AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Leysdown-on-Sea? Don't Start It
If AdBlue has got into your diesel tank, leave the engine off and leave the ignition off. In plain terms, AdBlue is simply urea in water. The trouble starts once it is sucked through the pump — it won't ignite, and it will not blend with diesel. In Leysdown-on-Sea, AdBlue in a diesel tank found before the motor runs usually comes down to a drain and a thorough flush, right where your car is. No step comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in your diesel tank in Leysdown-on-Sea
Things to do:
- Keys out — that way no one can switch anything on.
- Close to moving traffic? So put your hazards on.
- So you can tell us which fluid it was and about what quantity, keep your receipt or the empty bottle.
- Call right where you are. Say a ME12 4 postcode or the nearest street sign, and no one has to search for you.
Things not to do:
- Not even for a second, and not to shift your vehicle: your motor stays off.
- Do not switch the ignition on. On many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- No more fuel on top. The AdBlue won't mix, so it is wasted.
- Do not drive the vehicle anywhere, not even a short distance down The Promenade.
- No draining it yourself, either, at the roadside.
Get the attendants to help you roll your vehicle off the island if you are at a forecourt around Leysdown-on-Sea, whether it's the the nearest petrol station or elsewhere. At home, your car stays just as it is.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
The engine is not what AdBlue is made for; the exhaust is. From a separate reservoir it is fed straight to the exhaust, cleaning what your engine emits. Nothing in it is supposed to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is designed to handle it.
Tipped in with the diesel, it stays separate instead of mixing — entirely different from fuel. The pickup takes fuel from the lowest part of that tank, and that is precisely where AdBlue ends up: as it is denser than diesel, it sinks. A vehicle filled on a drive in Hamlet of Shellness overnight and not started since is the simple one. No pump has sucked the AdBlue up yet — though once your engine runs, that's what is pulled first, directly from the bottom of the tank.
It causes 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, so it keeps working on the components it gets to for as long as it remains there. By daybreak, a vehicle parked around Leysdown-on-Sea with AdBlue in its lines gets worse; where it's only in the tank, nothing changes. Water protects nothing. The injection pump and every injector need diesel flowing through them, so the water content damages them by itself.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel regularly the bigger problem?
Put petrol in a diesel at the another forecourt nearby and you have a fault of thin fuel. No harm comes as long as it sits unused, blended into your diesel — only once the motor works on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is another matter: not thin fuel, yet no fuel at all. Since it doesn't burn, running it through isn't an option. Whether the vehicle sits in Eastchurch or the heart of Leysdown-on-Sea, firing it up "to see" costs more with AdBlue than nearly any other mistake, and the flush matters for more. The reasons: it won't remain mixed, so watering it down is impossible; and crystals and corrosion outlast the next fill.
With AdBlue, the good news is no distinct from petrol. Emptying a tank is the simplest job on any fuel system, and without start-up, the AdBlue stays in there — wherever across Kent your vehicle sits.
Leysdown-on-Sea: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
After dark, two caps side by side — the AdBlue cap and the diesel cap, occasionally under a single flap — can look the same. Nobody means it; plenty of layouts invite it. Mostly it occurs with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the drive, not at the pump.
A few familiar ways cover the majority of them. The top-up is hurried outside St. Clement's CofE Primary School, after your dash lit up with a warning as the kids were dropped off. After work, a bottle is tipped in on a drive close to Nutts Avenue. Otherwise, after dark outside Rose & Crown, your vehicle gets topped up by a driver opening that flap for the first time.
It comes up the most in a hire car, a new car, a fleet vehicle, or the spare vehicle in a family with both fuel types — the cars drivers use the least. An identical mistake, an identical first response — leave it switched off — wherever you happen to be in Leysdown-on-Sea or the rest of Kent.
Leysdown-on-Sea: started the motor with AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the AdBlue has left your tank. The fuel filter and pipework have had it pulled along, and any running time carries it on to the high-pressure pump and every injector.
Rough running, smoke, lost power, dashboard warnings or cutting out: any might appear, maybe part way across Leysdown-on-Sea or coming back from The Spinney. When safe, pull over then switch it off — without restarting to test. Each start pulls more of that through.
Exit the M2, under 10 miles from Leysdown-on-Sea, at the next junction and stop safely, rather than carrying on.
How far it went matters. A few hundred yards across Leysdown-on-Sea to the car park by Eastern Sheppey Community Hub is a very different job from a run towards Canterbury, under 15 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into your system with every mile. Roughly how far it had come is worth telling us.
We do all of the rinsing where the vehicle has come to a stop, and once the engine has been started there is more of it. Permanent damage is very rare when it's caught soon.
What emptying AdBlue from a diesel involves in Leysdown-on-Sea
Wherever it has stopped in Leysdown-on-Sea — a forecourt, a lay-by, a drive, a road beside Leysdown Market — the van travels to the vehicle. Three answers shape the job, so first we ask what went in, roughly the amount, and whether your engine has turned over.
On the spot, the tank is then drained, and both the polluted diesel and the urea leave as one. What remains from AdBlue will not flush out unaided, so the fuel system gets a careful flush, which matters much more with urea than with petrol. Fresh diesel goes in once the fuel filter is flushed — or swapped, if it needs to be — and then your car is tested. If your engine hasn't run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once our technicians arrive. Low-noise enough to use outside a house at night, and fine on a working forecourt, our pumps are explosion-proof.
Bleeding the fuel system with fresh diesel comes last. Firing it up comes next, and then you drive off from where your car is parked, outside Whitstable or on a drive around Leysdown-on-Sea. The test before our technicians leave is that it runs correctly on fresh diesel. No workshop is needed at any point, with the entire job done then and there. You receive a VAT invoice and an engineer report after that, which is what insurers ask for.
About Leysdown-on-Sea and where it is
Leysdown-on-Sea is a small coastal village in Kent, situated on the Isle of Sheppey at an elevation of around 12 metres. Leysdown-on-Sea lies near the towns of Warden and Bay View, and is close to the hamlet of Mud Row. Leysdown-on-Sea has a population of approximately 929 people, predominantly living in detached housing.
AdBlue drains across Kent, Leysdown-on-Sea included
AdBlue call-outs in Leysdown-on-Sea are passed to vans that serve the places around it — Warden, Bay View as well as Mud Row — and much of Kent beyond, across ME postcodes. If you are near a border, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask instead of guessing.
Leysdown-on-Sea is a coastal village, and a mobile drain suits it: whether your car is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, we drain it where it is, and so it never needs to be moved to us.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Leysdown-on-Sea: the cost of fixing it
Not one flat figure could be fair, because each job is different. Three things shift the cost: whether the motor has run and for how long, how much AdBlue went in, and where the car is. That last one turns on whether a van can get to it safely, and an open driveway is easier than a tight space behind Swimming Pool.
Before a quote, not afterwards, each enquiry from Leysdown-on-Sea begins with the same three checks: the liquid, the amount, and if it ran. Those replies narrow the range right down to one number.
Quoted by phone before the engineer heads out, it is paid for on the day — card or phone, nothing in advance. Look at your insurance whilst we're on the way: plenty include misfuelling cover.
Still beside the car in Leysdown-on-Sea?
Then, the best thing to do with your vehicle is to not touch it. Motor off, keys out, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel handles the remainder, across Leysdown-on-Sea or wherever in Kent, after you ring 0333 366 0103 to say it's AdBlue, about what quantity, and if it ran.