Sole Street: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
AdBlue in the diesel tank? Then keep the motor off — and your ignition as well. Urea mixed in water is all AdBlue is. The harm starts once it's sucked through the lines — it will not burn, and it won't combine with diesel. Caught before the engine has been run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is around Sole Street. No step comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
Your next steps straight away, Sole Street: AdBlue in the diesel tank
To do:
- Take your keys out, and so no one switches the ignition on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is at all close.
- The empty bottle or the till receipt shows us the fluid and the amount, and so don't throw it away.
- Call right where you are. Say a DA12 3 postcode or the closest street sign, and no one has to search for you.
Things not to do:
- Not even for a second, and not to roll your vehicle: the engine remains off.
- Your ignition stays off: on many diesels, switching it on is enough to run your pump.
- No extra fuel on top. The AdBlue won't blend, and so it is pointless.
- Any driving at all is to be avoided, including a short way up Green Lands.
- Beside the road, do not try emptying it on your own.
Rolling your car away from the pumps is a job for staff to help with, whichever Sole Street forecourt you are on, the Esso included. If you are on your own drive, leave the vehicle precisely where it stands.
What does AdBlue do in a diesel tank?
The engine isn't what AdBlue is made for; your exhaust is. From a dedicated tank it is fed straight to your exhaust, cleaning what your motor emits. A fuel pump isn't made to take it, and AdBlue was never supposed to travel through one.
Poured in with the diesel, it keeps apart instead of blending — entirely unlike fuel. Denser than diesel, it drops and pools underneath it — the very spot the intake sucks from. The first thing your fuel system pulls through, after it runs, is the AdBlue. So a motor that had AdBlue poured in on a drive in Henley Street last night, and has not been started since, is still the easy case: the AdBlue is lying at the bottom of your tank, and nothing has drawn it in.
It does two kinds of damage 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 working on the components it gets to for as long as it remains there. By daybreak, a car sitting around Sole Street with AdBlue through its pipework gets worse; where it is only in your tank, it doesn't. Diesel lubricates the high-pressure pump and each injector as it flows; water gives no lubrication, and that is a separate kind of harm.
AdBlue in a diesel: why it's often worse than petrol
Fill a diesel with petrol by mistake at the Shell, and this issue is thinned fuel. Mixed into your diesel and sitting unused, it is no threat for now; using your engine is the damage.
AdBlue in a diesel is an issue of the wrong substance altogether. It cannot simply be run through, since it doesn't burn. Nor can it be thinned, because it splits back out — and the following fill won't clear away deposits or corrosion. So the flush matters more here, and trying the engine "to see", in the heart of Sole Street or out in Hook Green, costs more than almost any other mistake.
As with petrol, there's good news. Emptying a tank is the easiest job on any fuel system, and with no running, the AdBlue stays in there — anywhere around Kent the vehicle has stopped.
Sole Street: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
It's not deliberate. Many cars keep the AdBlue cap alongside the diesel inlet, now and then behind one flap, and muddling them up is easy after dark. Mostly it happens with a bottle bought on the way home and poured in on the driveway, not at the forecourt.
It tends to take place in a few familiar ways. The top-up is hurried outside Cobham Primary School, after your dash lit up with a warning while the children were dropped in. Close to Scratton Fields, a driver tips a bottle in at home in the evening. Else, after dark outside The Railway Inn, the vehicle is topped up by someone using that flap for the first time.
It occurs most in the vehicles people know least: a hire car, a new motor, a company car, or the second motor of a household with one diesel and one petrol. Same mistake, an identical first response — leave it off — anywhere you are in Sole Street or the rest of Kent.
Started your engine with AdBlue in your diesel tank around Sole Street?
Then the AdBlue has left that tank. The fuel filter and pipework have had it pulled through, and any running carries it on to the injection pump and each injector.
Maybe coming back from Camer Park, or part way across Sole Street, your engine may run rough, smoke, drop pace, light up your dash or cut out. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and do not restart the vehicle to check. Each start pulls more of that through.
On the M2, under 3 miles from Sole Street, the next junction is where to exit, and anywhere sensible is where to stop — not driving on.
How far it went counts. A couple of hundred yards across Sole Street to the car park by St Mary's Room, Sole Street is a very different job from a run towards Southend-on-Sea, under 25 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into your system with every mile. Tell us roughly how far it had come.
Once your engine has been run, the flush includes more, and all of it is done where your car has come to a stop. When it is noticed early, lasting damage is very rare.
Sole Street: how AdBlue is drained from a diesel
The vehicle stays where it is, whether that's a street near St Mary Magdalene, a drive, a layby or a forecourt in Sole Street, and the van travels to it. Before anything else our technicians ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether the motor has been run, because those answers settle the work.
Next, draining that tank on the spot takes out the contaminated diesel along with the AdBlue together. A careful flush matters far more after AdBlue than after petrol, since what remains will not wash out by itself. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; clean diesel goes in; and your car is tested. Most of these jobs are a half-hour job once our technicians arrive, provided the motor has not run. The pumping gear is explosion-proof, so a busy filling station is no fault, and it is quiet enough for a residential street late at night.
Last, your system is bled with fresh diesel. Firing it up comes next, and then you set off from where the car is parked, outside the nearest station or on a driveway in Sole Street. The test before our engineers head off is that it runs correctly on fresh diesel. No workshop is needed at any point, with the whole job done on the spot. Insurers want a VAT invoice and an engineer report, and both come at the end.
About Sole Street and where it is
Sole Street is a small village in Kent, situated inland at an elevation of around 94 metres, and is located near the villages of Camer, Gold Street, and Round Street. Sole Street has a population of approximately 665 residents and is characterised by predominantly detached housing. Sole Street is within commuting distance of London, being around 23.5 miles from the capital, and is also close to the city of Southend-on-Sea, which is 17.9 miles away.
Sole Street and Kent: AdBlue drains across the area
The vans that answer AdBlue call-outs around Sole Street also cover the spots around it, Camer, Gold Street and Round Street among them, and most of Kent beyond, across the DA postcode area. If you're close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, ring and ask instead of assuming.
Sole Street is a rural village, and an on-site drain suits it: whether the vehicle is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, we drain it where it is, and so it never needs to be moved to us.
What does AdBlue in a diesel tank cost to sort out around Sole Street?
There's no fair single quote, since the jobs aren't the same. The cost moves first with how long, if at all, your engine has been running, and next with the amount of AdBlue that went in. After that it turns on where the vehicle is and whether our van can reach it safely, which is simpler on an open driveway than in a tight spot behind Meadow Rooms.
With that in mind, every call from Sole Street begins by asking the same trio — what went in, what quantity, if the engine ran — before a figure. With those replies, a range shrinks to a single firm figure.
The quote is given during the call, before a van leaves; payment happens on the day, by card or by phone, with nothing upfront. Misfuelling cover is part of many insurance policies, so it is worth looking at yours before the van gets there.
Still beside the vehicle in Sole Street?
Not touching your car is, then, the most useful move you can do. Keys out, engine off, ignition off. Petrol in Diesel handles the rest, across Sole Street or anywhere within Kent, once you call 0333 366 0103 saying it was AdBlue, roughly how big an amount, and whether it ran.