Highgate: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
AdBlue in your diesel tank? Then keep the engine off — and your ignition as well. AdBlue is urea mixed in water. Not like fuel, it neither ignites nor mixes, and nothing starts till your engine sucks it round. Caught before your engine has been run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Highgate. Before you do anything else, phone 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Highgate: the first few minutes
To do:
- Pocket your keys, and that prevents anyone turning the power on.
- Put the hazard lights on if you are at all close to moving traffic.
- Keep the receipt or the empty bottle, and so you can tell us what went in and about how much.
- Ring right where you are. Quote a SK22 2 postcode or the closest street name, and nobody has to hunt for you.
Things not to do:
- Not even briefly, and not to shift the car: the engine stays off.
- Your ignition stays off: on lots of diesels, switching it on is enough to run your pump.
- AdBlue does not dilute in diesel — it separates out — so adding more diesel will not thin it.
- Even a short way along Chapel Road is too far to drive the car.
- Beside the road, do not attempt draining it on your own.
Ask the people behind the counter to help you roll your vehicle away from the pumps if you're at a forecourt in Highgate, whether it's the Carlton or elsewhere. If you're on your own drive, leave the vehicle just where it stands.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
Not the engine but the exhaust is where AdBlue belongs. It goes into its own tank and is sprayed into the exhaust gas to clean it. No part in an injection pump is designed for this fluid — and none of it was meant to go that way.
It doesn't combine. Once it's poured into a tank of diesel, AdBlue acts nothing like fuel. It drops, because it's denser than diesel, and pools low where the intake draws its fuel from. When your pump runs, the AdBlue is top of the list to be pulled through. Before then it sits beneath the diesel, which is how a car filled in Farlands Booth yesterday and never switched on remains the straightforward one, as long as nobody touches the key.
It causes two kinds of harm 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, so it keeps working on the components it gets to for as long as it stays there. Lines holding AdBlue mean harm overnight for a car sitting in Highgate. Just inside the tank, it stays the same. Diesel lubricates the high-pressure pump and every injector as it flows; water gives none of that, and that is a second form of harm.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel often the bigger issue?
Petrol put into a diesel on New Mills Marina Diesel Pump's forecourt leaves the fuel thin — that is the whole problem. Damage just comes from running on it. Blended into the diesel and sitting inside that tank, it does nothing.
The issue with AdBlue in a diesel is a totally wrong liquid. Because it doesn't burn, running it through is not an option. Deposits and corrosion stay through the following fill, and AdBlue separates back from your diesel, and so thinning it can't work. Hence the flush matters more, and turning the key "to see" does more harm with AdBlue than almost any other slip — in Chinley Head or the heart of Highgate equally.
With AdBlue, the good news is no separate from petrol. Anywhere across Derbyshire the car has stopped, an unstarted motor leaves the AdBlue yet inside the reservoir: the easiest part of any fuel system to empty.
How AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank around Highgate
Nobody means to do it. The AdBlue filler on many motors rests right next to the diesel filler, sometimes under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. Mostly it takes place with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the drive, not at the forecourt.
A few familiar ways account for the majority of them. The top-up is rushed outside Hayfield Primary School, because your dash flashed with a warning as the kids were dropped in. Someone tips the container in outside their house, right off Valley Road, as the day ends. Or a driver unfamiliar with that flap tops up your vehicle after dark, stopped in the car park by George Hotel.
It comes up most in a rental, a brand-new vehicle, a company car, or the spare car in a family with both fuels — the cars people use the least. Leave it switched off: that's the first step to the same slip, anywhere around Highgate or the rest of Derbyshire you happen to be.
Highgate: started the engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
In that case, the AdBlue is no longer in the tank. Through the filter, through the pipework, and — with any running — on to the injection pump and every injector: that's where it travels.
You may see the motor running unevenly, smoking, losing power, showing warning lights or cutting out, possibly on the way back from Hayfield Park or halfway across Highgate. Pull over when it is safe. Switch off. Keep the car off rather than testing it again. More of it is pulled through with each start.
If you were on the M67, under 10 miles from Highgate, come off at the next junction and stop somewhere safe instead of pressing on.
Hopping across Highgate to the car park by Hayfield Cricket Ground is one thing; heading for Manchester, under 15 miles away, is something else, because each mile carries the AdBlue further in. So mileage matters. Roughly how far it had come is worth telling us.
There's more to clean out once your engine has run, and we do all of it where the vehicle has stopped. Very rarely does it leave lasting damage if it is caught soon.
What does an AdBlue drain on a diesel involve around Highgate?
Wherever it has come to rest around Highgate — a filling station, a lay-by, a driveway, a road by Hayfield Library — the van travels to your car. What was put in, about the quantity, and whether your engine has been run: we check first, since those shape the job.
Then the tank is cleared where the vehicle waits, and so the contaminated fuel and the AdBlue come out together. With AdBlue, more so than with petrol, flushing counts: the fuel system is cleaned right through because residue won't wash away unaided. Next, your filter: cleaned, or changed when it has to be. Then fresh diesel, then a check of your car. Engine not run? Then count on about half an hour on site for most jobs. Quiet enough for use outside a house at night, and fine on a busy forecourt, our pumps are explosion-proof.
Fresh diesel goes in to bleed the fuel system, and that's the final step. Starting the car comes next, and then you head off from where your car is parked, by Chinley or on a drive around Highgate. The check before our engineers go is that it runs correctly on fresh diesel. As the job is done in full where your car is, a workshop never comes into it. The insurer is likely to want an engineer's report and your VAT invoice — each handed over once the job is done.
About Highgate itself
Highgate is a suburban area in Derbyshire, situated on the banks of a river at an elevation of around 230 metres. Highgate is located near several small villages, including Hayfield, Little Hayfield, and Birch Vale, and is approximately 14 miles from Manchester. Highgate has a population of around 1644 people and is characterised by predominantly terraced housing. Highgate is also relatively distant from London, at around 150 miles away.
Highgate and Derbyshire: AdBlue drains across the area
The teams that answer AdBlue call-outs in Highgate also cover the spots around it, Hayfield, Little Hayfield and Birch Vale among them, and most of Derbyshire beyond, across the SK postcode area. Phone and check rather than guess when you are close to a county line, or anywhere awkward to pin down.
Highgate is a residential suburb, and a call-out drain suits it: whether the car is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, our engineers drain it where it is, so it never needs to be moved to us.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right in Highgate
Because the jobs vary, a single price would not be honest. What moves the cost is, firstly, whether your engine has run and for how long; then how much AdBlue was put in; and finally where the vehicle is and whether our van can reach it safely, which is easier on an open driveway than in a tight space behind Saint John's Methodist Church.
For that reason, each enquiry from Highgate opens with the identical trio — what was put in, how much, whether the engine ran — before a figure. Their answers narrow a range right down to a single number.
You hear that price on the phone, before anybody heads out, and you pay on the day, by card or by phone, with nothing upfront. As the van is travelling, dig out your policy: many include misfuelling.
Still next to your car in Highgate?
Right now, the best thing to do with the vehicle is to leave it. Ignition off, engine off, keys out. Tell us it's AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and whether it ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel takes over, across Highgate or anywhere in Derbyshire.