Don't Start It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Loudwater
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, your ignition remains off and so does the engine. AdBlue is urea mixed in water. As it is water-based, it won't burn and never combines with diesel; trouble just starts once the pump begins pulling it. If your motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally drained and thoroughly cleaned where your car stands in Loudwater. No step comes before ringing 0333 366 0103.
What to do right now, Loudwater: AdBlue in the diesel tank
Things to do:
- Keys out — that way no one can switch anything on.
- Close to moving traffic? Then put your hazards on.
- The empty bottle or the till receipt shows us the product and the amount, so don't bin it away.
- Call right where you are. Say a HP10 9 postcode or the closest street name, and nobody has to search for you.
Don't:
- No starting your engine — not for a second, not to shift the vehicle.
- Do not switch the ignition on. On many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- AdBlue does not mix in diesel — it separates out — so adding more fuel won't weaken it.
- Even a short stretch up Station Road is too far to drive the vehicle.
- By the road, do not attempt draining it yourself.
Rolling your car away from the island is a job for attendants to help with, wherever Loudwater forecourt you are on, the Shell included. If you are on your own drive, leave the vehicle precisely where it stands.
What does AdBlue do in a diesel tank?
Made for the exhaust, AdBlue has no place in the engine. Stored in a separate tank, it is injected into the exhaust stream to treat the fumes. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is made to handle it.
Inside a diesel tank it acts very differently from fuel. It does not mix in. It sinks, because it is denser than diesel, and pools low where the intake takes its supply from. Once the system runs, the AdBlue is top of the list to go through. Before then it sits underneath your diesel, and that is how a car filled in Wycombe Marsh last night and never switched on stays the simple one, as long as no one turns the key.
From there it causes two kinds of damage. What is left once the water goes is urea, which turns into crystals: they settle in tiny passages and block filters. Worse, it attacks some metals in a fuel system, and keeps going until it's cleared out. By daybreak, a vehicle sitting around Loudwater with AdBlue through its pipework grows worse; where it's only inside the tank, it doesn't. The water in it does damage of its own: the high-pressure fuel pump and your injectors rely on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it's commonly worse than petrol
Petrol pumped into a diesel on Esso's forecourt leaves the fuel watery — that's the main problem. Harm just comes from driving on it. Mixed into the diesel and sitting in your tank, it does nothing.
The issue with AdBlue in a diesel is a totally wrong substance. It does not burn, so it can't simply be run through. Crystals and corrosion stay after the following tankful, and AdBlue separates back from your diesel, and so watering it won't work. That is why the flush counts more, and turning your key "to see" does more harm with AdBlue than nearly any other slip — in Holtspur or the heart of Loudwater alike.
As with petrol, there's good news. If the engine has not run, the AdBlue is still inside your tank, and your tank is the simplest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever across Buckinghamshire the vehicle is standing.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank in Loudwater?
Nobody means to do it. The AdBlue filler on many cars sits right next to the diesel filler, sometimes under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. Usually it's never the forecourt: someone picks up a bottle driving home and tips it in outside the house.
The ways it occurs are few and familiar. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up takes place in a hurry outside Loudwater Combined School. Near Old Forge Road, someone tips a container in on the drive after work. Another pattern: darkness, the car park by Papermill Brewers Fayre, and a driver using that flap for the first time.
It happens most in the cars motorists know least: a hire car, a new car, a company car, or the second motor of a household with one diesel and one petrol. Leave it switched off: that's the first step to the same slip, wherever around Loudwater or the rest of Buckinghamshire you happen to be.
Loudwater: started your engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
Then the AdBlue has left your tank. Given any running time, it goes on to the injection pump and every injector, having passed through the fuel filter and pipework.
Perhaps returning from Derehams Park, or midway across Loudwater, the engine may go lumpy, smoke, drop pace, flash the dash or stall. No restarting to test: pull over when safe, then turn everything off. Each start pulls more of it through.
On the M40, under a mile from Loudwater, the first junction is where to exit, and anywhere sensible is where to park — not carrying on.
Hopping across Loudwater to the car park by Loudwater Boys Club/Centre is one matter; driving towards St Albans, under 25 miles away, is something else, since each mile carries the AdBlue deeper in. So mileage matters. About how far it had come is worth telling us.
Wherever your car came to a stop is where all of it gets done, even with more to flush after your engine has been running. Very seldom does it leave lasting damage when it's noticed early.
Loudwater: how AdBlue is emptied from a diesel
Anywhere it has come to rest in Loudwater — a filling station, a layby, a driveway, a street beside St. Peters — the van travels to the vehicle. Three answers shape the job, and so before anything else our engineers ask which fluid was put in, roughly the amount, and if the engine has run.
Next, draining the tank right there removes the polluted diesel and the AdBlue together. The fuel system is cleaned thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, because what it leaves behind doesn't rinse out on its own. Clean diesel goes in once your filter is flushed — or replaced, if it needs to be — and after that the vehicle is tested. About half an hour on site is typical for most jobs where your engine hasn't run. The equipment is explosion-proof, and so a busy filling station is no issue, and it's hushed enough for a residential street late at night.
The final step is to prime your system on fresh diesel. Whether it is a parking bay by Bourne End or a drive around Loudwater, that is where we start it and you drive off. It's checked on fresh diesel to be sure it runs smoothly before our technicians head off. No garage is required at any point, with the whole job done then and there. You get a VAT invoice and an engineer report later on, which is what insurers want.
About Loudwater itself
Loudwater is a village situated on the River Thames in Buckinghamshire, with a mix of semi-detached housing and other residential properties. Loudwater sits at an elevation of 53 metres, near the villages of Flackwell Heath, Wooburn Moor, and Wooburn Green. Loudwater is located approximately 25.5 miles west of London and 18.4 miles south of St Albans, making it a commuter base for those working in the surrounding cities. Loudwater has a population of around 1789 residents, living in a variety of housing types, predominantly semi-detached homes.
Loudwater and Buckinghamshire: AdBlue drains across the area
AdBlue jobs in Loudwater go to vans that cover the towns near it — Flackwell Heath, Wooburn Moor as well as Wooburn Green — and most of Buckinghamshire further out, throughout HP postcodes. Phone and check rather than guess if you are by a county line, or anywhere awkward to explain.
No towing is needed. In Loudwater, a village, a mobile service works: your vehicle is drained on the spot, whether on a drive, a side street, a parking area or a forecourt.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Loudwater: the cost of fixing it
Each job is different, and so no fixed price is fair. What moves the cost is, firstly, whether the motor has been running and for how long; then how much AdBlue got in; and finally where the car is and whether our van can get to it safely, which is easier on an open driveway than in a tight spot behind Swim Street.
Before any figure, never after, every call from Loudwater opens with the same three questions: the liquid, the quantity, plus if the engine ran. Their answers shrink a range down to one figure.
Priced on the call before the engineer heads out, it is settled on the day — card or phone, no deposit. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, so it's worth checking yours whilst we're on the way.
Still next to the car in Loudwater?
Then, touch nothing — that is the most helpful move there is. Keys out, motor off, ignition off. Say it's AdBlue, about how big an amount, and if it ran, on 0333 366 0103. After that Petrol in Diesel handles it, across Loudwater or wherever within Buckinghamshire.