Don't Start It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Woodsetts
If AdBlue has gone into the diesel tank, keep the motor off and leave your ignition off. Urea dissolved in water is all AdBlue is. It doesn't burn, it doesn't mix with diesel, and the harm it does starts when the system pulls it in. Caught before your engine has run, AdBlue in a diesel tank is normally a drain and a thorough flush, done where the vehicle is around Woodsetts. Ring 0333 366 0103 before you do anything else.
Those opening minutes: AdBlue in your diesel tank around Woodsetts
Do these:
- Pull the keys out, so no one switches your ignition on.
- Near moving traffic? So put the hazards on.
- Which fluid, and roughly what quantity? Save the bottle or the receipt, and our technicians can know.
- The van finds you fastest with a postcode starting S81 8, or just the name of a street nearby, so call from the car.
Not to do:
- Don't start your motor, even for a moment to move your car.
- Your ignition remains off: on many diesels, switching it on is enough to run the pump.
- No extra fuel added. The AdBlue won't mix, and so it's pointless.
- Any driving at all is to be avoided, even a short distance down Pear Tree Close.
- By the road, do not attempt emptying it yourself.
The staff working at any Woodsetts forecourt — the South Anston Service Station included — will normally lend a hand pushing it aside if you ask. If you are on your own drive, leave the vehicle just where it stands.
What AdBlue does in a diesel tank
Not your motor but your exhaust is where AdBlue belongs. Kept in a separate tank, it is squirted into the exhaust to treat the gases. Nothing in it is meant to pass through a fuel pump, and nothing in a fuel pump is built to handle it.
Poured in with your diesel, it keeps separate rather than blending — entirely unlike fuel. Heavier than diesel, it sinks and pools below it — the very place the intake sucks from. The first thing the system pulls through, after it runs, is the AdBlue. So a car that had AdBlue poured in on a drive in Turnerwood last night, and hasn't been started since, is still the straightforward case: the AdBlue is lying at the bottom of the tank, and nothing has drawn it in.
Once it's sucked in, the harm comes in two forms. 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, so it keeps labouring on the components it gets to for as long as it stays there. By daybreak, a car sitting around Woodsetts with AdBlue through its pipework gets worse; where it's only inside your tank, nothing changes. The water in it does damage of its own: your high-pressure pump and the injectors depend on diesel to lubricate them, and water offers them nothing.
Why is AdBlue in a diesel regularly the bigger issue?
A fault of thinned fuel is what you get from fuelling a diesel with petrol at the Shell. Damage only comes from driving on it. Blended into your diesel and left inside your tank, it causes none.
With AdBlue in a diesel, the liquid itself is simply the wrong one. It can't simply be run through, because it doesn't burn. Whether your vehicle sits in Wallingwells or the centre of Woodsetts, firing it up "to see" costs more with AdBlue than almost any other mistake, and the flush counts for more. The reasons: it won't stay blended, so diluting it is impossible; and crystals and corrosion outlast the next tankful.
With AdBlue, the good news is no separate from petrol. Not started? Then the AdBlue waits just inside your tank, the simplest bit of the entire system to clear, wherever the car has come to rest in South Yorkshire.
How AdBlue ends up in a diesel tank around Woodsetts
After dark, two caps together — the AdBlue cap and the diesel cap, occasionally behind a single flap — may appear the same. No one means it; plenty of layouts allow it. A bottle picked up while driving home and poured in at home, instead of at the filling station, is the typical route.
Usually, it happens in one of a few familiar ways. Hurrying, outside Woodsetts Primary School, after a warning light came on during the school run, someone tops up the car. A bottle is poured in at the end of the day on a drive just off Lindrick Road. Or someone new to that flap tops up your car in dim light, stopped in the car park outside the pub in the village.
It crops up the most in a hire car, a new car, a fleet vehicle, or the other motor in a home with both fuel types — the vehicles drivers use least. Wherever you're in Woodsetts or the rest of South Yorkshire, it's the same slip and the same first answer: leave the vehicle off.
