AdBlue in the Diesel Tank in Sheerness? Keep It Switched Off
With AdBlue in the diesel tank, your ignition remains off and so does your engine. Urea mixed in water is all AdBlue is. Not like fuel, it neither ignites nor mixes, and no harm starts until your motor pulls it round. A drain and a thorough flush, done where your car is in Sheerness, is normally all AdBlue in a diesel tank takes — if it's caught before your engine has been run. Before you do anything else, ring 0333 366 0103.
Your next steps right now, Sheerness: AdBlue in your diesel tank
Do:
- Keys out — then nobody can power anything on.
- Put the hazard lights on if you're at all close to moving traffic.
- Which fluid, and roughly what volume? Save the bottle or the receipt, and our technicians will know.
- Ring just where you are. Say a ME12 1 postcode or the closest street name, and no one has to search for you.
Things not to do:
- No starting your motor — not briefly, not to reposition the vehicle.
- Plenty of diesels run their fuel pump the moment the ignition goes on, so keep the car off.
- AdBlue doesn't dilute in diesel — it separates out — so adding more diesel won't weaken it.
- Even a short stretch down Clock Tower Crescent is too far to drive it.
- Emptying your tank yourself beside the road isn't worth trying.
Moving the car away from the island is a job for attendants to help with, wherever Sheerness forecourt you're on, the Tesco included. If you are on your own drive, leave the car just where it stands.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
AdBlue is made for your exhaust, not your motor. Its own reservoir keeps it, and from there it is sprayed into the exhaust, where it cleans the gas. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is built to handle it.
Inside a diesel tank it acts very differently from fuel. It doesn't mix in. The intake takes fuel from the lowest part of the tank, and that's exactly where AdBlue settles: being denser than diesel, it sinks. A vehicle filled on a drive in West Minster yesterday evening and left unstarted counts as the straightforward case. No pump has sucked the AdBlue up yet — though once your motor turns, that's what is pulled first, straight from the bottom of your tank.
Two kinds of harm come from there. As its water goes, the urea left behind crystallises, and the crystals block filters and settle in fine passages. And it is corrosive to some of the metals a fuel system is made from, and so it keeps working on the components it gets to for as long as it stays there. Pipes holding AdBlue spell damage overnight for a car parked around Sheerness. Just in your tank, it stays stable. Diesel lubricates the high-pressure pump and every injector as it flows; water gives no lubrication, and that is a separate kind of harm.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is frequently more significant than petrol
Petrol pumped into a diesel on Shell's forecourt makes your fuel watery — that's the whole problem. No damage comes as long as it sits unused, blended into your diesel — only once your engine works on it.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the fluid itself is simply the wrong one. Since it does not burn, running it through isn't an option. Whether your car sits in Halfway Houses or the centre of Sheerness, turning it over "to see" does more harm in this case than almost any other mistake, and the flush matters more. The reasons: it won't remain mixed, so diluting it is impossible; and crystals and corrosion outlast the following fill.
The good news is the same as with petrol. If your motor hasn't run, the AdBlue is still inside your tank, and your tank is the simplest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever in Kent the car is standing.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank around Sheerness?
It's not on purpose. Plenty of vehicles have the AdBlue cap alongside the diesel inlet, occasionally under one flap, and mixing them up is simple in poor light. It mostly happens at home, from a container bought on the journey home, not at the forecourt.
It tends to occur in a few familiar ways. A warning light comes on during the school run, and the top-up occurs in a hurry outside Rose Street Primary School. A driver pours the container in outside their house, right off High Street, as the day ends. Or your car is topped up in the car park outside The Belle And Lion, in poor light, by someone who has never opened that flap before.
It occurs most in the motors motorists know least: a hire car, a new vehicle, a company car, or the second vehicle of a household with one diesel and one petrol. Leave it off: that is the first response to the same slip, anywhere around Sheerness or the rest of Kent you are.
