AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Westthorpe? Don't Start It
If AdBlue has gone into your diesel tank, leave your engine off then keep the ignition off. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water. Unlike fuel, it neither burns nor blends, and nothing happens until the engine sucks it round. If your engine has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally emptied and carefully cleaned where your car sits in Westthorpe. Phone 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Westthorpe: the first few minutes
Things to do:
- Keys out — that way nobody can switch anything on.
- If you are at all close to moving traffic, put your hazards on.
- Which product, and roughly what quantity? Save the bottle or your receipt, and our engineers will see.
- Ring us from where you are. A postcode starting S21 1, or the name of the closest street, brings our van to you without a search.
Things not to do:
- No starting your motor — not briefly, not to shift the car.
- Plenty of diesels run their pump the moment your ignition comes on, and so keep the vehicle off.
- Adding more diesel does not work: AdBlue settles out instead of thinning.
- Leave the vehicle where it is rather than driving it anywhere, even a short stretch up Crofters Close.
- Do not try to drain the vehicle yourself at the roadside.
On a forecourt around Westthorpe, whether it is the the nearest petrol station or another one, ask the staff to help you push the vehicle away from the pump. Parked on your own drive? Then it remains exactly where it is.
What does AdBlue do in a diesel tank?
Not your engine but the exhaust is where AdBlue belongs. It goes into its own tank and is sprayed into your exhaust gas to fresh it. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is designed to handle it.
Inside a diesel tank it behaves very differently from fuel. It does not mix in. Heavier than diesel, it sinks and pools below it — the very spot the intake draws from. When the system runs, the AdBlue is first to go through. Before then it waits underneath your diesel, and that is how a vehicle topped up in Netherthorpe yesterday and not started stays the straightforward case, as long as no one touches the key.
Two kinds of harm follow from there. 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 labouring on the components it gets to for as long as it stays there. Where the AdBlue is in the lines, waiting overnight around Westthorpe leaves things worse. In that tank alone, time costs nothing. And there is the water: it offers no protection to the components that rely on it most — the high-pressure pump and every injector.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel frequently the bigger fault?
Petrol pumped into a diesel on Morrisons's forecourt makes the fuel thin — that is the main fault. Blended through your diesel and sitting unused, it's harmless for now; using the motor does the damage.
The trouble with AdBlue in a diesel is a completely wrong liquid. It cannot simply be run through, since it does not burn. Crystals and corrosion stay through the next fill, and AdBlue separates back from your diesel, so watering it won't work. That is why the flush matters so much, and trying the engine "to see" costs more here than almost any other mistake — in Spinkhill or the heart of Westthorpe equally.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Wherever around Derbyshire your car has stopped, an unstarted motor means the AdBlue still inside the tank: the easiest part of a fuel system to empty.
Westthorpe: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
It is not deliberate. Plenty of vehicles have the AdBlue inlet beside the diesel inlet, occasionally behind one flap, and mixing them up is easy in poor light. It mostly takes place outside the house, from a bottle grabbed on the journey home, rather than at the filling station.
It tends to occur in a few familiar ways. The refill is rushed outside St Giles CofE Primary School, after the dash lit up with a warning as the kids were taken in. After work, a container goes in on a driveway close to Westthorpe Road. One more pattern: dim light, the car park by West End Hotel, and a driver opening that flap for the first time.
It occurs most in the vehicles drivers know least: a hire car, a new motor, a company car, or the second vehicle of a household with one diesel and one petrol. An identical mistake, same first step — keep it off — anywhere you happen to be in Westthorpe or the rest of Derbyshire.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Westthorpe, and the motor started?
If so, the AdBlue is no longer in your tank. It has been pulled through the fuel filter and the fuel lines, and if the engine ran for any time, it has reached the high-pressure pump and the injectors.
Perhaps coming back from Heathlands Park, or midway across Westthorpe, the engine might go lumpy, smoke, drop power, flash the dash or cut out. When safe, stop then turn it off — with no turning it on again to test. Each start pulls more of it through.
Leave the M1, under 3 miles from Westthorpe, by the next junction and park somewhere safe, rather than driving on.
How far it went matters. A few hundred yards across Westthorpe to the car park by The Pavillion @ Mount St. Mary's College is a very different job from a run towards Sheffield, under 10 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into your system with each mile. Tell us roughly how far it had come.
Our technicians do all of the cleaning where the vehicle has ended up, and once the engine has been run there is more of it. If it is caught soon, permanent damage is very unusual.
What clearing AdBlue from a diesel involves around Westthorpe
Our technicians come to the car, wherever it has stopped in Westthorpe: a side street close to The Memorial Chapel, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. Which fluid was put in, roughly how much, plus whether the engine has turned over: our technicians ask first, since those shape the work.
Right there, your tank is then drained, and all of the contaminated diesel and the urea come out as one. The fuel system is flushed thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, because what it leaves behind doesn't rinse out on its own. Clean diesel goes in once the fuel filter is cleaned — or replaced, if it needs to be — and then the vehicle is tested. If your motor hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once our engineers are there. Explosion-proof pumps make a live forecourt safe to work on, and they run quiet enough to spare the neighbours at night.
Fresh diesel goes in to bleed the fuel system, and that is the last step. Whether it's a parking space at Kiveton Bridge or a driveway in Westthorpe, that is where our technicians fire it up and you set off. Before leaving, our engineers confirm it's running correctly with new diesel in. No workshop is needed at any point, with the whole job done then and there. Insurers want a VAT invoice and an engineer report, and you get both at the end.
About Westthorpe and where it is
Westthorpe is a suburban area in Derbyshire, situated on the riverside at an elevation of 95 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation. Westthorpe lies approximately 7.8 miles from Sheffield and is close to nearby places such as Upperthorpe and Killamarsh. Westthorpe has a population of around 3922 residents and is located in the East Midlands region, about 134.5 miles from London. Westthorpe forms part of the wider residential area surrounding Sheffield.
AdBlue drains across Derbyshire, Westthorpe included
The vans that answer AdBlue calls in Westthorpe also cover the locations round it, Upperthorpe, Killamarsh and Church Town among them, and most of Derbyshire beyond, across the S postcode area. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask rather than assuming.
Anywhere the car stands — a drive at home, a side street, a car park, a forecourt — we empty it on the spot, with no need to bring it to us; which suits Westthorpe, a residential suburb, well.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right around Westthorpe
No flat figure would be honest, because every job is different. What changes the cost is, first, whether the engine has run and for how long; then how much AdBlue went in; and then where your car is and whether a van can get to it safely, which is simpler on an open driveway than in a tight spot behind Killamarsh Methodist Church.
With that in mind, every call from Westthorpe begins with the identical trio — which fluid got in, how much, whether it ran — before a figure. With those replies, a range narrows to a single fixed number.
You get that quote on the phone, before anybody heads out, and you pay on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Misfuelling cover is part of many insurance policies, so it pays to look at yours before the van gets there.
In Westthorpe and still next to the car?
Then the most useful thing you can do is nothing to the vehicle. Keys out; motor and ignition off. Say it's AdBlue, about what quantity, and whether it ran, on 0333 366 0103. After that Petrol in Diesel takes over, across Westthorpe or wherever within Derbyshire.