Rowlands Castle: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
AdBlue in your diesel tank? Then keep the motor off — and the ignition too. Water with urea dissolved in it: that's AdBlue. Being water-based, it won't ignite and won't blend with diesel; trouble only starts when your pump starts drawing it. If the motor hasn't run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally drained and carefully purged where your car sits around Rowlands Castle. Nothing comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
Rowlands Castle, AdBlue in your diesel tank: what to do at once
Do:
- Pocket your keys, and that stops anyone switching the power on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is anywhere close.
- The empty bottle or the receipt shows us the product and the quantity, so do not throw it out.
- Call us from where you are. A postcode starting PO9 6, or the name of the nearest street, brings our van to you without a search.
Not to do:
- Do not start your motor, even for a moment to shift the vehicle.
- Many diesels run their fuel pump the instant the ignition goes on, and so keep it off.
- Adding more diesel does not help: AdBlue settles out instead of thinning.
- Even a short way up Redhill Road is too far to drive the car.
- Emptying your tank yourself by the road isn't worth trying.
The attendants on duty at any Rowlands Castle filling station — the Shell among them — will usually lend a hand pushing it aside if you ask. If you're on your own drive, leave the car exactly where it is.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
Made for your exhaust, AdBlue has no place in the motor. From a separate reservoir it goes straight to your exhaust, treating what the motor emits. Nothing inside an injection pump is made for this liquid — and no part of it was meant to go that way.
Tipped in with the diesel, it stays apart rather than mixing — entirely different from fuel. Heavier than diesel, it drops and pools below it — the same place the pickup draws from. The first thing the system pulls through, after it runs, is the AdBlue. So a vehicle that had AdBlue poured in on a drive in Stubbermere last night, and has not been started since, is still the straightforward case: the AdBlue is lying at the bottom of that tank, and nothing has sucked it in.
After it is pulled in, the harm comes in two forms. Crystals and corrosion. As the water evaporates, it strands urea that hardens in filter elements and narrow passages; and, because it attacks some metals, each part it reaches suffers for as long as it stays in there. Overnight, a vehicle parked around Rowlands Castle with AdBlue through its pipework gets worse; where it is only in that tank, it doesn't. Water protects nothing. The injection pump and every injector need diesel flowing past them, so the water part harms them by itself.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is commonly more major than petrol
Petrol pumped into a diesel on Morrisons's forecourt leaves the fuel thin — that is the main problem. Blended through the diesel and left still, it is harmless at that stage; running your motor does the damage.
AdBlue in a diesel is a problem of the wrong substance altogether. It doesn't burn, and so it can't simply be run through. Whether your car sits in West Leigh or the heart of Rowlands Castle, firing it up "to see" does more harm with AdBlue than almost any other slip, and the flush matters for more. The reasons: it will not stay blended, so diluting it is impossible; and deposits and corrosion outlast the following tankful.
The same good news holds as with petrol. Wherever around Hampshire your vehicle has stopped, an unrun engine leaves the AdBlue still inside the tank: the easiest part of a fuel system to clear.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Rowlands Castle: how it ends up there
After dark, two caps side by side — the AdBlue cap and the diesel cap, now and then under a single flap — can appear the same. No one intends it; plenty of layouts invite it. Usually it's never the forecourt: someone picks up a bottle driving home and tips it in at home.
Mostly, it occurs in one of a couple of familiar ways. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up occurs in a hurry outside Rowlands Castle St John's Church of England Controlled Primary School. A bottle is poured in at the end of the day on a drive just off The Green. Otherwise, after dark by The Robin Hood, your car is topped up by someone opening that flap for the first time.
It takes place most in the cars drivers know least: a hire car, a new motor, a company car, or the second vehicle of a household with one diesel and one petrol. Keep it switched off: that's the first response to the same slip, anywhere around Rowlands Castle or the rest of Hampshire you are.
Started your engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank in Rowlands Castle?
In that case, the AdBlue is no longer inside that tank. With any running time, it travels to the injection pump and every injector, having passed via your filter and lines.
Expect rough running, exhaust smoke, falling power, lights on your dash, or a cut-out — returning from RLC1 Land at Deerleap (north), perhaps, or midway across Rowlands Castle. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and do not restart the vehicle to check. Each start pulls more of it through.
Exit the Waterlooville Bypass, under 3 miles from Rowlands Castle, by the next junction and park safely, not carrying on.
How far it went matters. A few hundred yards across Rowlands Castle to the car park by Deerleap is a very different job from a run towards Chichester, under 10 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the system with every mile. Roughly how far had it come? Tell us.
We do all of the cleaning where the car has come to a stop, and once the engine has run there is more of it. Lasting damage is very rare when it's noticed quickly.
Emptying AdBlue in a diesel in Rowlands Castle: what it takes
The car stays put, whether that is a road beside Rowlands Castle (remains), a driveway, a layby or a forecourt around Rowlands Castle, and our van travels to it. Three answers shape the job, so first our technicians ask which fluid went in, about the amount, plus if your engine has run.
Right there, your tank is then drained, and all of the polluted diesel and the urea leave at once. With AdBlue, more so than with petrol, flushing counts: the whole system is flushed right through since residue will not wash out unaided. Fresh diesel goes in after the filter is flushed — or swapped, if it needs to be — and then the vehicle is tested. If your engine hasn't run, most jobs take about half an hour once we are there. Explosion-proof pumps mean a live forecourt safe to work on, and they're quiet enough not to disturb the street at night.
The last step is to bleed the system on fresh diesel. Whether it's a parking bay by the nearest station or a driveway in Rowlands Castle, that is where we start it and you drive off. Before we leave, we check it's running correctly with clean diesel in. The entire job is done where the car is, so it never needs to be taken to a workshop. At the end, you are given paperwork for your insurer: a VAT invoice and a written report from the engineer.
About Rowlands Castle, briefly
Rowlands Castle is a village situated in a riverside setting in Hampshire, with an elevation of 34 metres above sea level. Rowlands Castle lies near the cities of Chichester and Portsmouth, and is surrounded by smaller settlements such as Durrants and Finchdean. Rowlands Castle has a population of approximately 768 residents, who mostly live in detached houses. Rowlands Castle is located about 55 miles from London, making it a relatively rural community in the South East region.
AdBlue drains across Rowlands Castle and Hampshire
AdBlue jobs in Rowlands Castle are passed to vans that cover the towns around it — Durrants, Finchdean as well as Deanlane End — and much of Hampshire further out, throughout PO postcodes. Ring and ask rather than guess when you are by a county line, or somewhere awkward to pin down.
Anywhere your vehicle sits — your drive at home, a residential street, a car park, a forecourt — our engineers empty it there, with no need to take it to us; which suits Rowlands Castle, a village, well.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right in Rowlands Castle
There's no honest single price, because the jobs aren't the same. The cost shifts first with how long, if at all, the motor has been running, and next with the amount of AdBlue that was put in. After that it rests on where the car is and whether a technician can reach it safely, which is easier on an open drive than in a tight gap behind Rowlands Castle Parish Hall.
Which fluid went in, what quantity, and if the engine ran: every Rowlands Castle call opens with precisely those, ahead of any quote, not afterwards. Those answers shrink the range right down to one number.
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, so it's worth checking yours while we're on the way.
In Rowlands Castle and still next to your car?
Leaving the vehicle alone is, then, the best thing you can do. Motor off, keys out, ignition off. Ring 0333 366 0103: AdBlue, roughly how much, and whether it ran are all our technicians need. Petrol in Diesel handles the remainder across Hampshire, Rowlands Castle too.