Highfield: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
If AdBlue has got into your diesel tank, leave your engine off and leave the ignition off. Water with urea mixed in it: that is AdBlue. As it is water-based, it won't ignite and won't blend with diesel; trouble just starts when the pump begins pulling it. If your motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally drained and thoroughly flushed where the vehicle stands in Highfield. Ring 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in your diesel tank around Highfield
Do these:
- Keys out — then no one can power anything on.
- Put the hazard lights on if you are at all near moving traffic.
- The empty bottle or your receipt tells us the product and the quantity, so do not bin it away.
- Ring right where you are. Quote a OX26 2 postcode or the closest street name, and nobody has to hunt for you.
Don't do these:
- Shifting your car just a few yards is no reason to start the engine.
- Don't switch your ignition on. On many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- Adding extra diesel doesn't help: AdBlue separates out rather than blending.
- Any driving at all is to be avoided, even a short way along Bucknell Road.
- Draining that tank yourself beside the road isn't one to try.
Rolling your vehicle off the island is a job for staff to help with, whichever Highfield forecourt you're on, the EG On the Move included. On the drive, the car remains just where it was left.
What does AdBlue do in a diesel tank?
The motor is not what AdBlue is made for; the exhaust is. From a separate reservoir it is fed directly to your exhaust, cleaning what the motor emits. A fuel pump is not designed to take it, and AdBlue was never intended to travel through one.
Inside a diesel tank it behaves really differently from fuel. It does not mix in. It is heavier than diesel, so it sinks and gathers at the bottom of your tank, which is where the pickup sucks fuel from. The first thing your fuel system pulls through, after it runs, is the AdBlue. So a vehicle that had AdBlue poured in on a drive in Kings End last night, and hasn't been started since, is still the simple case: the AdBlue is lying at the bottom of that tank, and nothing has drawn it in.
Once it's sucked in, the damage comes in two forms. It attacks certain metals used in fuel systems, attacking any part it reaches till it is removed completely. And once the water goes, the urea forms crystals that clog filters and lodge in tiny passages. A motor left sitting around Highfield with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue only in its tank is not. Water protects nothing. The injection pump and each injector depend on diesel flowing through them, and so the water content harms them in its own right.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel regularly the bigger fault?
Fill a diesel with petrol by mistake at the Gulf, and the issue is diluted fuel. Damage just comes from driving on it. Mixed into your diesel and left inside your tank, it causes nothing.
AdBlue in a diesel is a fault of the wrong substance altogether. It cannot just be run through, since it does not burn. Deposits and corrosion stay after the next fill, and AdBlue separates back out of your diesel, and so watering it won't work. Hence the flush matters so much, and trying the engine "to see" costs more with AdBlue than nearly any other mistake — in Bicester or the heart of Highfield alike.
As with petrol, there is good news. Not run? Then the AdBlue sits just in your tank, the easiest bit of the whole system to clear, anywhere your vehicle has stopped in Oxfordshire.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank in Highfield?
No one means to do it. The AdBlue filler on many motors waits right next to your diesel filler, at times under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. It mostly takes place outside the house, from a bottle grabbed en route home, rather than at the filling station.
The ways it occurs are few and familiar. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up occurs in a hurry outside Brookside Primary School. In the evening, a container goes in on a drive close to The Oval. Or someone new to that flap tops up your vehicle in dim light, stopped in the car park outside Highfield Social Club.
It occurs most in the vehicles drivers know least: a hire car, a new vehicle, a company car, or the second car of a household with one diesel and one petrol. An identical mistake, same first step — keep it off — anywhere you are in Highfield or the remainder of Oxfordshire.
Highfield: started the motor with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
The AdBlue has left the tank, then. Through the filter, through the lines, and — given any running — into the injection pump and each injector: that's where it has gone.
Lumpy running, smoke from the exhaust, lost power, dashboard warnings or cutting out: any might show up, maybe part way across Highfield or coming back from Southwold Park. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and don't restart the car to check. Each start pulls more of that through.
If you were on the M40, under 3 miles from Highfield, come off at the next exit and stop somewhere sensible rather than pressing on.
How far it went counts. A few hundred yards across Highfield to the car park by Emmanuel Church Bicester is a very different job from a run towards Oxford, under 15 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into your system with every mile. Let us know about how far it had come.
Once the engine has run, the flush covers more, and all of it is done where your car has stopped. Lasting damage is very unusual if it is spotted quickly.
Highfield: how AdBlue is emptied from a diesel
Our technicians come to your car, wherever it has stopped in Highfield: a side street near Bicester Magistrates Court, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. Before anything else we ask what got in, about how much, and if the engine has run, because those answers settle the work.
The polluted diesel and the urea leave together when that tank is emptied, on the spot. With AdBlue, more so than with petrol, flushing matters: the whole system is flushed all the way through because residue will not flush out by itself. A test of the car comes at the end, after fresh diesel goes in and the fuel filter is flushed or, if necessary, swapped. Not run? In that case expect about half an hour once we are there for most jobs. Low-noise enough to use outside a house at night, and fine on a working forecourt, our pumps are explosion-proof.
Lastly, the fuel system is bled with fresh diesel. Firing it up comes next, and then you drive off from where the car is parked, by Bicester North or on a driveway around Highfield. It's checked on clean diesel to be sure it runs properly before we head off. No garage is needed at any stage, with the entire job done then and there. The insurer is likely to want an engineer's report and your VAT invoice — both yours afterwards.
About Highfield, briefly
Highfield is a suburban area in Oxfordshire, situated inland at an elevation of 79 metres, approximately 11 miles from Oxford and 52 miles from London. Highfield is characterized by its predominantly semi-detached housing stock, with nearby areas including Bure Park, Greenwood, and Woodfield. Highfield has a population of around 6656 residents, making it a moderately sized community in the region.
AdBlue drains across Highfield and Oxfordshire
The vans that answer AdBlue call-outs in Highfield also cover the locations around it, Bure Park, Greenwood and Woodfield among them, and most of Oxfordshire beyond, across the OX postcode area. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask rather than assuming.
Wherever the car sits — a driveway at home, a residential street, a parking area, a filling station — our engineers empty it on the spot, with no need to take it to us; which suits Highfield, a residential suburb, well.
What does AdBlue in a diesel tank cost to sort out in Highfield?
Each job differs, and so no single price would be honest. Whether the motor has run, and for how long, comes first in what shifts the price. How much AdBlue was put in comes next, and then the position of your car, since an open driveway is easier for our van to reach safely than a tight spot behind The Redeemed Christian Church of God.
That's why each call from Highfield starts with the same three questions, asked before giving a figure, not after: what got in, how much, and whether it has run. When they are known, a range becomes a single fixed number.
Before a van heads out, you hear the price on the phone. Then payment is on the day, card or by phone, with nothing in advance. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it is worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
In Highfield and still beside the vehicle?
In that case, touch nothing — that's the best step there is. Ignition off, motor off, keys out. Phone 0333 366 0103: AdBlue, roughly how much, plus if the engine ran are everything our engineers ask. Petrol in Diesel takes over the remainder throughout Oxfordshire, Highfield too.