Don't Start It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Draycott
If AdBlue has got into the diesel tank, leave your engine off and leave your ignition off. Chemically, AdBlue is simply urea in water. The harm begins once it is sucked through the pump — it won't ignite, and it will not blend with diesel. In Draycott, AdBlue in a diesel tank caught before your engine runs usually means a drain and a thorough flush, right where the vehicle is. Ring 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in the diesel tank in Draycott
Do:
- Remove the keys, and that prevents anyone turning the electrics on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is at all near.
- Keep the receipt or the empty bottle, so you can tell us what was put in and about how much.
- Tell us a postcode starting GL11 5, or whichever street is nearest, and the van reaches you straight — so call from wherever you stand.
Not to do:
- No starting your engine — not for a second, not to reposition your vehicle.
- Do not switch the ignition on. On plenty of diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- Do not top up with diesel to thin it. AdBlue does not dilute in diesel; it separates out.
- Even a short stretch down Box Road is too far to drive the car.
- Emptying the tank yourself by the road is not worth trying.
Get the attendants to help you roll your car off the island if you're at a forecourt around Draycott, whether it is the Shell or elsewhere. At home, your car remains exactly where it was left.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
AdBlue is made for the exhaust, not your motor. It goes into its own tank and is sprayed into your exhaust gas to clean it. A fuel pump is not designed to take it, and AdBlue was never supposed to go through one.
Poured in with the diesel, it stays separate instead of blending — entirely different from fuel. It drops, since it's denser than diesel, and pools down where the pickup takes its supply from. Once your pump runs, the AdBlue is first to be pulled through. Before then it waits beneath your diesel, which is how a car topped up in Gossington last night and never started remains the straightforward case, as long as nobody touches your key.
It does two kinds of damage from there. As its water goes, the urea left behind crystallises, and the crystals block filters and settle in fine passages. And it is corrosive to some of the metals a fuel system is made from, and so it keeps working on the components it reaches for as long as it stays there. Pipes holding AdBlue spell damage by morning for a vehicle sitting in Draycott. Only in that tank, it stays stable. Then there's the water: it brings no lubrication to the components that need it most — the injection pump and each injector.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it's frequently worse than petrol
Fill a diesel with petrol by mistake at the Texaco, and this issue is thinned fuel. It mixes with the diesel, and while it's inside the tank it causes no damage; the harm comes from running your motor on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is a problem of the wrong substance altogether. Not burning, it cannot just be run through. Deposits and corrosion stay after the following tankful, and AdBlue separates again from the diesel, and so thinning it won't help. That is why the flush counts so much, and turning the key "to see" costs more here than nearly any other slip — in Summerhayes or the centre of Draycott alike.
The same good news applies as with petrol. If your motor has not run, the AdBlue is still inside your tank, and that tank is the simplest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever in Gloucestershire your car is sitting.
How AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank in Draycott
It's not deliberate. Plenty of vehicles keep the AdBlue cap beside the diesel one, now and then behind one flap, and mixing them up is simple in poor light. Usually it is never the forecourt: someone picks up a container driving home and pours it in outside the house.
It tends to happen in a few familiar ways. Rushing, outside Slimbridge Primary School, after a warning light flashed on during the school run, a parent tops up the vehicle. After work, a bottle goes in on a driveway close to Draycott. Or your car is topped up in the car park outside Berkeley Arms, in poor light, by a person who has never opened that flap before.
It occurs most in the vehicles people know least: a hire car, a new car, a company car, or the second car of a household with one diesel and one petrol. Keep it off: that's the first response to the same mistake, anywhere around Draycott or the rest of Gloucestershire you are.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Draycott, and your engine started?
The AdBlue has left your tank, then. Through the filter, along the lines, and — given any running — into the injection pump and every injector: that is where it travels.
Expect lumpy running, smoke, falling power, warnings on your dash, or a cut-out — coming back from Jubilee Playing Field & Athletics Track, say, or midway across Draycott. No starting it again to check: pull over when safe, then switch it off. Every start pulls more of that through.
Leave the M5, under a mile from Draycott, by the first junction and park safely, not driving on.
Each mile carries the AdBlue further into your system. That is why crossing Draycott to park near Arthur S Winterbotham Memorial Hall and a drive of under 15 miles for Gloucester are such distinct jobs. Tell us about how far it had come.
There is more to rinse out once the engine has run, and our technicians do all of it where the car has ended up. Long-term damage is very unusual if it's spotted quickly.
Draycott: how AdBlue is emptied from a diesel
Wherever it has stopped in Draycott — a forecourt, a layby, a drive, a street beside St Bartholomews Church — the van travels to your car. What got in, roughly the quantity, and if the motor has been run: we check first, since those shape the work.
Right there, your tank is then drained, and all of the contaminated diesel and the urea leave at once. With AdBlue, far more than with petrol, the flush matters: the whole system is flushed all the way through since residue will not wash away by itself. Next, the fuel filter: cleaned, or replaced when it must be. After that fresh diesel, then a test of the car. About half an hour once we arrive is usual for most jobs when the engine hasn't run. The pumping gear is explosion-proof, and so a busy filling station is no fault, and it's quiet enough for a residential street after dark.
The last step is to bleed your system on clean diesel. You drive off as soon as our technicians have fired it up, and it makes no difference whether your car is on a drive in Draycott or in a bay at Cam & Dursley. The check before our technicians go is that it runs smoothly on clean diesel. No garage is required at any point, with the whole job done then and there. Your insurer is likely to want an engineer's report and the VAT invoice — each handed over once this job is done.
About Draycott and where it is
Draycott is a small suburban area in Gloucestershire, situated near the coast at an elevation of 34 metres. Draycott lies close to the nearby places of Lower Cam, Fairmead, and Upthorpe, and is approximately 11.7 miles from Gloucester. Draycott has a population of around 823 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing. Draycott is also within commuting distance of larger cities, being around 97 miles from London.
AdBlue drains across Draycott and Gloucestershire
Throughout the GL postcode area, the teams answering AdBlue call-outs around Draycott reach much of Gloucestershire too, Lower Cam, Fairmead and Upthorpe among them. If you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask rather than guessing.
No towing is needed. In Draycott, a residential suburb, a mobile service works: the vehicle is drained on the spot, whether in a driveway, a side street, a parking area or a forecourt.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Draycott: the cost of fixing it
Every job is different, so no single quote would be honest. Whether the engine has run, and for how long, comes first in what changes the cost. How much AdBlue went in comes next, and then the location of the vehicle, because an open drive is simpler for a van to get to safely than a tight gap behind Lower Cam War Memorial.
Before a figure, not after, every enquiry from Draycott begins with three questions: the liquid, the quantity, and if the engine ran. Their answers shrink a range right down to a single number.
The quote is quoted during the call, before a van sets off; settling up happens on the day, by card or by phone, with nothing upfront. Misfuelling cover comes with plenty of insurance policies, so it is worth looking at yours before the van gets there.
In Draycott and still beside your car?
Then the most helpful thing you can do is nothing to the car. Engine off, keys out, ignition off. Tell us it's AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and if it ran, on 0333 366 0103. After that Petrol in Diesel handles it, in Draycott or anywhere in Gloucestershire.