AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Victory? Keep It Switched Off
Engine off, ignition off: that is how you start if AdBlue has got into your diesel tank. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water. The trouble begins once it's sucked through the lines — it won't ignite, and it won't combine with diesel. Caught before the engine has been run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is in Victory. First, call us on 0333 366 0103.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in the diesel tank in Victory
Things to do:
- Pocket your keys, and that prevents anyone switching the electrics on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is at all close.
- Keep the till receipt or the empty bottle, and so you can tell us what went in and roughly how much.
- Tell us a postcode starting BL1 3, or whatever street is nearest, and the van reaches you straight — so ring from wherever you are.
Not to do:
- Don't start your motor, even for a moment to move the vehicle.
- Plenty of diesels run their pump the instant the ignition goes on, and so leave the car off.
- Adding more diesel does not help: AdBlue settles out rather than blending.
- Do not drive the car anywhere, not even a short distance up Beatrice Road.
- Do not try to drain the car yourself by the roadside.
The staff working at any Victory forecourt — the Shell included — will usually help pushing it clear if you ask. At your own driveway, don't move it at all.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
Not your engine but your exhaust is where AdBlue is meant to go. Kept in a separate tank, it is squirted into the exhaust to clean the fumes. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is built to handle it.
Inside a diesel tank it behaves really differently from fuel. It does not mix in. It's heavier than diesel, and so it sinks and collects at the bottom of your tank, which is where the pickup draws fuel from. When your system runs, the AdBlue is first to go through. Before then it waits underneath the diesel, and that is why a vehicle filled in Gilnow last night and never started remains the straightforward case, as long as nobody turns the key.
Once it is drawn in, the damage takes two forms. 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 running on the parts it gets to for as long as it stays there. Pipes carrying AdBlue spell harm by morning for a car sitting around Victory. Just in your tank, it stays stable. Water lubricates nothing. The injection pump and each injector need diesel flowing through them, so the water part damages them by itself.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it is frequently worse than petrol
A problem of thin fuel is what you end up with after filling a diesel with petrol from the Morrisons. No harm comes as long as it sits unused, blended into your diesel — only once the engine runs on it.
The trouble with AdBlue in a diesel is a totally wrong liquid. It cannot simply be run through, because it does not burn. Deposits and corrosion remain through the following fill, and AdBlue separates back from the diesel, and so thinning it can't work. Hence the flush counts more, and turning your key "to see" does more harm with AdBlue than nearly any other mistake — in Heaton or the heart of Victory alike.
As with petrol, there's good news. Anywhere around Greater Manchester the vehicle has come to rest, an unrun motor means the AdBlue yet in the tank: the simplest part of a fuel system to empty.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Victory: how it ends up there
Nobody means to do it. The AdBlue filler on many vehicles sits right next to the diesel filler, occasionally under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. A bottle picked up while driving home and poured in outside the house, instead of at the forecourt, is the typical story.
A couple of familiar ways cover most cases. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up occurs in a hurry outside Oxford Grove Primary School. After work, a container is tipped in on a driveway close to Battenberg Road. Another version: darkness, the car park outside The Lion Of Vienna, and a driver using that flap the first time.
It comes up most in a hire car, a new car, a fleet motor, or the spare vehicle of a home with one of each fuel types — the vehicles people know the least. Wherever you're around Victory or the rest of Greater Manchester, it is the same error and the same first answer: leave the car off.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Victory, and your engine started?
Then the tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. With any running time, it goes on to the injection pump and each injector, having passed through the filter and pipework.
Expect rough running, smoke, lost power, lights on your dash, or a cut-out — coming back from Thomasson Park, say, or part way across Victory. Pull over when it is safe. Turn off. Leave the vehicle off rather than testing it again. More of that is pulled through with each start.
Victory lies under 3 miles from the M61; if you were on it, exit by the first junction and pull up somewhere safe instead of driving on.
How far it went counts. A couple of hundred yards across Victory to the car park by St. Luke's Church is a very different job from a run towards Salford, under 10 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the system with every mile. Roughly how far it had come is worth telling us.
There is more to clean out once your engine has been run, and our engineers do all of it where your car has ended up. When it is noticed soon, permanent damage is very uncommon.
Draining AdBlue in a diesel in Victory: what it takes
A street beside Halliwell UCAN Centre, a driveway, a layby or a forecourt: anywhere the car has stopped in Victory, our technicians come to it. The job rests on three replies, which our technicians ask for before all else — what got in, the quantity, and whether the engine has turned over.
Then the tank is drained where your car sits, and so the polluted fuel and the AdBlue come out together. A careful flush counts far more with AdBlue than with petrol, because what remains will not clear out on its own. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and your car is tested. Roughly half an hour on site is usual for most jobs where your engine hasn't run. Our pumping gear is explosion-proof, and so a busy filling station is no fault, and it is quiet enough for a residential street after dark.
The final step is to bleed the fuel system on fresh diesel. Firing it up comes next, and then you drive off from where your car is parked, at Bolton or on a driveway in Victory. The test before our technicians leave is that it runs smoothly on new diesel. No garage is required at any point, with the entire job done then and there. You receive a VAT invoice and an engineer report later on, which is what insurers want.
About Victory itself
Victory is a suburban area situated near several lakes in Greater Manchester, with a mix of terraced housing and local amenities. Victory sits at an elevation of 131 metres, approximately 9.6 miles from Salford and 173.5 miles from London. Victory is close to nearby places such as Cope Bank, Halliwell, and Brownlow Fold, and has a population of around 10910 residents. Victory is characterized by its predominantly terraced housing stock.
Victory and Greater Manchester: AdBlue drains across the area
Cope Bank, Halliwell and Brownlow Fold are among the places near Victory that the same vans serve, along with much of Greater Manchester further out, over the BL postcode area. If you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask instead of guessing.
Victory is a residential suburb, and a call-out drain suits it: whether the vehicle is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, we drain it where it stands, and so it never needs to be moved to us.
Victory: what AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to fix
There is no honest single price, because the jobs aren't the same. Whether the motor has been running, and for how long, comes first in what moves the cost. How much AdBlue got in comes next, and then the position of the vehicle, because an open drive is simpler for our van to get to safely than a tight spot behind Jamia Madina Masjid.
What got in, what quantity, plus whether it ran: every Victory call opens with precisely those, ahead of any quote, never afterwards. The replies turn a range into a straight price.
The quote is given on the call, before anyone leaves; payment happens on the day, by card or by phone, and nothing upfront. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
Beside the car around Victory, still?
Not touching your car is, then, the most useful thing you can do. Keys out, engine off, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel takes over the rest, in Victory or wherever within Greater Manchester, once you ring 0333 366 0103 to say it was AdBlue, about what quantity, and if the engine ran.