Tooting: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Avoid It?
AdBlue already in the diesel tank? Then put this page aside a moment, leave your ignition and engine off, then ring 0333 366 0103. A drain plus a thorough flush, done just where your car sits around Tooting, is usually all it takes when found before the engine runs. Not happened yet? Further down, the page explains the why it happens and the how to avoid it altogether.
Why does AdBlue in a diesel vehicle need its own filler?
Diesel goes to your engine — but plenty of newer diesels driven about Tooting and Furzedown hold another liquid too. The exhaust, not your engine, is where AdBlue ends up: dosed into the fumes to fresh it, from a separate tank.
Separate tanks, different fillers. Many of motors have a single flap for the two, whereas others move the AdBlue filler to your boot or under the bonnet. Diesel goes in at every forecourt call-out, week in, week out. A driver who has to stop and think where it goes usually tops up the AdBlue side, from a bottle, and far less often. It is in the gap that the mistake lives.
AdBlue in the diesel tank around Tooting: how it occurs
Carelessness rarely explains it. Instead is three things lining up at once.
On a driveway off Longmead Road before work, or in the car park at Graveney and Meadow on the way home: that is where the rushed top-up takes place. What is the reason for the rush? As AdBlue runs low the vehicle tells you, and if it's gone, limp mode kicks in.
Then the car is strange. A hire car, a new motor or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and your hand hits for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part halts the tip once it has started, because a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as easily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. The same few seconds decide it, in the middle of Tooting or out in Tooting Bec.
The AdBlue filler and the diesel filler: telling them apart
Be it a Tooting forecourt or a driveway over in Upper Tooting, take a few seconds on these before anything is poured in.
- Read the cap instead of going by position: AdBlue ones are often blue or marked "AdBlue", and diesel caps normally are not.
- The size. On plenty of cars the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Check inside your fuel flap: many motors have a label there saying which fuel goes where.
- Cannot see it next to your diesel filler? In that case look beneath the bonnet or inside the boot — the owner's manual says where.
- Check with the person who drove it last — before you leave, not when the light comes on — if you collect a hire or company car from somewhere like the car park outside the nearest station.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
Wherever around Greater London the light comes on, this is a routine for that day.
- Pull in on level, motor off, with time in hand — not rushing on the side of Undine Street.
- Say "AdBlue" out loud as you unscrew the cap, once you find the AdBlue filler and read it. Silly, perhaps, yet it does the trick.
- The diesel cap remains on. When the two share a flap, confirm it is shut before lifting the bottle.
- Gently does it, through the bottle's own spout, until it is full or the bottle is empty.
- Before you start the car, close the cap and look again that your diesel cap was never opened off.
If at stage two or three you find you have already poured into the diesel side, stop there. Never carry on to step five.
Put AdBlue in your diesel tank in Tooting already?
Short order, then. Top of it: the engine stays off. On many diesels your ignition alone runs the fuel pump, and so don't switch the car on. Topping up with diesel will not dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of the tank, just where fuel is drawn from.
If you're at a forecourt, whether it's the BP or the Tesco, ask the attendants to help push the car away from the petrol pump. Leave it where it is if you're on your own driveway in Tooting.
If the engine has already run, stop as soon as it is safe then switch off. Tooting sits under 10 miles from the M4; there, take the first exit. Tell us roughly how far it went: a run towards Westminster, under 10 miles away, is a bigger job than a short hop across Tooting.
Tooting: what occurs when we arrive
Our van reaches the car anywhere it stopped — your own drive, beside Broadway Market, or outside St Boniface RC Primary School. Which fluid went in, the amount, and whether it ran: our technicians ask since the replies set the work and price. You get that price on the phone, before anybody heads out.
The system is then flushed thoroughly, after your tank is drained. With AdBlue that counts 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. A test is at the end: before that, clean diesel goes in, and the fuel filter is flushed or changed as needed. The motor is started next and tested to confirm it runs properly, all before our technicians leave.
Using pumps safe on a busy forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house at night, most jobs in which the motor hasn't run take about half an hour after our engineers arrive. The insurer will ask for the engineer's report and your VAT invoice, and you get both once this job is done. Payment comes on the day, with no deposit. While we travel, take a look at your insurance documents; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Tooting and where it is
Tooting is a suburban area in south London, situated near the River Wandle and close to several open spaces, including Tooting Bec Common. Tooting has a mix of housing types, but is predominantly characterized by terraced homes. Tooting is located about 5.7 miles from central London and is near the neighbouring areas of Tooting Bec and Tooting Graveney. Tooting sits at a relatively low elevation of around 18 metres above sea level.
AdBlue drains about Tooting, and Greater London beyond
Being a residential suburb, Tooting has the same vans as surrounding areas — Tooting Graveney, Tooting Bec Common — all the way across SW postcodes and the wider area around them. The van gets to you fastest with a postcode starting SW17 8.
Your car does not need to shift. Wherever it sits — near Tooting Market, in a layby heading to Graveney Pocket Park, at home — that is where it is emptied. Assuming won't help behind Tooting Library, on a border, or somewhere awkward to describe; phone and check.
For Tooting motorists, the short version
Before you tip, read the cap. Petrol in Diesel empties it on the spot, anywhere around Greater London, if AdBlue has gone in the diesel tank all the same — so leave the vehicle off then call 0333 366 0103.