AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Wivenhoe? Don't Start It
With AdBlue in your diesel tank, your ignition stays off and so does the motor. Water with urea mixed in it: that's AdBlue. The trouble starts once it's pulled through the lines — it won't ignite, and it won't combine with diesel. Caught before your motor has run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is generally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Wivenhoe. Nothing comes before ringing 0333 366 0103.
AdBlue in your diesel tank around Wivenhoe: the first few minutes
Do these:
- So no one can switch the ignition on, take your keys out.
- If you are at all near moving traffic, put the hazard lights on.
- So you can give us which fluid it was and roughly how much, keep your receipt or the empty bottle.
- The van locates you fastest with a postcode starting CO7 9, or just the name of a street close by, and so call from the car.
Don't do these:
- Moving the vehicle even a few yards is no reason to fire up the motor.
- Many diesels power their fuel pump the instant the ignition comes on, and so keep the car off.
- No more fuel added. The AdBlue won't blend, so it's wasted.
- Even a short way down Queen's Road is too far to drive the vehicle.
- Don't try to drain it yourself by the kerbside.
The attendants working at any Wivenhoe forecourt — the Murco included — will normally help rolling it clear if you ask. On the drive, the vehicle remains just where it was left.
AdBlue in a diesel tank: what it does
Not your motor but the exhaust is where AdBlue belongs. It goes into its own tank and is sprayed into the exhaust gas to fresh it. Nothing inside a fuel pump is designed for this fluid — and none of that was intended to travel through one.
It doesn't combine. After it's tipped into a tank of diesel, AdBlue behaves nothing like fuel. Heavier than diesel, it drops and pools underneath it — the same spot the intake draws from. Simplest of all: a vehicle that got AdBlue in Fingringhoe last night and has not been started since. The liquid waits at the base of the tank, untouched — though it would be first through if the motor runs, ahead of any diesel at all.
Two kinds of damage follow 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 reaches for as long as it remains there. Where the AdBlue is in the pipework, leaving it overnight in Wivenhoe makes things worse. Inside the tank only, waiting does nothing. The water in it causes harm of its own: the high-pressure fuel pump and the fuel injectors rely on diesel to lubricate them, and water gives them nothing.
Petrol or AdBlue in a diesel: why AdBlue is often worse
Fill a diesel with petrol in error at the Tesco, and this issue is thinned fuel. No damage is done while it stays unused, mixed into your diesel — only once the engine works on it.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the liquid as such is simply the wrong one. Not burning, it can't just be run through. Deposits and corrosion remain after the following tankful, and AdBlue splits back from the diesel, and so watering it can't work. Hence the flush matters so much, and turning your key "to see" costs more with AdBlue than nearly any other slip — in Keelars Tye or the centre of Wivenhoe equally.
With AdBlue, the good news is no different from petrol. Not run? Then the AdBlue waits only in that tank, the easiest section of the whole system to empty, wherever the car has come to rest across Essex.
Wivenhoe: how AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank
Nobody means to do it. The AdBlue filler on plenty of motors sits right next to the diesel filler, sometimes under the same flap, and the two caps can look alike in poor light. A bottle bought when heading home and tipped in outside the house, instead of at the forecourt, is the usual story.
A couple of familiar ways cover most cases. The top-up gets rushed outside Millfields Primary School, after the dash flashed with a warning as the kids were taken off. After work, a bottle goes in on a driveway close to Clifton Terrace. One more version: darkness, the car park outside The Greyhound, and a driver using that flap the first time.
It happens 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. Keep it off: that is the first response to the same mistake, wherever around Wivenhoe or the rest of Essex you happen to be.
Started your engine with AdBlue in the diesel tank around Wivenhoe?
The AdBlue has left that tank, then. Through the fuel filter, along the pipework, and — with any running — into the injection pump and each injector: that is where it travels.
Lumpy running, smoke from the exhaust, dropping power, dashboard lights or cutting out: any may show up, perhaps midway across Wivenhoe or returning from Wivenhoe Jubilee Garden. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and do not restart it to check. Each start pulls more of it through.
On the M11, under 50 miles from Wivenhoe, the first junction is where to exit, and anywhere sensible is where to park — not carrying on.
Hopping across Wivenhoe to the car park by Old Grocery is one thing; heading towards Colchester, under 5 miles away, is another, because every mile pushes the AdBlue deeper in. So mileage counts. Tell us about how far it had come.
We do all of the cleaning where your car has stopped, and once your engine has been run there is more of it. Spotted soon, it very seldom leaves lasting damage.
What does an AdBlue drain on a diesel involve in Wivenhoe?
Anywhere it has stopped around Wivenhoe — a filling station, a lay-by, a driveway, a road beside William Loveless Hall — our van travels to your vehicle. Before anything else our technicians ask what went in, roughly how much, and whether the engine has run, because those answers settle this work.
Next, draining the tank right there takes out the contaminated diesel and the AdBlue together. The system is purged thoroughly, which counts more with AdBlue than with petrol, since what it leaves behind doesn't rinse out on its own. Clean diesel goes in after the filter is flushed — or swapped, if it needs to be — and after that the vehicle is tested. The majority of these jobs are a half-hour job once our technicians arrive, provided your engine hasn't run. Our equipment is explosion-proof, so a live filling station is no issue, and it is hushed enough for a residential street after dark.
Lastly, your system is primed with clean diesel. You head off as soon as we have started it, and it makes no difference whether the vehicle is on a driveway around Wivenhoe or in a space at the nearest station. Our engineers make sure it runs correctly on new diesel before leaving. No workshop is required at any stage, with the whole job done then and there. Your insurer will want an engineer's report and your VAT invoice — both yours once the job is done.
About Wivenhoe itself
Wivenhoe is a coastal town in Essex, situated on the banks of the River Colne, approximately 3.4 miles south of Colchester. Wivenhoe sits at a relatively low elevation of around 16 metres, with its semi-detached housing stock reflecting the town's 20th-century expansion. Wivenhoe is close to nearby places such as Rowhedge, Black Horse Corner, and High Park Corner, and is within commuting distance of London, about 52.5 miles to the west. Wivenhoe has a population of around 9474 people, making it a small but significant urban centre in the region.
Wivenhoe and Essex: AdBlue drains across the area
Rowhedge, Black Horse Corner and High Park Corner are among the towns near Wivenhoe that the same teams reach, together with much of Essex further out, throughout the CO postcode area. If you are close to a boundary, or somewhere hard to explain, ring and ask rather than assuming.
No moving is needed. In Wivenhoe, a coastal town, a mobile service fits: your car is drained on the spot, be it in a driveway, a residential street, a car park or a filling station.
What AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to put right around Wivenhoe
No single price could be honest, because each job is different. The price shifts 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 turns on where the car is and whether a van can get to it safely, which is simpler on an open drive than in a tight spot behind Wivenhoe Library.
That is why each call from Wivenhoe starts with the same three queries, asked before giving a figure, not after: what went in, how much, and if it has run. Given those replies, a range shrinks to a single firm number.
Priced on the call before the engineer heads out, it is settled on the day — card or phone, nothing in advance. Look at your insurance whilst we are on the way: many carry misfuelling cover.
Alongside the vehicle in Wivenhoe, still?
Leaving the vehicle alone is, right now, the best thing you can do. Keys out, motor off, ignition off. Phone 0333 366 0103 then tell us it is AdBlue, about how much, and if it has run. Petrol in Diesel takes it from there, in Wivenhoe or anywhere around Essex.