AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Hardwick? Keep It Switched Off
With AdBlue in the diesel tank, your ignition stays off and so does your engine. AdBlue is urea mixed in water. The harm starts once it is sucked through your pump — it won't ignite, and it will not combine with diesel. If the engine has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally emptied and thoroughly flushed where the vehicle sits around Hardwick. Call 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in your diesel tank in Hardwick
To do:
- Pocket your keys, which prevents someone switching the electrics on.
- Put your hazards on if you are at all near moving traffic.
- The empty bottle or the till receipt shows us the product and the amount, so do not throw it away.
- Ring us from where you are. A postcode starting OX16 1, or the name of the nearest street, gets the van to you without a search.
Things not to do:
- No starting the engine — not for a second, not to shift the car.
- Turning your key to ignition alone sets the pump going on many diesels. Avoid it.
- Adding extra diesel does not help: AdBlue settles out instead of blending.
- Even a short distance down Hereford Way is too far to drive it.
- Do not try to drain it yourself at the kerbside.
The attendants on duty at any Hardwick forecourt — the Tesco included — will normally help rolling it aside if you ask. On your own drive, do not move it at all.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
AdBlue is made for the exhaust, not your engine. Kept in a separate tank, it is squirted into the exhaust to clean the gases. Neither side suits the other: urea does not belong in an injection pump, and a pump cannot take urea.
Inside a diesel tank it acts very differently from fuel. It doesn't mix in. It is heavier than diesel, so it sinks and gathers at the bottom of your tank, which is where the pickup draws fuel from. Simplest of all: one that had AdBlue in Hanwell overnight and has not been started since. The AdBlue waits at the foot of the tank, untouched — though it would be first through once your motor starts, before any diesel at all.
From there it causes two kinds of harm. 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 parts it gets to for as long as it remains there. A car left sitting around Hardwick with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue just in its tank isn't. Diesel lubricates the injection pump and each injector as it flows; water offers no lubrication, and that is a separate kind of damage.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is regularly more significant than petrol
Top up a diesel with petrol in error at the Texaco, and this issue is thinned fuel. It mixes with your diesel, and while it's inside your tank it does no damage; the harm comes from running your motor on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is an issue of the wrong substance altogether. It can't simply be run through, since it doesn't burn. Nor can it be watered down, because it separates back out — and the next fill will not clear away deposits or corrosion. So the flush counts for more here, and trying your engine "to see", in the heart of Hardwick or out in Banbury, does more harm than nearly any other slip.
As with petrol, there's good news. Anywhere across Oxfordshire the car has stopped, an unrun engine means the AdBlue still in the tank: the simplest bit of a fuel system to clear.
Hardwick: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
It's not deliberate. Many vehicles have the AdBlue cap beside the diesel one, occasionally under one flap, and muddling them up is easy after dark. A bottle bought while driving home and poured in at home, rather than at the filling station, is the usual story.
It tends to happen in a couple of familiar ways. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up takes place in a hurry outside Hardwick Primary School and Nursery. A bottle is poured in at the end of the day on a drive just off Ayrshire Close. Another pattern: darkness, the car park by Barley Mow, and a driver using that flap for the first time.
Hired vehicles, brand-new vehicles, fleet vehicles, or the spare car in a home with both fuels: the least familiar vehicles get it most. Wherever you're in Hardwick or the rest of Oxfordshire, it's the same error and the same first answer: leave it off.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Hardwick, and your engine started?
Then the tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. It has been pulled through your filter and the fuel lines, and if your motor ran for any time, it has reached your high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors.
You may notice your motor running unevenly, smoking, losing power, showing warning lights or cutting out, maybe on the way back from Rosedale Avenue Park or halfway across Hardwick. Stop when safe. Turn off. Keep it off rather than testing it again. With each start, more of that is pulled through.
Hardwick lies under 3 miles from the M40; if you were on it, exit at the next junction and stop somewhere safe rather than carrying on.
Hopping across Hardwick to the car park by The Observatory is one thing; heading for Oxford, under 25 miles away, is another, because every mile pushes the AdBlue deeper in. So mileage counts. Approximately how far had it come? Tell us.
Our engineers do all of the cleaning where the car has ended up, and once the motor has been run there is more of it. Lasting damage is very rare when it's noticed early.
What does an AdBlue drain on a diesel involve around Hardwick?
Anywhere it has stopped around Hardwick — a filling station, a layby, a driveway, a road beside Saint Francis — the van comes to the vehicle. The work depends on three replies, and our technicians get before all else — which fluid got in, the quantity, and whether the motor has turned over.
Right there, your tank is then emptied, and both the polluted diesel and the urea come out as one. With AdBlue, far more than with petrol, flushing matters: the fuel system is flushed all the way through since residue will not flush away unaided. Testing the car follows at the end, after clean diesel goes in and the fuel filter is cleaned or, if necessary, replaced. The majority of these jobs are a half-hour job once our technicians get there, provided your engine has not run. Our pumping gear is explosion-proof, and so a busy forecourt is no issue, and it is hushed enough for a residential street late at night.
Bleeding the system with new diesel comes at the end. Firing it up comes next, and then you drive off from where the car is parked, at Banbury or on a drive around Hardwick. It's checked on fresh diesel to be sure it runs smoothly before we head off. The whole job is done where the vehicle is, so it never has to go to a workshop. Insurers ask for a VAT invoice and an engineer report, and you get both afterwards.
About Hardwick, briefly
Hardwick is a suburban area in Oxfordshire, situated inland at an elevation of 146 metres, and forms part of the larger urban landscape around Oxford. Hardwick lies approximately 22.8 miles from Oxford and 65.7 miles from London, with nearby places including Drayton, Ruscote, and Neithrop. Hardwick has a population of around 7680 people and is characterised by predominantly terraced housing.
AdBlue drains around Hardwick and across Oxfordshire
AdBlue call-outs around Hardwick are passed to vans that serve the places around it — Drayton, Ruscote plus Neithrop — and most of Oxfordshire beyond, throughout OX postcodes. Assuming won't help by a border or anywhere hard to describe; ring and check.
Wherever your car stands — your drive at home, a side street, a car park, a forecourt — our engineers empty it on the spot, and there's no need to take it to us; that suits Hardwick, a residential suburb, well.
What does AdBlue in a diesel tank cost to sort out around Hardwick?
Every job is different, and so no fixed quote would be fair. What shifts the price is, first, whether the motor has been running and for how long; then how much AdBlue went in; and then where your car is and whether our van can get to it safely, which is simpler on an open drive than in a tight spot behind Hanwell Fields Community Centre.
That is why each call from Hardwick starts with the same three questions, asked before giving a figure, not after: what was put in, how much, and whether it has run. Their answers shrink the range right down to a single number.
Before a van heads out, you hear our quote on the phone. And you pay on the day, card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Check your policy while we are on the way: plenty include misfuelling cover.
Hardwick: still alongside your car?
Leaving your vehicle alone is, then, the best thing you can do. Keys out, engine off, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel handles the rest, in Hardwick or anywhere in Oxfordshire, after you phone 0333 366 0103 to say it was AdBlue, about how big an amount, and if it ran.