Why It Occurs and How to Prevent It: AdBlue in a Diesel Tank in Surbiton
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave your engine and the ignition off and call 0333 366 0103. Normally, when the motor has not run, it's drained and thoroughly rinsed where the car is around Surbiton. Here before the event? Then what follows covers how it comes about and how to stop it ever happening.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel motor
Diesel feeds your engine — yet many newer diesels seen around Surbiton and Tolworth carry a second fluid as well. Your exhaust, not the motor, is where AdBlue goes: dosed into the gas to fresh them, from its own tank.
There's a filler for every tank. Plenty of cars have a single flap for both, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to the boot or under the bonnet. At the petrol pump, the diesel side is topped up constantly. Someone who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less regularly. That gap is where the error lives.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank happen around Surbiton?
Three things tend to line up, and carelessness is seldom one of them.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue brings a message from the vehicle, and letting it run out means limp mode — hence a hurried top-up, maybe before work off Berrylands Road, perhaps outside Brave New World on the way home after work.
Then the vehicle is new. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one didn't, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part halts the tip after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. It takes a few seconds, whether out in Seething Wells or bang in the heart of Surbiton.
How to tell the AdBlue filler from the diesel one
Whether a Surbiton forecourt or a driveway out in Long Ditton, spend a couple of seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- Blue and lettering: an AdBlue cap is frequently blue, or says "AdBlue", where a diesel cap usually doesn't. Trust the cap, not where it sits.
- Check the size: the smaller neck is, on plenty of cars, the AdBlue one.
- A label inside your fuel flap frequently says which fuel goes where, on plenty of cars. Look for it.
- In the boot or under the bonnet: that's where the filler sits if it's not by your diesel cap, and the handbook tells you which.
- Whoever had it before will know. Check as you collect a hire car or company car — at the nearest station's car park, perhaps — not when the light comes on.
AdBlue top-ups that never reach your diesel tank
A routine for the day the light comes on, wherever around Greater London that is.
- Switch off once parked — flat ground, engine stopped, and not in a rush beside South Terrace on the verge.
- Find the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and say the word "AdBlue" aloud as you unscrew it. It sounds daft. It does the trick.
- Both under one flap? So confirm the lid on the diesel side is still closed before raising the bottle.
- Pour slowly, using the bottle's own spout. Stop when it's full or when the bottle is empty.
- Close the cap, then look once more — making sure the diesel filler remained closed the whole time. Only then, start the car.
Find at stage two or three that it's already gone into your diesel side? So stop just there. Never go on to step five.
Put AdBlue in the diesel tank in Surbiton already?
Don't start the motor: that's how the short order of things begins. Keep your ignition off too, because on plenty of diesels switching it on alone runs your pump. Filling up with diesel will not weaken it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of that tank, just where fuel is taken from.
On a forecourt — Esso, Shell or another — the attendants will usually help push the car clear, if you ask. If you're on your own drive around Surbiton, leave it where it is.
Already started? Pull over once it's sensible, then switch off. The next junction is the place to come off if you're on the M3, under 10 miles from Surbiton. Mileage matters — a short hop across Surbiton is a smaller job than driving under 15 miles to Westminster — so say roughly how far it went.
When our technicians get there in Surbiton, what takes place?
The van comes to the car wherever it has come to rest — your own drive, beside Surbiton Library, or by Lime Tree Primary School. Which fluid was put in, the amount, and if it ran: we ask because those answers decide the work and price. That price is given over the phone, ahead of any van leaving.
After that: a drain, then a thorough flush of the whole system. With AdBlue that matters more than with petrol: it crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it doesn't wash out on its own. The filter is flushed, or replaced where it needs to be; fresh diesel goes in; and the vehicle is tested. Then our engineers fire it up and make sure it runs properly before leaving.
Most jobs are finished in about half an hour after our engineers get there, as long as your engine hasn't run — and the pumps our engineers use are safe on a live forecourt yet quiet at night beside a house. Paying happens on the day, not upfront, and you are given the paperwork an insurer asks for: an engineer's report and a VAT invoice. Misfuelling cover is included in plenty of insurance policies — so use the wait to check yours.
About Surbiton
Surbiton is a locality in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, situated approximately 10.8 miles from central London. Surbiton sits at an elevation of around 39 metres, near the River Thames and close to nearby places such as Seething Wells and Berrylands. Surbiton is predominantly composed of flat dwellings, reflecting its urban character. Surbiton has a population of around 7148 people, according to recent estimates.
AdBlue drains across Greater London, Surbiton included
Surbiton is a small village, and our vans that cover it also work the towns around it, Berrylands and Southborough among them, across the KT postcode area. A postcode starting KT6 6 gets the van to you fastest.
There's no need to shift your car. Draining takes place on the spot, be it a driveway, a road by Surbiton War Memorial, or a lay-by towards The Wood. If you're near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Surbiton Library Hall, ring and ask rather than guessing.
The short version for Surbiton people
Tip no AdBlue till you've read the cap. Petrol in Diesel drains it on the spot, anywhere in Greater London, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — and so leave the car off and ring 0333 366 0103.