Don't Start It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Chambercombe
If AdBlue has gone into your diesel tank, keep the motor off then keep the ignition off. AdBlue is urea mixed in water. It doesn't burn, it does not mix with diesel, and the damage it does begins when your fuel system pulls it in. If the engine hasn't run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally emptied and carefully purged where your car sits in Chambercombe. Before anything, ring us on 0333 366 0103.
Chambercombe, AdBlue in the diesel tank: what to do straight away
Do:
- Pull the keys out, so no one switches the ignition on.
- Close to moving traffic? Then put the hazards on.
- The empty bottle or your receipt shows us the fluid and the amount, so do not throw it out.
- Our van locates you fastest with a postcode starting EX34 9, or just the name of a street nearby, and so call from the car.
Things not to do:
- Do not start your motor, even for a moment to move the car.
- Plenty of diesels power their fuel pump the instant the ignition goes on, so leave the vehicle off.
- AdBlue does not mix in diesel — it separates out — so adding more diesel won't thin it.
- Keep it where it is rather than driving it anywhere, even a short stretch up Crofts Lea Park.
- No draining it yourself, either, on the roadside.
The attendants on duty at any Chambercombe forecourt — the Total included — will usually lend a hand pushing it aside if you ask. On your own driveway, don't touch it at all.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
Not your motor but the exhaust is where AdBlue is meant to go. Kept in a separate tank, it's squirted into the exhaust stream to clean the fumes. A fuel pump isn't designed to take it, and AdBlue was never supposed to go through one.
Fuel blends; AdBlue, once tipped in, will not. Its behaviour is not at all like diesel's. Denser than diesel, it sinks and pools below it — the very place the intake draws from. A car filled on a drive in Lower Slade yesterday evening and not started since counts as the simple case. No pump has pulled the AdBlue up so far — but once your engine turns, that is what is pulled first, directly from the bottom of that tank.
Two kinds of damage come 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, so it keeps running on the parts it reaches for as long as it remains there. Where the AdBlue has reached the pipework, waiting till morning around Chambercombe makes it worse. In your tank only, waiting costs nothing. The water in it does damage of its own: the high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors rely on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is frequently more significant than petrol
Petrol put into a diesel on Murco's forecourt leaves your fuel watery — that is the main issue. Harm only comes from running on it. Blended into your diesel and sitting inside your tank, it does nothing.
AdBlue in a diesel is a fault of the wrong substance altogether. Because it doesn't burn, running it through is not an option. It doesn't stay mixed, and so it can't be diluted. 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 your car is in Higher Slade or the middle of Chambercombe.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Clearing a tank is the easiest job on a fuel system, and without start-up, the AdBlue stays in there — anywhere around Devon your vehicle has stopped.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Chambercombe: how it ends up there
Plenty of motors place the AdBlue filler alongside the diesel cap, now and then behind one flap, and in dim light the two may appear identical. No one intends it. Usually it is not the forecourt: a driver buys a container heading home and tips it in at home.
The ways it takes place are few and familiar. The top-up gets rushed outside Ilfracombe Church of England Junior School, after the dash flashed with a warning as the kids were taken off. In the evening, a bottle goes in on a driveway close to Channel View. Or a driver unfamiliar with that flap tops up your car after dark, parked in the car park by The Thatched Inn.
The least known vehicles see it most — hire cars, new cars, fleet cars, and the other car in a home with one of each fuel types. An identical mistake, an identical first response — keep it switched off — wherever you happen to be in Chambercombe or the remainder of Devon.
Chambercombe: started your engine with AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the AdBlue has left your tank. Through the filter, along the pipework, and — given any running time — on to the high-pressure pump and every injector: that is where it travels.
Lumpy running, smoke from the exhaust, dropping power, dashboard warnings or cutting out: each might show up, maybe midway across Chambercombe or coming back from Brimlands. Pull over when it is safe. Turn off. Leave it off rather than restarting it to check. Each start pulls more of that through.
On the M4, under 50 miles from Chambercombe, the first junction is where to leave, and somewhere sensible is where to stop — not driving on.
Hopping across Chambercombe to the car park by Watersport Hub is one thing; driving towards Swansea, under 50 miles away, is something else, since each mile carries the AdBlue further in. So distance counts. Tell us roughly how far it had come.
Once your engine has been run, the flush takes in more, and all of it is done where your car has stopped. Spotted early, it very rarely leaves long-term damage.
What draining AdBlue from a diesel involves in Chambercombe
Anywhere it has come to rest in Chambercombe — a forecourt, a layby, a driveway, a road by Verity — our van travels to the car. The job depends on three answers, and we ask for first — which fluid got in, the quantity, and whether your engine has run.
Then that tank is drained where the car sits, so the contaminated fuel and the AdBlue come out together. With AdBlue, far more than with petrol, flushing counts: the fuel system is cleaned right through since what remains will not flush away unaided. Clean diesel goes in after your filter is cleaned — or replaced, when it needs to be — and after that your car is tested. If the engine has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once our technicians arrive. Quiet enough to use outside a house at night, and fine on a working forecourt, our pumps are explosion-proof.
New diesel goes in to bleed the system, and that is the last step. Whether it is a parking bay outside Barnstaple or a drive around Chambercombe, that is where we start the engine and you set off. The check before we leave is that it runs smoothly on fresh diesel. Since the job is done in full where the vehicle is, a workshop never comes into it. You get a VAT invoice and an engineer report afterwards, which is what insurers want.
About Chambercombe, for a moment
Chambercombe is a small village in Devon, situated on the coast in the South West of England, with Hele and Ilfracombe nearby. Chambercombe has a population of around 964 people and is characterised by terraced housing. Chambercombe sits at an elevation of 85 metres, looking out over the coastal scenery. Chambercombe is located near Langleigh and is approximately 29 miles from Swansea.
AdBlue drains across Chambercombe and Devon
AdBlue call-outs in Chambercombe go to vans that serve the towns near it — Hele, Ilfracombe plus Langleigh — and much of Devon further out, throughout EX postcodes. If you are near a border, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask instead of guessing.
Anywhere your car sits — your driveway at home, a residential street, a car park, a forecourt — our engineers drain it on the spot, and there's no need to bring it to us; that suits Chambercombe, a coastal village, well.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right in Chambercombe
There is no fair single quote, because the jobs aren't the same. Three things shift the price: whether the engine has run and for how long, how much AdBlue was put in, and where your car is. That last one turns on whether our van can get to it safely, and an open driveway is easier than a tight spot behind Hele Cornmill.
With that reason, each enquiry from Chambercombe begins with the same trio — what got in, what quantity, if the engine ran — ahead of a figure. Their replies shrink the range down to one figure.
The quote is given during the call, before a van sets off; payment happens on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Misfuelling cover is part of plenty of insurance policies, so it pays to look at yours before the van arrives.
In Chambercombe and still alongside the car?
Then, do nothing — that is the most helpful move there is. Engine off, keys out, ignition off. Phone 0333 366 0103 then tell us it is AdBlue, about how much, and if it has run. Petrol in Diesel takes it from there, around Chambercombe or anywhere around Devon.