Started the motor with AdBlue in your diesel tank in Woodsetts?
In that case, the AdBlue is no longer inside the tank. Through the filter, through the pipework, and — with any running — into the injection pump and each injector: that's where it has gone.
Maybe returning from Lofties Plantation, or midway across Woodsetts, the engine may go rough, smoke, drop pace, light up the dash or stall. No starting it again to test: pull over when safe, then switch it off. Each start pulls more of that through.
On the M1, under 5 miles from Woodsetts, the next junction is where to leave, and anywhere safe is where to park — not carrying on.
How far it went counts. A few hundred yards across Woodsetts to the car park by St George's is a very different job from a run towards Doncaster, under 15 miles away, with the AdBlue reaching further into your system with each mile. Roughly how far had it come? Tell us.
Our engineers do all of the rinsing where your car has ended up, and once your engine has run there is more of it. If it's spotted soon, permanent damage is very uncommon.
Draining AdBlue in a diesel around Woodsetts: what it takes
A road by Woodsetts Village Hall, a driveway, a lay-by or a filling station: wherever your car has come to rest around Woodsetts, our technicians come to it. Three replies shape the job, and so before anything else we ask what was put in, roughly what quantity, and whether your engine has run.
Next, emptying your tank on the spot removes the contaminated diesel along with the AdBlue together. Residue from AdBlue won't flush away unaided, so the whole system gets a full flush, which counts much more here than for petrol. The filter is cleaned, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the car is tested. The majority of these jobs are a half-hour visit once we get there, if the motor has not run. The pumping gear is explosion-proof, so a busy filling station is no problem, and it is hushed enough for a residential street after dark.
Bleeding the system with clean diesel comes last. You head off as soon as our technicians have started the car, and it makes no difference whether the vehicle is on a drive around Woodsetts or in a space at Shireoaks. It is tested on fresh diesel to confirm it runs smoothly before our engineers head off. We do it all wherever your car has stopped, and it never needs to go to a workshop. The insurer is likely to want an engineer's report and your VAT invoice — both yours once this job is done.
About Woodsetts itself
Woodsetts is a small village in South Yorkshire, situated inland at an elevation of around 70 metres. Woodsetts lies approximately 12 miles north of Doncaster and 134 miles north of London, near notable local landmarks such as Cotterhill Woods and Lindrick Dale. Woodsetts has a population of around 1465 people, predominantly living in semi-detached housing. Woodsetts is also close to the rural area of Gildingwells, which adds to its natural surroundings.
Woodsetts and South Yorkshire: AdBlue drains across the area
Cotterhill Woods, Lindrick Dale and Gildingwells are among the places near Woodsetts that the same teams serve, together with much of South Yorkshire beyond, throughout the S postcode area. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe, ring and ask rather than guessing.
Woodsetts is a rural village, and an on-site drain suits it: whether your car is on a home drive, a residential street, a car park or a forecourt, our technicians drain it where it is, so it never needs to be moved to us.
Woodsetts: what AdBlue in a diesel tank costs to fix
There's no fair single quote, because the jobs aren't the same. Three things change the cost: whether the engine has been running and for how long, how much AdBlue went in, and where the vehicle is. That last one rests on whether a technician can reach it safely, and an open drive is simpler than a tight space behind Tropical Butterfly House.
For that reason, each enquiry from Woodsetts opens with the same trio — which fluid got in, how much, whether the engine ran — before a figure. The replies turn a range into a straight price.
Our quote is quoted on the call, before a van sets off; payment happens on the day, by card or over the phone, and nothing upfront. Plenty of insurance policies include misfuelling cover, and so it is worth checking yours while we're on the way.
In Woodsetts and still next to the car?
Then the most helpful thing you can do is nothing to the car. Ignition off, engine off, keys out. Tell us it was AdBlue, roughly what quantity, and if it ran, on 0333 366 0103. From there Petrol in Diesel handles it, across Woodsetts or wherever within South Yorkshire.