St Day: AdBlue in the Diesel Tank? Leave It Off
If AdBlue has gone into the diesel tank, leave the engine off then leave your ignition off. Water with urea dissolved in it: that is AdBlue. Unlike fuel, it neither burns nor mixes, and no harm starts until your engine pulls it round. If your motor hasn't run yet, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally emptied and carefully flushed where your car stands in St Day. Nothing comes before calling 0333 366 0103.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in your diesel tank around St Day
Do these:
- Remove the keys, which stops anyone turning the electrics on.
- Near moving traffic? Then put the hazard lights on.
- Hold on to the till receipt or the empty bottle, and so you can tell us what got in and roughly how much.
- Call just where you are. Say a TR16 5 postcode or the nearest street name, and nobody has to search for you.
Things not to do:
- No starting your motor — not for a second, not to shift the car.
- Turning your key to ignition by itself sets your pump going on many diesels. Avoid it.
- No more fuel on top. The AdBlue will not mix, and so it is wasted.
- Leave the car where it is instead of driving it anywhere, even a short stretch along Telegraph Street.
- No draining it yourself, either, at the roadside.
At a forecourt in St Day, whether it is the Texaco or another one, ask the staff to help you roll your car clear of the pump. If you are on your own drive, leave the vehicle exactly where it stands.
What does AdBlue do in a diesel tank?
Made for your exhaust, AdBlue has no place in your engine. Its own tank keeps it, and from there it is fed into your exhaust, where it cleans the gas. A fuel pump isn't made to cope with it, and AdBlue was never supposed to travel through one.
Inside a diesel tank it behaves very differently from fuel. It doesn't mix in. It drops, since it is denser than diesel, and settles down where the pickup draws its supply from. When the system runs, the AdBlue is first to be pulled through. Before then it waits underneath your diesel, which is how a vehicle filled in Crofthandy last night and not started remains the simple one, as long as nobody touches your key.
After it's drawn in, the damage takes two forms. 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 parts it hits for as long as it remains there. Where the AdBlue is in the pipework, waiting overnight in St Day makes it worse. Inside that tank alone, time does nothing. Diesel protects the injection pump and each injector as it passes; water gives none of that, and that is a separate kind of harm.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is frequently more major than petrol
Fill a diesel with petrol in error over at the Shell, and this problem is thinned fuel. Blended into the diesel and sitting unused, it is harmless for now; using your engine does the damage.
AdBlue in a diesel is an issue of the wrong substance altogether. Not burning, it can't simply be run through. It doesn't stay mixed, and so it cannot be thinned. And crystals and corrosion don't wash out with the next tank of fuel. That's why the flush matters more with AdBlue than with petrol, and why starting the motor "to see" costs more here than almost anywhere else, whether the car is in Lower Ninnis or the middle of St Day.
The good news is the same as with petrol. If your engine hasn't run, the AdBlue is still inside the tank, and the tank is the quickest part of a fuel system to clear, wherever in Cornwall the car is sitting.
How does AdBlue end up in a diesel tank around St Day?
It's not on purpose. Plenty of cars keep the AdBlue cap beside the diesel one, occasionally behind one flap, and muddling them up is easy after dark. It mostly happens at home, from a bottle bought on the journey home, not at the filling station.
The ways it happens are few and familiar. Hurrying, outside St Day and Carharrack Community School, after a warning lamp flashed on during the school run, someone refills the vehicle. Near Fore Street, someone tips a container in on the drive after work. Or someone unfamiliar with that flap tops up the car in dim light, parked in the car park outside St Day Inn.
It happens most in the motors drivers know least: a hire car, a new car, a company car, or the second vehicle of a household with one diesel and one petrol. Anywhere around Cornwall, St Day as well, the mistake doesn't change, and neither does the first response: keep it switched off.
St Day: started the engine with AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Then the AdBlue has left your tank. Through the filter, through the pipework, and — given any running — on to the injection pump and each injector: that is where it travels.
Maybe coming back from Wheal Jewel Playing Field, or part way across St Day, your motor may go lumpy, smoke, lose power, flash your dash or cut out. When safe, pull over and turn it off — with no restarting to test. Each start pulls more of that through.
Exit the M5, over 50 miles from St Day, at the next junction and stop safely, rather than carrying on.
A quick hop across St Day to the car park by St Day Community Centre is one matter; driving towards Truro, under 10 miles away, is another, because every mile carries the AdBlue deeper in. So distance counts. Roughly how far it had come is worth telling us.
Once the engine has been started, the flush takes in more, and all of it is done where your car has ended up. Long-term damage is very rare when it's noticed early.
Emptying AdBlue in a diesel around St Day: what it takes
A road by Holy Trinity Parish Church, St. Day, a drive, a lay-by or a filling station: wherever your car has come to rest around St Day, our technicians come to it. The work depends on three answers, and our technicians ask for first — what went in, the quantity, and whether the motor has turned over.
On the spot, the tank is then emptied, and all of the contaminated diesel and the urea come out as one. The fuel system is flushed thoroughly, which matters more with AdBlue than with petrol, since what it leaves behind does not rinse out on its own. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the car is tested. If your motor has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once our engineers arrive. Explosion-proof pumps make a live forecourt sensible to work on, and they're quiet enough to spare the street at night.
New diesel goes in to bleed the fuel system, and that is the final step. Whether it's a parking bay by Redruth or a driveway in St Day, that is where our technicians fire it up and you drive off. It's tested on fresh diesel to confirm it runs correctly before we go. The entire job is done where your car is, so it never needs to go to a workshop. You receive a VAT invoice and an engineer report later on, which is what insurers want.
About St Day and where it is
St Day is a village in Cornwall, situated inland at an elevation of 129 metres, approximately 6 miles from the city of Truro. St Day has a population of around 1432 people, with a predominance of terraced housing. St Day is surrounded by other small settlements, including Tolcarne, Vogue, and Tolgullow, in the Cornish countryside. St Day is located about 237 miles west of London, in the South West region of England.
AdBlue drains across Cornwall, St Day included
AdBlue call-outs around St Day go to teams that cover the places around it — Tolcarne, Vogue as well as Tolgullow — and much of Cornwall further out, across TR postcodes. Assuming won't help close to a border or somewhere hard to describe; phone and check.
No moving is needed. In St Day, a rural village, a mobile service works: your vehicle is emptied where it stands, whether on a driveway, a side street, a car park or a forecourt.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right in St Day
Because the jobs differ, a single price wouldn't be fair. The price moves first with how long, if at all, the engine has been running, and next with the amount of AdBlue that went in. After that it depends on where the car is and whether a van can reach it safely, which is easier on an open drive than in a tight spot behind St Day Methodist Church.
Ahead of a quote, never after, each call from St Day begins with the same three checks: the fuel, the amount, plus if it ran. Those answers turn a range into a straight quote.
Before anyone heads out, you hear the price on the phone. Then you pay on the day, card or by phone, with nothing in advance. As the van is travelling, check your insurance: many include misfuelling.
Beside the car around St Day, right now?
Then, touch nothing — that's the best move available. Ignition off, engine off, keys out. Petrol in Diesel takes over the rest, across St Day or anywhere in Cornwall, after you call 0333 366 0103 saying it's AdBlue, about what quantity, and whether it ran.