Don't Start It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Rostrevor
If AdBlue has gone into the diesel tank, leave your motor off and keep your ignition off. Chemically, AdBlue is just urea in water. Not like fuel, it neither ignites nor blends, and no harm happens till the engine sucks it round. If the engine hasn't run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is usually emptied and carefully cleaned where the car stands in Rostrevor. First, ring us on 0333 366 0103.
Your next steps straight away, Rostrevor: AdBlue in the diesel tank
To do:
- Pocket your keys, and that stops someone turning the electrics on.
- Close to moving traffic? So put the hazard lights on.
- The empty bottle or the till receipt shows us the fluid and the quantity, and so do not throw it away.
- Call us from where you are. A postcode starting BT34 3, or the name of the nearest street, brings our van to you without a search.
Never:
- No starting the engine — not for a second, not to shift the car.
- Switching your key to ignition by itself sets your pump going on many diesels. Avoid it.
- No extra fuel on top. The AdBlue will not blend, and so it's wasted.
- Any driving at all is to be avoided, including a short distance along B7041.
- Do not try to drain it yourself by the roadside.
Moving the car off the island is a job for attendants to help with, whichever Rostrevor forecourt you are on, the the nearest petrol station included. If you are on your own drive, leave the vehicle exactly where it sits.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
AdBlue is made for the exhaust, not your engine. From a dedicated reservoir it goes directly to the exhaust, cleaning what the motor emits. Nothing in it is supposed to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is designed to handle it.
Poured in with the diesel, it keeps apart instead of mixing — quite unlike fuel. The pickup takes fuel from the deepest part of the tank, and that's just where AdBlue settles: as it is heavier than diesel, it sinks. When your system runs, the AdBlue is first to be pulled through. Until then it waits underneath the diesel, which is how a vehicle filled in Mayobridge last night and not switched on remains the straightforward case, as long as nobody turns your key.
After it's drawn in, the damage takes two forms. It attacks some metals found in fuel systems, attacking whatever it reaches until it's cleared from your system. And once the water goes, the urea turns into crystals that clog filters and settle in narrow passages. A motor left sitting around Rostrevor with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue just in its tank isn't. The water in it does harm of its own: your high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it is frequently worse than petrol
Put petrol in a diesel at the another forecourt nearby and you have a problem of thin fuel. No damage is done while it stays put, mixed into your diesel — only once the engine works on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is a problem of the wrong substance altogether. It can't just be run through, since it does not burn. It does not stay mixed, so it can't be thinned. And crystals and corrosion don't wash out with the next tank of fuel. That's why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting the motor "to see" costs more here than almost anywhere else, whether your car is in Killeen or the middle of Rostrevor.
The same good news holds as with petrol. If your engine has not run, the AdBlue is still inside your tank, and that tank is the simplest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever across County Down your car is standing.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Rostrevor: how it ends up there
It is not deliberate. Plenty of cars keep the AdBlue inlet beside the diesel one, now and then behind a single flap, and muddling them up is easy in poor light. Most of the time it takes place with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the drive, not at the pump.
The ways it happens are few and familiar. Hurrying, outside the local primary school, after a warning lamp came on during the school run, someone tops up the vehicle. Near High Row, someone tips a container in at home in the evening. Or someone new to that flap tops up your vehicle after dark, stopped in the car park by the pub in the village.
It comes up most in a hire car, a brand-new car, a company vehicle, or the other motor of a home with one of each fuels — the vehicles drivers use the least. Keep it off: that's the first step to the same mistake, wherever in Rostrevor or the remainder of County Down you happen to be.
Rostrevor: started the engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
The AdBlue has left the tank, then. With any running time, it travels to the injection pump and every injector, having passed through the filter and pipework.
Maybe returning from the green space at the edge of the village, or midway across Rostrevor, your engine may go rough, smoke, drop power, light up your dash or cut out. No restarting to test: stop once safe, then switch everything off. Each start pulls more of that through.
If you were on the M77, over 50 miles from Rostrevor, come off at the next exit and stop somewhere safe rather than pressing on.
Each mile carries the AdBlue further in. That is why a hop across Rostrevor to park beside the centre and a drive of under 10 miles towards Newry are such different jobs. Approximately how far had it come? Tell us.
Once the engine has been run, the flush covers more, and all of it is done where the car has ended up. Long-term damage is very rare if it's noticed early.
What draining AdBlue from a diesel involves in Rostrevor
A road beside a street just off the centre, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt: anywhere your car has stopped around Rostrevor, our engineers travel to it. Before anything else we ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether the motor has run, because those answers determine the work.
Then the tank is cleared where your car stands, so the polluted fuel and the AdBlue come out together. The system is rinsed thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, because what it leaves behind does not rinse out on its own. Testing your car follows last, once clean diesel is added and your filter gets cleaned or, where necessary, replaced. If the motor hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once our engineers are there. Explosion-proof pumps mean a live forecourt sensible to work on, and they run quiet enough not to disturb the street at night.
Fresh diesel goes in to bleed the system, and that's the last step. Starting the engine comes next, and then you set off from where the vehicle is parked, at the nearest station or on a drive in Rostrevor. Before we leave, we confirm it's running properly with new diesel in. Because the job is done in its entirety where your car is, a garage never comes into it. You get a VAT invoice and an engineer report later on, which is what insurers ask for.
About Rostrevor, for a moment
Rostrevor is a coastal locality in County Down, situated near the shores of Carlingford Lough. Rostrevor lies close to the towns of Warrenpoint and Newry, and is surrounded by the scenic countryside of the Mourne Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Rostrevor has a population of around 1279 people, predominantly living in detached housing.
AdBlue drains in Rostrevor and across County Down
Our vans that answer AdBlue call-outs around Rostrevor also cover the locations about it, Warrenpoint, Burren and Killowen among them, and most of County Down beyond, across the BT postcode area. Phone and ask rather than guess if you are close to a border, or somewhere tricky to pin down.
Rostrevor is a coastal area, and a mobile drain suits it: whether the car is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, our engineers drain it where it is, so it never needs to be moved to us.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right around Rostrevor
There is no honest single quote, since the jobs aren't the same. What moves the price is, first, whether your engine has been running and for how long; then how much AdBlue went in; and finally where the vehicle is and whether our van can reach it safely, which is simpler on an open driveway than in a tight spot behind the far end of the built-up part.
With that in mind, each call from Rostrevor begins with the same trio — which fluid was put in, what quantity, if the engine ran — before any quote. Those replies turn a range into a straight quote.
Before anyone heads out, you are told the quote by phone. Then payment is on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing in advance. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours while we are on the way.
In Rostrevor and still alongside the car?
Not touching your car is, right now, the most useful move open to you. Keys out; engine and ignition off. Phone 0333 366 0103 and tell us it is AdBlue, about how much, and if it has run. Petrol in Diesel takes it from there, around Rostrevor or anywhere around County Down.