AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Ordsall? Keep It Switched Off
AdBlue in your diesel tank? Then leave your motor off — and the ignition too. AdBlue is urea mixed in water. Being water-based, it will not ignite and won't blend with diesel; damage only comes when the pump begins drawing it. Caught before your engine has run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Ordsall. Ring 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Ordsall: the first few minutes
Do:
- So nobody can switch the ignition on, pull the keys out.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is anywhere near.
- Hold on to the till receipt or the empty bottle, and so you can tell us what went in and about how much.
- Our van locates you quickest with a postcode starting DN22 7, or simply the name of a street nearby, and so phone from the spot.
Never do these:
- Shifting your vehicle even a few yards is no reason to start the motor.
- Switching your key to ignition alone sets your pump running on many diesels. Avoid it.
- Adding more diesel doesn't help: AdBlue settles out instead of thinning.
- Leave it where it is rather than driving it anywhere, even a short stretch along West Hill Road.
- By the road, don't try draining it yourself.
At a forecourt in Ordsall, whether it's the Asda or another one, ask the attendants to help you roll your car clear of the petrol pump. At home, your car stays just where it was left.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
The engine isn't what AdBlue is made for; the exhaust is. Stored in a dedicated tank, it is injected into the exhaust stream to treat the fumes. A fuel pump isn't designed to take it, and AdBlue was never intended to travel through one.
It doesn't blend. Once it is poured into a tank of diesel, AdBlue behaves nothing like diesel. It's heavier than diesel, and so it sinks and gathers at the bottom of the tank, which is where the pickup sucks fuel from. The first thing the fuel system pulls through, after it runs, is the AdBlue. So a vehicle that had AdBlue poured in on a drive in Retford last night, and hasn't been started since, is still the straightforward case: the AdBlue is lying at the bottom of the tank, and nothing has drawn it in.
It does 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's corrosive to some of the metals a fuel system is made from, and so it keeps running on the parts it reaches for as long as it stays there. If the AdBlue has reached the pipework, leaving it overnight in Ordsall makes things worse. In the tank only, waiting costs nothing. The water in it causes harm of its own: the high-pressure pump and the injectors rely on diesel to lubricate them, and water offers them nothing.
Petrol or AdBlue in a diesel: why AdBlue is regularly worse
Petrol pumped into a diesel on Esso's forecourt leaves your fuel watery — that is the whole fault. No harm comes while it sits put, mixed into the diesel — only once your engine runs on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is another problem: not thin fuel, but no fuel at all. It does not burn, and so it cannot just be run through. Whether the car sits in Newtown or the heart of Ordsall, turning it over "to see" costs more with AdBlue than almost any other error, and the flush matters more. Why: it won't remain mixed, so diluting it fails; and deposits and corrosion outlast the following fill.
With AdBlue, the good news is no different from petrol. Not run? Then the AdBlue sits just inside the tank, the simplest section of the whole system to clear, anywhere your car has come to rest across Nottinghamshire.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank in Ordsall?
It is not deliberate. Many vehicles have the AdBlue inlet beside the diesel one, occasionally behind one flap, and mixing them up is easy in poor light. It mostly happens at home, from a container grabbed en route home, rather than at the filling station.
The ways it happens are few and familiar. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up takes place in a hurry outside Ordsall Primary School. Near Orchard Leigh, someone tips a container in at home after work. Or the car is topped up in the car park outside The Clumber Inn, in poor light, by somebody who has never opened that flap before.
Rented vehicles, brand-new motors, company cars, or the spare vehicle in a family with both fuels: the least known cars see it most. An identical mistake, same first response — leave it off — anywhere you happen to be around Ordsall or the remainder of Nottinghamshire.
Ordsall: started the engine with AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the AdBlue has left your tank. It has been drawn through the filter and the lines, and if your motor ran for any time, it has got to the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors.
Lumpy running, smoke, lost power, dashboard warnings or cutting out: each may show up, perhaps part way across Ordsall or returning from East Retford Rugby Club Pitches. When safe, pull over then switch everything off — with no turning it on again to test. With each start, more of it is pulled through.
Ordsall sits under 10 miles from the Doncaster By-Pass; if you were on it, leave at the first junction and stop safely instead of driving on.
How far it went matters. A couple of hundred yards across Ordsall to the car park by Westhill Community Centre is a very different job from a run towards Doncaster, under 25 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the fuel system with every mile. Tell us roughly how far it had come.
Once your engine has been started, the flush includes more, and all of it is done where your car has come to a stop. If it is noticed quickly, long-term damage is very rare.
What does an AdBlue drain on a diesel involve in Ordsall?
A street by All Hallows Church, a driveway, a layby or a forecourt: wherever the vehicle has come to rest in Ordsall, our technicians come to it. Before anything else our engineers ask what got in, roughly how much, and whether the motor has been run, because those answers settle this work.
Next, draining the tank on the spot takes out the contaminated diesel along with the AdBlue in one go. Residue from AdBlue will not flush out by itself, so the whole system gets a full flush, which matters far more here than with petrol. Clean diesel goes in after your filter is flushed — or swapped, when it needs to be — and after that your car is tested. The majority of these jobs are a half-hour job once our engineers arrive, provided your motor hasn't run. The pumps are explosion-proof, safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night.
Fresh diesel goes in to bleed the fuel system, and that's the last step. Starting it comes next, and then you set off from where the vehicle is parked, by Retford or on a driveway around Ordsall. Before we go, we check it's running correctly with new diesel in. Because 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 the VAT invoice — both yours afterwards.
About Ordsall, for a moment
Ordsall is a suburban area in Nottinghamshire, situated on the riverside with an elevation of 28 metres. Ordsall lies near the towns of Retford and Doncaster, and is close to nearby places such as West Field, South Retford, and Thrumpton. Ordsall has a population of approximately 4965 people, and its predominant housing stock consists of semi-detached homes.
AdBlue drains across Nottinghamshire, Ordsall included
AdBlue jobs in Ordsall go to teams that serve the places around it — West Field, South Retford as well as Thrumpton — and most of Nottinghamshire beyond, across DN postcodes. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask instead of guessing.
No towing is needed. In Ordsall, a residential suburb, a mobile service fits: your car is drained on the spot, be it in a driveway, a residential street, a car park or a filling station.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Ordsall: the cost of fixing it
Every job is different, so no fixed quote is fair. What changes the cost is, first of all, whether the motor has been running and for how long; then how much AdBlue went in; and then where your car is and whether a van can get to it safely, which is simpler on an open drive than in a tight space behind Ordsall Parish Hall.
Which fluid was put in, how much, and whether it ran: each Ordsall call opens by asking precisely that, before any figure, never after. Those replies turn a range into a straight quote.
You get that quote on the phone, before anyone sets off, and you pay on the day, by card or by phone, with nothing upfront. Many insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours whilst we are on the way.
Still alongside your car in Ordsall?
Then the most helpful thing you can do is nothing to your car. Keys out; motor and ignition off. Tell us it was AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and if the engine ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel takes over, in Ordsall or wherever within Nottinghamshire.