all.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
Meant for your exhaust, AdBlue has no business in the engine. Kept in a separate tank, it is squirted into the exhaust to clean the gases. Not one side suits the other: urea doesn't belong in an injection pump, and a pump can't take urea.
Inside a diesel tank it acts very differently from fuel. It does not mix in. Denser than diesel, it drops and collects below it — the very place the intake draws from. The first thing the system pulls through, once it runs, is the AdBlue. So a motor that had AdBlue poured in on a drive in Penmaen Park last night, and hasn't been started since, is still the simple case: the AdBlue is lying at the bottom of the tank, and nothing has pulled it in.
From there it does two kinds of harm. As its water goes, the urea left behind crystallises, and the crystals block filters and settle in fine passages. And it's corrosive to some of the metals a fuel system is made from, and so it keeps working on the components it hits for as long as it remains there. Overnight, a car parked around Nant-y-Pandy with AdBlue in its lines gets worse; if it is only in that tank, it doesn't. Diesel lubricates the injection pump and every injector as it flows; water gives none of that, which is a second form of damage.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it's regularly worse than petrol
A fault of thin fuel is what you end up with from fuelling a diesel with petrol from the another forecourt nearby. Blended into your diesel and left still, it's harmless for now; using your motor does the damage.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the liquid as such is plainly the wrong one. It doesn't burn, and so it cannot simply be run through. Crystals and corrosion stay after the following tankful, and AdBlue splits again from your diesel, so watering it can't work. That is why the flush counts more, and trying your engine "to see" costs more here than almost any other slip — in Garizim or the centre of Nant-y-Pandy equally.
With AdBlue, the good news is no different from petrol. If the motor hasn't run, the AdBlue is still in your tank, and your tank is the quickest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever across Conwy the car is standing.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank around Nant-y-Pandy?
It is not deliberate. Plenty of vehicles keep the AdBlue inlet beside the diesel one, occasionally behind one flap, and mixing them up is easy in poor light. It usually occurs at home, from a bottle grabbed on the journey home, not at the filling station.
A few familiar ways cover the majority of them. The refill gets rushed outside the local primary school, after the dash flashed with a warning as the children were taken off. A driver tips the container in at home, just off Valley Road, as the day ends. Or someone new to that flap tops up your car in dim light, stopped in the car park outside Llanfair Arms.
Hired cars, brand-new cars, company cars, or the second car in a home with both fuels: the least familiar vehicles get it the most. Keep it off: that's the first step to the same mistake, wherever around Nant-y-Pandy or the remainder of Conwy you are.
Nant-y-Pandy: started your engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then that tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. With any running time, it goes on to the high-pressure pump and each injector, after passing via the fuel filter and pipework.
You may notice the motor running roughly, smoking, losing power, showing warning lights or cutting out, perhaps on the way back from Nanty y Coed or halfway across Nant-y-Pandy. No restarting to check: stop once safe, then switch everything off. Each start pulls more of it through.
Nant-y-Pandy sits under 50 miles from the Moreton Spur; if you were on it, exit at the first junction and pull up safely rather than carrying on.
A quick hop across Nant-y-Pandy to the car park by Llanfairfechan Library is one thing; heading for Bangor, under 10 miles away, is something else, because every mile carries the AdBlue further in. So mileage counts. About how far it had come is worth telling us.
There's more to rinse out once the motor has been started, and we do all of it where the car has stopped. Caught soon, it very seldom leaves permanent damage.
What does an AdBlue drain on a diesel involve around Nant-y-Pandy?
Wherever it has come to rest around Nant-y-Pandy — a filling station, a layby, a driveway, a road by St Mary of the Angels — the van comes to the vehicle. The job rests on three answers, which our technicians ask for first — what got in, the quantity, and whether your motor has run.
The contaminated diesel and the urea leave as one when your tank is emptied, right there. What remains from AdBlue won't flush away by itself, so the whole system gets a full flush, which matters far more with urea than with petrol. A test of the vehicle follows last, once clean diesel is added and your filter is flushed or, if needed, replaced. About half an hour on site is usual for most jobs where the engine hasn't run. The pumps are explosion-proof, safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark.
Lastly, the fuel system is bled with clean diesel. Whether it's a parking bay outside Llanfairfechan or a driveway around Nant-y-Pandy, that is where we fire it up and you drive off. It's checked on new diesel to confirm it runs smoothly before we go. No workshop is required at any point, with the whole job done then and there. Afterwards, there is the paperwork for the insurer: a VAT invoice plus a written report from the engineer.
About Nant-y-Pandy, for a moment
Nant-y-Pandy is a suburban area in Conwy, situated on the north Welsh coast, with Nant-y-Pandy being close to the Menai Strait and the Snowdonia National Park. Nant-y-Pandy has a mix of semi-detached housing and is located near other small communities such as Nant-y-Felin and Pentre Uchaf. Nant-y-Pandy sits at an elevation of 97 metres, overlooking the Irish Sea, and is within commuting distance of Bangor.
AdBlue drains across Conwy, Nant-y-Pandy included
Nant-y-Felin, Pentre Uchaf and Llanfairfechan are among the towns around Nant-y-Pandy that the same teams reach, together with most of Conwy further out, throughout the LL postcode area. Guessing doesn't help close to a border or anywhere tricky to describe; ring and check.
Nant-y-Pandy 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 sits, and so it never needs to be shifted to us.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Nant-y-Pandy: the cost of fixing it
There's no fair single price, since the jobs aren't the same. What shifts the price is, firstly, whether the motor has been running and for how long; then how much AdBlue was put in; and then where your car is and whether a technician can get to it safely, which is simpler on an open driveway than in a tight gap behind Llanfairfechan Community Hall.
Which fluid got in, how much, and whether it ran: every Nant-y-Pandy enquiry opens by asking precisely those, ahead of a quote, not afterwards. Once they are answered, a range becomes one fixed figure.
Our quote is given during the call, before a van sets off; settling up happens on the day, by card or by phone, with nothing upfront. Check your insurance while we are on the way: many carry misfuelling cover.
In Nant-y-Pandy and still alongside the car?
Then, the best thing to do with the car is to leave it. Keys out, engine off, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel handles the rest, across Nant-y-Pandy or anywhere in Conwy, after you phone 0333 366 0103 saying it's AdBlue, about how big an amount, and if it ran.