AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Pitchcott? Don't Start It
If AdBlue has gone into your diesel tank, keep the engine off and leave your ignition off. Chemically, AdBlue is simply urea in water. As it is water-based, it will not ignite and never combines with diesel; damage only starts when your pump begins pulling it. If your engine hasn't run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally drained and thoroughly rinsed where the car sits around Pitchcott. Nothing comes before ringing 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in your diesel tank in Pitchcott: the first few minutes
Do:
- Pocket the keys, and that stops anyone switching the electrics on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is anywhere close.
- The empty bottle or the receipt tells us the product and the amount, so do not bin it away.
- Ring right where you are. Say a HP22 4 postcode or the closest street name, and nobody has to hunt for you.
Not to do:
- Not even for a second, and not to shift the vehicle: your engine stays off.
- Don't switch your ignition on. On many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- Don't top up with diesel to dilute it. AdBlue doesn't mix in diesel; it separates out.
- Leave the car where it is rather than driving it anywhere, even a short distance up Pitchcott Road.
- Beside the road, do not try draining it on your own.
Get the people behind the counter to help you move the vehicle away from the pumps if you're at a forecourt in Pitchcott, whether it's the Gulf or somewhere else. At home, your car stays just where it was left.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
Meant for your exhaust, AdBlue has no business in the engine. From a separate reservoir it is fed directly to your exhaust, treating what your engine emits. Nothing inside an injection pump is made for this fluid — and none of it was intended to go that way.
Inside a diesel tank it behaves very differently from fuel. It does not mix in. It drops, since it is heavier than diesel, and pools low where the pickup takes its supply from. Simplest of all: one that got AdBlue in Whitchurch last night and hasn't been started since. The AdBlue waits at the base of that tank, undrawn — but it will be the first thing through once the engine runs, ahead of any diesel at all.
From there it causes two kinds of damage. It attacks certain metals used in fuel systems, working on any part it touches till it is removed from the system. And once the water evaporates, the urea forms crystals that clog filters and lodge in narrow passages. A car left sitting in Pitchcott with AdBlue already in its lines is worse by the morning; one with AdBlue just in its tank isn't. The water in it causes harm of its own: the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel commonly the bigger issue?
An issue of thinned fuel is what you get from fuelling a diesel with petrol at the Tesco. No damage comes as long as it stays unused, mixed into your diesel — only once your motor works on it.
AdBlue in a diesel is a fault of the wrong substance altogether. Not burning, it can't simply be run through. Nor can it be thinned, because it separates again — and the next fill will not rinse away crystals or corrosion. So the flush matters more here, and trying your engine "to see", in the heart of Pitchcott or out in Quainton, does more harm than nearly any other mistake.
With AdBlue, the good news is no separate from petrol. Anywhere in Buckinghamshire your vehicle has come to rest, an unrun motor means the AdBlue still inside the reservoir: the easiest part of a fuel system to clear.
Pitchcott: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
No one means to do it. The AdBlue filler on many cars sits right next to the diesel filler, occasionally under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. Most of the time it occurs with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the drive, not at the pump.
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 Whitchurch Combined School. Someone tips the container in outside their house, right off Carters Lane, as the day ends. One more version: dim light, the car park outside The Black Boy, and a driver using that flap for the first time.
Hired cars, brand-new cars, fleet cars, or the second vehicle in a family with both fuels: the least familiar vehicles see it the most. Same slip, an identical first response — leave it switched off — wherever you are in Pitchcott or the remainder of Buckinghamshire.
Already started the engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank in Pitchcott?
Then the tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. Your filter and pipework have had it sucked through, and some running time carries it on to the high-pressure pump and each injector.
Expect lumpy running, exhaust smoke, falling power, warnings on the dash, or a cut-out — returning from Berryfields Green, perhaps, or part way across Pitchcott. Stop when it is safe. Turn off. Keep the vehicle off rather than testing it again. More of that is pulled through with each start.
If you were on the M40, under 15 miles from Pitchcott, come off at the next junction and stop somewhere safe rather than pressing on.
Mileage matters: every mile carries the AdBlue further into your system, and so heading for Milton Keynes, under 15 miles away, makes a far larger job than hopping across Pitchcott to the car park by All Saints. About how far it had come is worth telling us.
There's more to clean out once the motor has been started, and our engineers do all of it where the car has stopped. When it's noticed early, long-term damage is very uncommon.
What emptying AdBlue from a diesel involves in Pitchcott
Our technicians come to your car, wherever it has stopped in Pitchcott: a side street close to Village Hall, a drive, a lay-by or a forecourt. Three answers shape the work, so first our technicians ask what went in, about what quantity, and whether the engine has turned over.
On the spot, that tank is then drained, and all of the contaminated diesel and the urea come out as one. The system is flushed thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, because what it leaves behind does not rinse out on its own. Testing the vehicle comes last, after clean diesel is added and the fuel filter gets flushed or, if necessary, swapped. The majority of these jobs are a half-hour job once our technicians turn up, provided the motor has not run. The pumps are explosion-proof, fine on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark.
Priming the system with new diesel comes at the end. You head off as soon as our engineers have started it, and it makes no difference whether the vehicle is on a drive around Pitchcott or in a bay at Aylesbury Vale Parkway. We confirm it runs correctly on clean diesel before we go. The whole job is done where the vehicle is, so it never needs to go to a garage. You receive a VAT invoice and an engineer report later on, which is what insurers want.
About Pitchcott and where it is
Pitchcott is a small hamlet in Buckinghamshire, situated in the inland countryside of the South East region. Pitchcott sits at an elevation of around 137 metres, approximately 40 miles from London and 13 miles from Milton Keynes. Pitchcott is surrounded by nearby places such as Oving, Hunters Yard, and North Marston, and is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock. Pitchcott has a population of around 534 residents.
AdBlue drains in Pitchcott and across Buckinghamshire
Throughout the HP postcode area, the teams taking AdBlue jobs in Pitchcott serve much of Buckinghamshire as well, Oving, Hunters Yard and North Marston included. Near a border, or anywhere tricky to explain? Checking beats guessing, and so phone.
Pitchcott is a rural hamlet, and a call-out drain suits it: whether your car is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, our engineers drain it where it sits, and so it never needs to be shifted to us.
What does AdBlue in a diesel tank cost to sort out around Pitchcott?
Every job differs, and so no single price is fair. Three things shift the price: whether the engine has been running and for how long, how much AdBlue went in, and where the vehicle is. That last one comes down to whether a van can get to it safely, and an open drive is simpler than a tight gap behind Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
For that in mind, every enquiry from Pitchcott begins by asking the same trio — what went in, how much, if it ran — ahead of any figure. With them, the range shrinks to one firm figure.
The price is given on the call, before anyone sets off; settling up happens on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Look at your policy whilst we're on the way: many carry misfuelling cover.
In Pitchcott and still alongside your car?
Not touching your car is, right now, the most useful thing open to you. Ignition off, motor off, keys out. Petrol in Diesel takes over the rest, across Pitchcott or wherever in Buckinghamshire, after you phone 0333 366 0103 to say it was AdBlue, roughly what quantity, and if the engine ran.