AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Trewoon? Don't Start It
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, the ignition remains off and so does your engine. AdBlue is urea dissolved in water. The trouble starts once it is sucked through your lines — it will not ignite, and it won't blend with diesel. Caught before your engine has run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the car is in Trewoon. Before you do anything else, ring 0333 366 0103.
What to do straight away, Trewoon: AdBlue in your diesel tank
Do these:
- Remove the keys, and that prevents someone turning the power on.
- Hazards on, if moving traffic is at all near.
- So you can tell us which liquid it was and roughly what quantity, keep the till receipt or the empty bottle.
- Call just where you are. Say a PL25 5 postcode or the closest street sign, and nobody has to search for you.
Things not to do:
- Not even for a second, and not to roll the car: your engine remains off.
- Don't switch the ignition on. On many diesels that alone runs the fuel pump.
- Do not top up with diesel to dilute it. AdBlue does not dilute in diesel; it separates out.
- Leave the car where it is instead of driving it anywhere, even a short way up Tye Hill Close.
- Don't try to drain the car yourself by the kerbside.
The attendants working at any Trewoon filling station — the EG On the Go included — will normally help pushing it aside if you ask. On the drive, your car remains just where it was left.
AdBlue in a diesel tank, and what it does there
The engine is not what AdBlue is made for; your exhaust is. From a dedicated reservoir it goes directly to the exhaust, treating what your engine emits. Nothing in an injection pump is made for this fluid — and none of that was intended to go through one.
Tipped in with your diesel, it keeps separate rather than blending — quite different from fuel. Denser than diesel, it drops and pools below it — the very place the intake sucks from. Simplest of all: one that had AdBlue in Trelowth overnight and has not been started since. The AdBlue waits at the base of the tank, untouched — though it will be first through if your engine runs, before any diesel at all.
It causes two kinds of harm from there. Crystals and corrosion. As the water evaporates, it leaves urea that hardens in filter elements and tiny channels; meanwhile, because it eats at certain metals, every part it touches suffers for as long as it stays in there. By daybreak, a car sitting around Trewoon with AdBlue through its pipework grows worse; where it's only inside your tank, nothing changes. The water in it causes damage of its own: the high-pressure fuel pump and your injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
Why AdBlue in a diesel is regularly more serious than petrol
An issue of thinned fuel is what you end up with from filling a diesel with petrol at the Texaco. Blended into your diesel and left still, it is harmless for now; running the motor does the damage.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the liquid itself is plainly the wrong one. Not burning, it cannot just be run through. Nor can it be watered down, since it separates again — and the next fill won't clear away deposits or corrosion. So the flush counts for more here, and trying the engine "to see", in the heart of Trewoon or out in Lanjeth, costs more than almost any other slip.
The good news is the same as with petrol. Never started? Then the AdBlue waits only in your tank, the easiest section of the whole system to clear, anywhere your vehicle has come to rest in Cornwall.
AdBlue in a diesel tank in Trewoon: how it ends up there
In dim light, two caps together — the AdBlue one and the diesel cap, occasionally behind a single flap — may appear the same. Nobody intends it; plenty of designs invite it. A bottle picked up when heading home and poured in at home, rather than at the filling station, is the usual story.
A couple of familiar ways cover most cases. Rushing, outside St Mewan Community Primary School, after a warning lamp flashed on during the school run, a parent tops up the vehicle. In the evening, a container is tipped in on a drive near Cooperage Road. Or someone new to that flap tops up the car in dim light, stopped in the car park by The White Pyramid.
It crops up the most in a rental, a brand-new vehicle, a company motor, or the other motor of a family with one of each fuels — the vehicles drivers use the least. Wherever you're around Trewoon or the rest of Cornwall, it's the same slip and the same first answer: leave the car off.
Trewoon: started your engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank?
The AdBlue has left that tank, then. It has been sucked through the fuel filter and the fuel lines, and if the engine ran for any time, it has got to the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors.
You may notice your motor running roughly, smoking, losing power, showing warning lights or cutting out, perhaps on the way back from Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Garden or halfway across Trewoon. No restarting to check: stop when it is safe, then turn everything off. With each start, more of it is pulled through.
Trewoon lies over 50 miles from the M5; if you were on it, exit by the next junction and stop somewhere safe rather than driving on.
How far it went matters. A few hundred yards across Trewoon to the car park by Trewoon Village Hall is a very different job from a run towards Truro, under 15 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into the system with each mile. Tell us roughly how far it had come.
Our technicians do all of the rinsing where your car has stopped, and once your engine has been started there is more of it. Very rarely does it leave permanent damage when it is caught soon.
Trewoon: how AdBlue is cleared from a diesel
Anywhere it has stopped in Trewoon — a filling station, a layby, a drive, a street by Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses — our van comes to your car. Three answers decide the work, so before anything else our technicians ask which fluid got in, roughly the amount, and if your motor has run.
Right there, your tank is then emptied, and both the contaminated diesel and the urea come out as one. With AdBlue, more so than with petrol, the flush matters: the whole system is cleaned all the way through since residue won't flush out by itself. Testing your car comes at the end, once clean diesel goes in and the filter is flushed or, where needed, replaced. Most of these jobs are a half-hour visit once our technicians turn up, provided your motor hasn't run. Quiet enough for use outside a house at night, and fine on a busy forecourt, our pumps are explosion-proof.
Priming the system with fresh diesel comes at the end. You drive off as soon as our technicians have fired it up, and it makes no difference whether the vehicle is on a drive in Trewoon or in a bay at St Austell. It is checked on clean diesel to be sure it runs smoothly before we head off. No workshop is needed at any point, with the entire job done then and there. At the end, you are given the paperwork for your insurer: a VAT invoice plus a report from the engineer.
About Trewoon
Trewoon is a small village in Cornwall, situated near the coast and approximately 11.5 miles from Truro. Trewoon sits at an elevation of around 102 metres, overlooking the surrounding countryside. Trewoon is characterised by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its rural setting. Trewoon is close to nearby places such as St Mewan, Hornick, and St Austell, and is about 219.6 miles west of London.
AdBlue drains across Trewoon and Cornwall
Over the PL postcode area, the teams answering AdBlue call-outs around Trewoon reach most of Cornwall as well, St Mewan, Hornick and St Austell among them. Guessing won't help by a county line or anywhere hard to pin down; phone and ask.
Trewoon is a coastal village, and a mobile drain suits it: whether the car is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, our technicians drain it where it sits, so it never needs to be moved to us.
Trewoon: what AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to fix
Every job is different, and so no fixed price is fair. The price moves first with how long, if at all, the engine has been running, and next with the amount of AdBlue that was put in. After that it depends on 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 Saint Mewan Church.
For that reason, each call from Trewoon begins by asking the same trio — what went in, what quantity, if the engine ran — before a quote. Those replies turn a range into a straight quote.
You get that quote on the phone, before anyone sets off, and you pay on the day, by card or over the phone, with nothing upfront. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it's worth checking yours whilst we're on the way.
Trewoon: still alongside the vehicle?
Then, do nothing — that's the most helpful step there is. Engine off, keys out, ignition off. Call 0333 366 0103 then tell us it is AdBlue, about how much, and if it's run. Petrol in Diesel takes it from there, around Trewoon or anywhere across Cornwall.