AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Wallgate? Don't Start It
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, the ignition stays off and so does the motor. Water with urea dissolved in it: that's AdBlue. It doesn't burn, it does not mix with diesel, and the harm it does begins when your fuel system draws it in. A drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is in Wallgate, is generally all AdBlue in a diesel tank takes — if it is caught before your engine has run. Before anything, ring us on 0333 366 0103.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in the diesel tank in Wallgate
Do:
- So no one can switch the ignition on, take the keys away.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is anywhere near.
- Hold on to your receipt or the empty bottle, and so you can tell us what got in and about how much.
- The van finds you quickest with a postcode starting WN3 4, or simply the name of a street nearby, and so call from the car.
Things not to do:
- Not even for a second, and not to shift the vehicle: the engine remains off.
- Your ignition stays off: on lots of diesels, switching it on is enough to start the fuel pump.
- Pouring in extra diesel doesn't help: AdBlue settles out instead of thinning.
- Any driving at all is best avoided, including a short stretch along Queen Street.
- Beside the road, don't attempt emptying it yourself.
The staff on duty at any Wallgate filling station — the Tesco included — will usually lend a hand rolling it aside if you ask. Stopped on your own drive? Then it stays just as it is.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
The motor is not what AdBlue is made for; your exhaust is. Stored in a separate tank, it's squirted into the exhaust stream to clean the gases. A fuel pump isn't designed to take it, and AdBlue was never supposed to travel through one.
It doesn't blend. After it is poured into a tank of diesel, AdBlue behaves not at all like diesel. It is heavier than diesel, and so it sinks and collects at the bottom of the tank, which is where the pickup pulls fuel from. Once your pump runs, the AdBlue is top of the list to go through. Before then it waits underneath the diesel, which is how a car topped up in Water Heyes yesterday and never started stays the straightforward one, provided no one touches your key.
It does two kinds of damage from there. Crystals and corrosion. As the water evaporates, it strands urea that hardens in filters and narrow channels; meanwhile, since it attacks certain metals, every part it reaches suffers for as long as it remains in there. A motor left standing around Wallgate with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue just in its tank isn't. Water protects nothing. The injection pump and each injector depend on diesel running through them, so the water content damages them by itself.
Petrol or AdBlue in a diesel: why AdBlue is commonly worse
Petrol put into a diesel on Asda's forecourt leaves the fuel watery — that is the whole fault. It mixes with your diesel, and while it is inside the tank it does no harm; the harm comes from running your motor on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is a problem of the wrong substance altogether. Not burning, it can't just be run through. It doesn't stay mixed, so it can't be weakened. And crystals and corrosion do not wash out with the next tank of fuel. That is why the flush matters more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting the motor "to see" costs more here than nearly anywhere else, whether the car is in Scholes or the middle of Wallgate.
With AdBlue, the good news is no separate from petrol. Clearing a tank is the simplest job on a fuel system, and with no running, the AdBlue remains in there — anywhere in Greater Manchester your car has stopped.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank around Wallgate?
After dark, two caps side by side — the AdBlue cap and the diesel one, now and then behind a single flap — may appear the same. Nobody means it; many layouts allow it. Most of the time it happens with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the driveway, not at the forecourt.
A few familiar ways account for most cases. Midway through the drop-off, the dashboard warns, and outside St Mary and St John Catholic Primary School the top-up is hurried. Someone pours the container in outside their house, just off Great George Street, as the day ends. Or the car is topped up in the car park outside The Swan & Railway, in poor light, by somebody who has never opened that flap before.
It occurs most in the motors drivers know least: a hire car, a new vehicle, a company car, or the second vehicle of a household with one diesel and one petrol. Keep it off: that's the first step to the same mistake, wherever in Wallgate or the rest of Greater Manchester you are.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Wallgate, and the motor started?
The AdBlue has left your tank, then. Your filter and pipework have had it sucked through, and some running time takes it on to the injection pump and every injector.
Lumpy running, smoke, dropping power, dashboard lights or cutting out: each may show up, maybe part way across Wallgate or returning from Pier Quarter Garden. Stop when it is safe. Switch off. Leave the vehicle off instead of restarting it to check. With each start, more of that is pulled through.
On the Bryn Spur, under 3 miles from Wallgate, the first junction is where to exit, and anywhere sensible is where to stop — not carrying on.
Distance counts: each mile pushes the AdBlue deeper into the system, so heading for Salford, under 15 miles away, gives a much larger job than hopping across Wallgate to the car park by The Old Courts. Tell us roughly how far it had come.
There is more to rinse out once the engine has been run, and we do all of it where the car has stopped. Caught soon, it very seldom leaves lasting damage.
Wallgate: how AdBlue is emptied from a diesel
We come to the vehicle, wherever it has stopped in Wallgate: a side street close to All Saints' Parish Church, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. Which fluid got in, roughly how much, plus if your motor has turned over: our technicians ask first, since those shape the work.
Then that tank is emptied where the car waits, so the contaminated fuel and the AdBlue come out together. With AdBlue, more so than with petrol, the flush counts: the fuel system is flushed right through since what remains will not flush out by itself. The fuel filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. Roughly half an hour once we arrive is typical for most jobs when the motor has not run. Low-noise enough for use outside a house at night, and safe on a working forecourt, the pumps are explosion-proof.
Priming the system with new diesel comes last. Whether it is a parking space at Wigan North Western or a driveway around Wallgate, that is where our technicians fire it up and you head off. It's tested on fresh diesel to make sure it runs properly before our engineers head off. Because the job is done in its entirety where your car is, a workshop never comes into it. Insurers want a VAT invoice and an engineer report, and you get both afterwards.
About Wallgate
Wallgate is a suburban area located on the riverside in Greater Manchester, with a relatively low elevation of 38 metres. Wallgate sits near the towns of Wigan and Salford, and is close to other nearby places such as Bull Hey and Poolstock. Wallgate is predominantly composed of flat housing, which is typical of many urban areas in the North West of England.
AdBlue drains across Wallgate and Greater Manchester
Throughout the WN postcode area, the teams answering AdBlue jobs around Wallgate reach much of Greater Manchester as well, Wigan, Bull Hey and Poolstock among them. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, ring and ask instead of guessing.
Anywhere your car stands — a driveway at home, a side street, a parking area, a forecourt — we empty it there, with no need to bring it to us; which suits Wallgate, a residential suburb, well.
What does AdBlue in a diesel tank cost to sort out in Wallgate?
There's no honest single price, because the jobs are not the same. The cost shifts first with how long, if at all, the motor has been running, and next with the quantity of AdBlue that was put in. After that it depends on where the car is and whether a technician can reach it safely, which is easier on an open drive than in a tight gap behind Museum of Wigan Life.
With that reason, each call from Wallgate opens by asking the identical trio — which fluid got in, what quantity, whether it ran — before any figure. Those replies turn a range into a straight price.
The quote is quoted on the call, before a van sets off; payment comes on the day, by card or over the phone, and nothing upfront. As the van is on the way, check your policy: plenty include misfuelling.
Alongside the vehicle in Wallgate, right now?
Then, the most helpful thing to do with the car is to leave it. Keys out, motor off, ignition off. Tell us it was AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and if it ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel takes over, in Wallgate or anywhere within Greater Manchester.