Already started your engine with AdBlue in your diesel tank in Sheerness?
Then the tank is no longer where the AdBlue is. The filter and pipework have had it sucked through, and some running time takes it on to the high-pressure pump and every injector.
Maybe returning from Vincent Gardens, or midway across Sheerness, the motor may go lumpy, smoke, lose pace, light up the dash or stall. No starting it again to check: pull over when safe, then switch everything off. With each start, more of it is pulled through.
If you were on the M2, under 10 miles from Sheerness, come off at the next exit and stop somewhere safe instead of pressing on.
A quick hop across Sheerness to the car park by The Church in Hope Street is one matter; heading for Southend-on-Sea, under 10 miles away, is something else, since each mile carries the AdBlue further in. So distance counts. Roughly how far had it come? Tell us.
Once the engine has been started, the flush includes more, and all of it is done where the vehicle has come to a stop. When it is spotted early, long-term damage is very unusual.
What clearing AdBlue from a diesel involves around Sheerness
A road by Holy Trinity Church Hall, a drive, a lay-by or a filling station: wherever the car has come to rest in Sheerness, our engineers come to it. The job rests on three answers, and our engineers get before all else — which fluid went in, the quantity, and if the motor has run.
Right there, the tank is then emptied, and all of the contaminated diesel and the urea come out as one. A careful flush counts much more after AdBlue than with petrol, because what remains will not clear away on its own. A test of your vehicle comes last, once fresh diesel goes in and the filter gets cleaned or, where needed, replaced. If your engine has not run, the majority of jobs take about half an hour once we arrive. Explosion-proof pumps make a busy forecourt sensible to work on, and they're quiet enough to spare the neighbours at night.
Lastly, your system is bled with clean diesel. Whether it's a parking bay at Sheerness-On-Sea or a drive in Sheerness, that is where we start the engine and you drive off. Before we go, our engineers check it is running correctly with clean diesel in. Since the job is done in full where the car is, a workshop never comes into it. You receive a VAT invoice and an engineer report after that, which is what insurers ask for.
About Sheerness
Sheerness is a coastal town in Kent, situated on the Isle of Sheppey, with a low elevation of around 5 metres above sea level. Sheerness is located near the mouth of the Medway Estuary, close to the nearby settlements of Mile Town, Marine Town, and Blue Town. Sheerness has a mix of housing types, but is predominantly characterised by terraced homes. Sheerness is also within commuting distance of London, approximately 38.6 miles away, and is close to the city of Southend-on-Sea, which is 7.3 miles away.
Sheerness and Kent: AdBlue drains across the area
Our teams that answer AdBlue jobs around Sheerness also cover the locations around it, Mile Town, Marine Town and Blue Town among them, and most of Kent beyond, across the ME postcode area. Guessing won't help close to a county line or somewhere hard to pin down; phone and ask.
A mobile service fits Sheerness, a coastal town: you have no need to take your car to us, because we drain it on the spot, on a drive, a side street, a car park or a forecourt.
AdBlue in a diesel tank around Sheerness: the cost of fixing it
Not one single price could be honest, because each job differs. What moves the cost is, firstly, whether your engine has run and for how long; then how much AdBlue got in; and finally where the car is and whether a technician can reach it safely, which is simpler on an open driveway than in a tight spot behind Holy Trinity Church.
For that reason, every call from Sheerness begins with the identical trio — which fluid got in, what quantity, whether it ran — before any figure. Those answers narrow the range down to a single number.
Before a van sets off, you hear the price by phone. And payment is on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing in advance. Check your policy while we're on the way: plenty include misfuelling cover.
Sheerness: still alongside the car?
Then the most helpful thing you can do is nothing to your car. Keys out; engine and ignition off. Petrol in Diesel handles the rest, in Sheerness or anywhere within Kent, once you phone 0333 366 0103 saying it was AdBlue, about what quantity, and if it ran.