AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Great Hivings? Keep It Switched Off
If AdBlue has gone into your diesel tank, leave your motor off then leave the ignition off. In plain terms, AdBlue is just urea 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. In Great Hivings, AdBlue in a diesel tank caught before your motor runs usually means a drain and a thorough flush, right where the car is. Phone 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
What to do right now, Great Hivings: AdBlue in your diesel tank
Do:
- Pull the keys out, and so no one switches the ignition on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is at all near.
- So you can tell us which fluid it was and roughly what quantity, keep your receipt or the empty bottle.
- Our van locates you quickest with a postcode starting HP5 2, or just the name of a street close by, and so phone from the spot.
Things not to do:
- Shifting the vehicle just a short way is no reason to fire up your motor.
- Do not switch the ignition on. On many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- Pouring in more diesel does not help: AdBlue settles out instead of blending.
- Keep the car where it is instead of driving it anywhere, even a short way up Mount Nugent.
- Emptying your tank yourself by the road isn't one to try.
Ask the attendants to help you move your vehicle away from the island if you are on a forecourt in Great Hivings, whether it is the Shell or elsewhere. On that drive, the vehicle remains exactly as it was left.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
The motor is not what AdBlue is made for; the exhaust is. Its own tank holds it, and from there it's fed into the exhaust, where it cleans the gas. Neither side suits the other: urea does not belong in an injection pump, and an injection pump can't take urea.
Tipped in with your diesel, it stays separate rather than mixing — quite different from fuel. The pickup takes fuel from the lowest part of the tank, and that is precisely where AdBlue settles: as it is denser than diesel, it sinks. Once your system runs, the AdBlue is first to be pulled through. Before then it sits beneath the diesel, and that is how a car filled in Bellingdon last night and not switched on stays the simple one, as long as nobody turns your key.
From there it does two kinds of damage. 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 working on the parts it hits for as long as it remains there. A car left sitting in Great Hivings with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue just in its tank isn't. Diesel protects the high-pressure pump and every injector as it flows; water offers no lubrication, and that is a second kind of damage.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is often more serious than petrol
Top up a diesel with petrol by mistake at the Applegreen, and the issue is thinned fuel. Mixed through your diesel and sitting still, it's no threat for now; running the engine does the harm.
AdBlue in a diesel is a problem of the wrong substance altogether. It can't simply be run through, since it doesn't burn. Crystals and corrosion stay through the next tankful, and AdBlue separates again from the diesel, and so thinning it can't work. That is why the flush counts so much, and turning the key "to see" costs more here than almost any other mistake — in Newtown or the centre of Great Hivings equally.
With AdBlue, the good news is no distinct from petrol. Emptying a tank is the easiest job on any fuel system, and without start-up, the AdBlue stays in it — wherever across Buckinghamshire your car sits.
How AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank in Great Hivings
Nobody means to do it. The AdBlue filler on many motors rests right next to the diesel filler, occasionally under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. It mostly occurs outside the house, from a container grabbed on the journey home, not at the filling station.
It tends to occur in a couple of familiar ways. Hurrying, outside Ivingswood Academy, after a warning lamp came on during the school run, someone tops up your car. A bottle is poured in at the end of the day on a drive just off Great Hivings. Or a driver new to that flap refills the vehicle after dark, parked in the car park outside The Black Horse.
It crops up the most in a hire car, a new car, a fleet motor, or the other car of a family with both fuels — the cars drivers know least. Wherever you are around Great Hivings or the remainder of Buckinghamshire, it is the same slip and the same first answer: leave the car off.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Great Hivings, and the engine started?
The AdBlue has left the tank, then. It has been pulled through the fuel filter and the lines, and if the engine ran for any time, it has got to the high-pressure pump and the injectors.
Expect lumpy running, smoke, falling power, lights on the dash, or a stall — coming back from Captain's Wood, say, or midway across Great Hivings. Stop when it is safe. Switch off. Keep the vehicle off rather than restarting it to check. Each start pulls more of that through.
If you were on the M25, under 10 miles from Great Hivings, come off at the next exit and stop somewhere safe rather than pressing on.
Every mile carries the AdBlue further in. That is why crossing Great Hivings to park beside Local graffiti and a drive of under 15 miles for St Albans are very different jobs. Roughly how far it had come is worth telling us.
We do all of the cleaning where the vehicle has ended up, and once the engine has run there is more of it. Very seldom does it leave lasting damage if it is caught soon.
What clearing AdBlue from a diesel involves in Great Hivings
Anywhere it has stopped in Great Hivings — a forecourt, a lay-by, a driveway, a street beside Hivings Free Church — our van comes to the vehicle. Before anything else we ask what was put in, about how much, and if your engine has been run, because those replies settle this work.
Then the tank is drained where the vehicle sits, and so the polluted fuel and the AdBlue come out together. What remains from AdBlue won't wash out by itself, so the fuel system gets a full flush, which counts far more with urea than with petrol. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the car is tested. If the engine hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once our engineers are there. Low-noise enough to use outside a house at night, and fine on a working forecourt, the pumps are explosion-proof.
Priming the fuel system with fresh diesel comes at the end. At that point we start it and you drive off, whether from a parking bay by Amersham or a drive around Great Hivings. We check it runs correctly on fresh diesel before leaving. Since the job is done in its entirety where your car is, a garage never comes into it. You receive a VAT invoice and an engineer report later, which is what insurers want.
About Great Hivings itself
Great Hivings is a suburban area in Buckinghamshire, situated inland at an elevation of 167 metres, with semi-detached housing being the predominant type. Great Hivings lies approximately 25.9 miles from London and 12.2 miles from St Albans, placing it within commuting distance of both cities. Great Hivings is surrounded by nearby places such as Pond Park, Griffitts Yard, and Asheridge, and has a population of around 2187 residents. Great Hivings forms a quiet residential community with a mix of local amenities and rural surroundings.
AdBlue drains across Great Hivings and Buckinghamshire
AdBlue call-outs in Great Hivings go to vans that serve the places near it — Pond Park, Griffitts Yard as well as Asheridge — and most of Buckinghamshire beyond, throughout HP postcodes. If you are close to a border, or somewhere hard to describe, ring and ask instead of guessing.
A van that comes to you suits Great Hivings, a residential suburb: you have no need to bring your car to us, since our technicians drain it there, on a driveway, a side street, a car park or a forecourt.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right around Great Hivings
There's no honest single quote, because the jobs are not the same. Three things change the price: whether the engine has run and for how long, how much AdBlue got in, and where your car is. That last one comes down to whether our van can reach it safely, and an open driveway is simpler than a tight spot behind Wallington House Community Centre.
For that reason, every call from Great Hivings opens with the same trio — what got in, how much, whether the engine ran — before any figure. With them, the range shrinks to a single firm number.
Before anyone heads out, you are told the price by phone. Then you pay on the day, card or over the phone, with nothing in advance. While our engineer is travelling, check your policy: many include misfuelling.
Alongside the car around Great Hivings, still?
Not touching the car is, right now, the most useful move you can do. Ignition off, motor off, keys out. Say it's AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and whether it ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel handles it, in Great Hivings or wherever within Buckinghamshire.