AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Nunthorpe? Keep It Switched Off
If AdBlue has gone into the diesel tank, leave the engine off and keep your ignition off. Water with urea mixed in it: that's AdBlue. The trouble begins once it's pulled through your pump — it won't ignite, and it will not blend with diesel. If the motor has not run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is usually emptied and carefully purged where the car stands in Nunthorpe. Ring 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
Your next steps right now, Nunthorpe: AdBlue in your diesel tank
Do:
- So nobody can switch your ignition on, take your keys away.
- If you are at all near moving traffic, put the hazard lights on.
- The empty bottle or the till receipt tells us the product and the quantity, and so do not bin it out.
- Ring right where you are. Quote a TS7 0 postcode or the closest street name, and no one has to search for you.
Things not to do:
- Moving your car even a short way is no reason to start the motor.
- Plenty of diesels power their pump the instant your ignition goes on, and so leave the car off.
- AdBlue does not mix in diesel — it separates out — so adding more fuel will not weaken it.
- Don't drive the vehicle anywhere, not even a short stretch down Moor Green.
- Emptying that tank on your own by the road is not worth trying.
The attendants working at any Nunthorpe forecourt — the Tesco Express among them — will usually help rolling it aside if you ask. At your own driveway, do not move it at all.
What does AdBlue do in a diesel tank?
Not your motor but the exhaust is where AdBlue is meant to go. Its own reservoir keeps it, and from there it is sprayed into the exhaust, where it treats the gas. A fuel pump is not made to cope with it, and AdBlue was never intended to go through one.
It does not blend. Once it's poured into a tank of diesel, AdBlue behaves nothing like diesel. Heavier than diesel, it sinks and pools underneath it — the same place the pickup draws from. When the pump runs, the AdBlue is first to be pulled through. Until then it waits beneath the diesel, which is why a car topped up in Tunstall last night and never started remains the simple one, provided no one turns the key.
From there it causes two kinds of damage. What is left once the water goes is urea, which forms crystals: they settle in narrow passages and clog filters. Worse, it attacks certain metals in a fuel system, and carries on until it is cleared out. A vehicle left standing around Nunthorpe with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue just in its tank is not. The water in it does damage of its own: your high-pressure pump and the fuel injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water offers them nothing.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it is regularly worse than petrol
An issue of thinned fuel is what you end up with after filling a diesel with petrol from the Tesco. It mixes with your diesel, and whilst it's in that tank it does no damage; the damage comes from running your motor on it.
The trouble with AdBlue in a diesel is a completely wrong substance. Not burning, it cannot simply be run through. It doesn't stay mixed, so it cannot be weakened. And crystals and corrosion do not wash out with the next tank of fuel. That is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting the motor "to see" costs more here than almost anywhere else, whether your car is in Ormesby or the middle of Nunthorpe.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Anywhere around North Yorkshire the car has stopped, an unstarted engine leaves the AdBlue still in the tank: the easiest part of any fuel system to clear.
How AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank in Nunthorpe
In dim light, two caps together — the AdBlue one and the diesel cap, occasionally under a single flap — may look the same. Nobody means it; plenty of layouts invite it. Mostly it's not the forecourt: someone picks up a container heading home and pours it in outside the house.
The ways it happens are few and familiar. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up happens in a hurry outside Chandlers Ridge Academy. After work, a bottle is tipped in on a drive near The Woodlands. Or the vehicle is topped up in the car park outside Brunton Arms, in poor light, by somebody who has never opened that flap before.
It crops up the most in a hire car, a brand-new car, a company car, or the other vehicle in a family with both fuels — the vehicles drivers use the least. Keep it off: that is the first step to an identical mistake, wherever around Nunthorpe or the rest of North Yorkshire you happen to be.
Already started the engine with AdBlue in your diesel tank in Nunthorpe?
If so, the AdBlue is no longer in your tank. It's been sucked through the filter and the fuel lines, and if your engine ran for any time, it has reached the high-pressure fuel 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 Nunthorpe Sports Club or halfway across Nunthorpe. Once you safely can, pull over then switch it off — with no turning it on again to see. Each start pulls more of it through.
On the A1(M), under 25 miles from Nunthorpe, the next junction is where to leave, and anywhere sensible is where to stop — not carrying on.
Hopping across Nunthorpe to the car park by Nunthorpe War Memorial is one matter; driving towards Durham, under 25 miles away, is something else, since each mile carries the AdBlue further in. So mileage matters. Approximately how far had it come? Tell us.
Once the engine has run, the flush covers more, and all of it is done where the car has ended up. When it's noticed soon, permanent damage is very uncommon.
What does an AdBlue drain on a diesel involve in Nunthorpe?
The car remains where it is, whether that is a street beside St Mary’s, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt around Nunthorpe, and the van travels to it. The work depends on three replies, and our technicians get before all else — what was put in, the amount, and whether your engine has run.
On the spot, that tank is then drained, and both the polluted diesel and the urea come out as one. What remains from AdBlue won't flush away by itself, and so the fuel system gets a full flush, which matters much more here than with petrol. The filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. The majority of these jobs are a half-hour job once our technicians turn up, provided your motor has not run. Quiet enough for use outside a house at night, and safe on a busy forecourt, our pumps are explosion-proof.
The final step is to prime the system on clean diesel. At that point our engineers fire it up and you set off, whether from a parking space by the nearest station or a driveway around Nunthorpe. Before we leave, we check it is running properly with clean diesel in. Since the job is done in its entirety where the car is, a workshop never comes into it. At the end, there is paperwork for your insurer: a VAT invoice plus a written report from the engineer.
About Nunthorpe and where it is
Nunthorpe is a suburban area in North Yorkshire, situated approximately 87 metres above sea level in a predominantly inland setting. Nunthorpe lies near the communities of Marton, Coulby Newham, and Tollesby, and is characterised by its detached housing stock. Nunthorpe is located some distance from major urban centres, with Durham being the nearest city at around 24 miles away.
Nunthorpe and North Yorkshire: AdBlue drains across the area
AdBlue call-outs in Nunthorpe go to teams that serve the towns around it — Marton, Coulby Newham as well as Tollesby — and most of North Yorkshire further out, across TS postcodes. Assuming won't help close to a border or somewhere hard to describe; ring and ask.
A van that comes to you suits Nunthorpe, a residential suburb: you have no need to bring your vehicle to us, since our engineers empty it on the spot, on a driveway, a residential street, a parking area or a forecourt.
What does AdBlue in a diesel tank cost to sort out around Nunthorpe?
There's no fair single price, because the jobs aren't the same. What moves the price is, first, whether your engine has been running and for how long; then how much AdBlue got in; and after that where the car is and whether a technician can reach it safely, which is simpler on an open drive than in a tight space behind Standing Stone.
That's why every call from Nunthorpe starts with the same three questions, asked before giving a figure, not after: what went in, how much, and whether it's run. Those replies turn a range into a straight quote.
Priced by phone before the van sets out, it is settled on the day — card or phone, nothing in advance. As our engineer is travelling, check your insurance: plenty cover misfuelling.
Nunthorpe: still alongside your car?
Then the most handy thing you can do is nothing to the vehicle. Motor off, keys out, ignition off. Ring 0333 366 0103 then tell us it is AdBlue, roughly how much, and if it's run. Petrol in Diesel takes it from there, around Nunthorpe or anywhere around North Yorkshire.