Don't Start It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Blackthorn
AdBlue in your diesel tank? Then keep your motor off — and the ignition as well. Urea mixed in water is all AdBlue is. It does not burn, it does not mix with diesel, and the harm it does starts when the system draws it in. Caught before the engine has run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Blackthorn. Nothing comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
Your next steps straight away, Blackthorn: AdBlue in the diesel tank
To do:
- Remove your keys, which stops anyone switching the power on.
- Put your hazards on if you're anywhere near moving traffic.
- Keep the till receipt or the empty bottle, and so you can tell us what was put in and roughly how much.
- Our van locates you quickest with a postcode starting OX25 1, or just the name of a street nearby, and so phone from the car.
Things not to do:
- No starting your motor — not briefly, not to shift the car.
- The ignition remains off: on many diesels, switching it on is enough to run your pump.
- AdBlue does not dilute in diesel — it separates out — so adding extra fuel won't thin it.
- Do not drive the vehicle anywhere, not even a short way up Blackthorn Close.
- Beside the road, don't attempt draining it on your own.
Ask the people behind the counter to help you roll the vehicle off the pumps if you're at a forecourt around Blackthorn, whether it's the Shell or elsewhere. At home, the car stays just where it is.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
Made for the exhaust, AdBlue has no business in your motor. From a separate reservoir it is fed straight to your exhaust, treating what your engine lets out. Neither side fits the other: urea doesn't belong in an injection pump, and a pump can't deal with urea.
Inside a diesel tank it behaves very differently from fuel. It does not mix in. Heavier than diesel, it sinks and collects below it — the same spot the pickup sucks from. A car topped up on a drive in Piddington overnight and left unstarted is the simple case. Nothing has sucked the AdBlue up yet — though once the motor turns, that's what is pulled first, straight from the bottom of your tank.
From there it causes two kinds of damage. It attacks certain metals used in fuel components, working on whatever it reaches until it is removed completely. And when the water evaporates, the urea turns into crystals that clog filters and settle in narrow passages. A motor left standing in Blackthorn with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue just in its tank is not. Diesel protects the injection pump and each injector as it flows; water gives no lubrication, and that is a separate form of harm.
Petrol or AdBlue in a diesel: why AdBlue is frequently worse
A fault of thin fuel is what you get from fuelling a diesel with petrol at the BP. No damage is done while it stays unused, blended into the diesel — only when the motor works on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is a different matter: not thin fuel, but no fuel at all. Not burning, it can't simply be run through. It doesn't stay mixed, and so it cannot be thinned. And crystals and corrosion do not wash out with the next tank of fuel. That is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting the motor "to see" costs more here than nearly anywhere else, whether the vehicle is in Langford Village or the middle of Blackthorn.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Wherever in Oxfordshire your car has come to rest, an unrun engine leaves the AdBlue yet inside the tank: the simplest bit of any fuel system to empty.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank around Blackthorn?
After dark, two caps side by side — the AdBlue one and the diesel one, occasionally behind a single flap — can look the same. No one intends it; plenty of layouts allow it. Most of the time it occurs with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the driveway, not at the forecourt.
Mostly, it occurs in one of a few familiar ways. The refill is rushed outside Five Acres Primary School, after the dash flashed with a warning while the children were taken in. Near B4011, a driver tips a bottle in on that drive in the evening. Another pattern: darkness, a pub car park outside The Turner Arms, and someone using that flap for the first time.
Rented cars, new motors, fleet motors, or the second car in a family with both fuels: the least known cars get it the most. Same slip, same first step — keep it off — wherever you are around Blackthorn or the rest of Oxfordshire.
AdBlue in the diesel tank in Blackthorn, and the engine started?
Then the AdBlue has left the tank. Given any running time, it travels to the high-pressure pump and each injector, having passed through your filter and pipework.
Maybe coming back from Cow Leys, or midway across Blackthorn, the engine may go rough, smoke, lose power, flash your dash or cut out. No starting it again to check: pull over once it is safe, then turn everything off. With each start, more of that is pulled through.
On the M40, under 3 miles from Blackthorn, the next junction is where to exit, and somewhere sensible is where to stop — not carrying on.
How far it went matters. A couple of hundred yards across Blackthorn to the car park by Blackthorn Village Hall is a very different job from a run towards Oxford, under 15 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the fuel system with every mile. Let us know roughly how far it had come.
Wherever the car came to a stop is where all of it gets done, even with more to rinse out once your engine has been running. Very rarely does it leave permanent damage when it's spotted quickly.
Blackthorn: how AdBlue is emptied from a diesel
Anywhere it has come to rest in Blackthorn — a filling station, a layby, a driveway, a street by Ambrosden Village Hall — the van comes to your car. Before anything else our engineers ask what was put in, about how much, and whether the motor has run, because those replies determine this work.
The polluted diesel and the urea come out as one when your tank is emptied, right there. What remains from AdBlue will not flush out unaided, and so the fuel system gets a careful flush, which counts much more with urea than with petrol. The fuel filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and your car is tested. Most of these jobs are a half-hour visit once our engineers get there, provided your engine hasn't run. The equipment is explosion-proof, so a busy filling station is no fault, and it is hushed enough for a residential street after dark.
Bleeding your system with clean diesel comes last. At that point we start the car and you head off, whether from a parking space outside Bicester Village or a driveway around Blackthorn. It's tested on clean diesel to confirm it runs properly before we head off. The entire job is done where the car is, so it never has to be taken to a garage. Afterwards, there is the paperwork for the insurer: a VAT invoice plus a report from the engineer.
About Blackthorn
Blackthorn is a village in Oxfordshire, situated on the banks of a river at an elevation of around 63 metres. Blackthorn lies near the cities of Oxford and Bicester, with the nearby villages of Ambrosden, Lower Arncott, and Upper Arncott also being part of the local community. Blackthorn has a population of approximately 605 people, with detached housing being the predominant type of accommodation in the area.
AdBlue drains across Oxfordshire, Blackthorn included
Over the OX postcode area, the vans answering AdBlue call-outs in Blackthorn serve much of Oxfordshire too, Ambrosden, Lower Arncott and Upper Arncott included. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, ring and ask rather than guessing.
Wherever the vehicle sits — a drive at home, a residential street, a parking area, a forecourt — our engineers drain it there, with no need to bring it to us; which suits Blackthorn, a village, well.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Blackthorn: the cost of fixing it
There's no honest single price, since the jobs aren't the same. The cost moves first with how long, if at all, the engine has been running, and next with the quantity of AdBlue that got in. After that it depends on where the vehicle is and whether a van can get to it safely, which is simpler on an open driveway than in a tight gap behind Saint Mary the Virgin.
With that reason, every enquiry from Blackthorn opens by asking the identical trio — what was put in, what quantity, if it ran — ahead of a figure. With them, the range shrinks to one fixed figure.
Before a van sets off, you hear our quote by phone. And you pay on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Check your insurance whilst we are on the way: many include misfuelling cover.
Blackthorn: still next to the car?
Leaving the vehicle alone is, right now, the most useful thing you can do. Keys out, motor off, ignition off. Say it was AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and whether the engine ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel handles it, across Blackthorn or wherever within Oxfordshire.