AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Oldfield? Keep It Switched Off
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, your ignition stays off and so does the engine. Chemically, AdBlue is simply urea in water. Unlike fuel, it neither ignites nor mixes, and nothing starts until your motor sucks it round. If the motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally emptied and carefully purged where the car stands in Oldfield. Before you do anything else, ring 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Oldfield: the first few minutes
Do these:
- Keys out — then no one can switch anything on.
- Put your hazards on if you are anywhere near moving traffic.
- Keep your 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 WV16 6, or the name of the nearest street, brings our van to you without a search.
Do not do these:
- No starting the motor — not for a second, not to reposition your vehicle.
- Do not switch your ignition on. On many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- Pouring in extra diesel does not work: AdBlue separates out instead of blending.
- Any driving at all is to be avoided, including a short stretch along B4364.
- Don't try to drain the vehicle yourself by the kerbside.
Rolling your vehicle away from the pumps is a job for attendants to help with, wherever Oldfield forecourt you are on, the the nearest petrol station or any other. On that drive, the car remains exactly where it is.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
Meant for your exhaust, AdBlue has no place in your motor. Kept in a separate tank, it is squirted into the exhaust to clean the gases. A fuel pump isn't designed to cope with it, and AdBlue was never intended to travel through one.
Poured in with your diesel, it keeps separate rather than mixing — entirely different from fuel. Heavier than diesel, it drops and pools below it — the same place the pickup sucks from. Easiest of all: one that had AdBlue in The Down last night and has not turned since. The liquid waits at the base of that tank, undrawn — though it would be first through if your motor runs, ahead of any diesel at all.
It does two kinds of damage from there. Crystals and corrosion. As the water evaporates, it leaves urea that crystallises in filters and tiny channels; and, since it eats at certain metals, every part it reaches suffers for as long as it stays inside. If the AdBlue has reached the pipework, waiting till morning around Oldfield makes it worse. In that tank only, waiting costs nothing. The water in it does damage of its own: the high-pressure pump and the injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is frequently more serious than petrol
Put petrol in a diesel at the Esso and you have a fault of thin fuel. It mixes with the diesel, and while it is inside the tank it causes no damage; the harm comes from running the engine on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is a different problem: not thin fuel, yet no fuel at all. Not burning, it cannot simply be run through. Deposits and corrosion stay after the next tankful, and AdBlue separates again out of the diesel, and so thinning it can't work. Hence the flush counts so much, and trying your engine "to see" costs more with AdBlue than almost any other mistake — in Chetton or the centre of Oldfield alike.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Not started? Then the AdBlue waits just inside the tank, the easiest bit of the entire system to clear, anywhere the vehicle has come to rest around Shropshire.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Oldfield: 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 happens with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the driveway, not at the pump.
It tends to happen in a few familiar ways. Halfway through the morning drop-off, the dashboard warns, and outside Morville CofE (Controlled) Primary School the refill is hurried. After work, a bottle is tipped in on a driveway near Milfields Way. Or the vehicle is topped up in the car park at the pub in the village, in poor light, by a person who has never opened that flap before.
The least familiar vehicles see it the most — hire cars, new cars, fleet cars, and the other car in a family with one of each fuels. Wherever you are around Oldfield or the remainder of Shropshire, it is the same mistake and the same first answer: leave the vehicle off.
Oldfield: started the motor with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
The AdBlue has left the tank, then. Through your filter, through the pipework, and — with any running time — on to the injection pump and every injector: that's where it has gone.
Watch for lumpy running, exhaust smoke, lost power, lights on the dash, or a stall — coming back from Birches Coppice, perhaps, or midway across Oldfield. Stop when it is safe. Switch off. Keep the vehicle off instead of restarting it to check. Every start pulls more of it through.
Leave the M54, under 15 miles from Oldfield, at the next junction and stop safely, rather than driving on.
Mileage counts: each mile pushes the AdBlue deeper in, so heading for Wolverhampton, under 25 miles away, makes a far bigger job than hopping across Oldfield to the car park by St John the Baptist. Tell us about how far it had come.
Once the engine has been started, the flush covers more, and all of it is done where the car has ended up. Permanent damage is very unusual if it's spotted quickly.
What draining AdBlue from a diesel involves in Oldfield
Wherever it has come to rest around Oldfield — a forecourt, a lay-by, a drive, a road by St Giles — our van comes to your vehicle. Three answers shape the work, and so first we ask which fluid was put in, about the amount, plus whether the motor has turned over.
Right there, your tank is then drained, and both the contaminated diesel and the urea leave at once. With AdBlue, more so than with petrol, the flush counts: the whole system is cleaned right through because what remains will not flush away unaided. A test of the car comes last, once clean diesel is added and the fuel filter gets flushed or, where needed, replaced. Roughly half an hour once we arrive is typical for most jobs where the motor hasn't run. Explosion-proof pumps mean a busy forecourt safe to work on, and they're quiet enough not to disturb the neighbours at night.
New diesel goes in to prime the system, and that is the final step. You head off as soon as our engineers have fired it up, and it makes no difference whether the car is on a drive in Oldfield or in a space by the nearest station. We check it runs smoothly on clean diesel before we leave. Our engineers do it all wherever your car has stopped, and it never has to go to a garage. The insurer is likely to want an engineer's report and the VAT invoice — each handed over once the job is done.
About Oldfield and where it is
Oldfield is a small hamlet in Shropshire, situated inland at an elevation of 193 metres, and is located approximately 16 miles from Wolverhampton. Oldfield comprises predominantly detached housing and has a population of around 579 residents. Oldfield is part of a wider rural area that includes nearby places such as Eudon George and Middleton Scriven. Oldfield sits within the West Midlands region, about 121 miles northwest of London.
Oldfield and Shropshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Throughout the WV postcode area, the teams answering AdBlue call-outs in Oldfield serve most of Shropshire too, Eudon George, Middleton Scriven and Defford among them. Ring and ask rather than guess when you're close to a border, or somewhere awkward to pin down.
No towing is needed. In Oldfield, a rural hamlet, a van that comes to you fits: the car is drained on the spot, be it in a drive, a side street, a car park or a filling station.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right in Oldfield
There's no honest single price, because the jobs aren't the same. Whether the engine has been running, and for how long, comes first in what changes the cost. How much AdBlue got in comes next, and then the position of the vehicle, because an open driveway is simpler for a van to get to safely than a tight spot behind St Bartholomew.
For that in mind, every call from Oldfield begins with the same trio — which fluid got in, how much, if it ran — before a figure. The answers turn a range into a straight price.
You get that price by phone, before anyone sets off, and you pay on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. While the van is travelling, check your policy: many include misfuelling.
Oldfield: still next to the car?
Leaving your vehicle alone is, right now, the best move you can do. Motor off, keys out, ignition off. Tell us it's AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and whether it ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel takes over, in Oldfield or anywhere within Shropshire.