GregRoles

It's an overly rich, basic tune, loading your DPF up too frequently. I had the same problem plugging in a tuning "box", they are all crap, and run overly rich, thus generating excess soot for the DPF. I was doing regens every 100kms or so on that box, whereas stock was 350-400kms. Your DPF looks healthy with a very low oil ash residue, unless the tuner reset that value ( likely ). I went to a name brand tune from the box, and the regens slowed down, but never went back to "pretune / box". All power tunes will produce more soot, the question is how crude they are, and thus how much unnecessary soot they make. If you find a diesel tuner who has an actual idea of diesel tuning, and isn't just reselling a crude "direct from the wholesaler" type tune, your regens will settle down. Try to get the local garage to put on a "eco" or "blue" tune, it should still provide extra power, but at far less additional fuel. Even better go to a tuner with a rolling road, and ask them to limit the soot, by going easy of fuelling off boost. Yep you can delete the DPF, but then this sooty tune will be glaringly obvious, plus your car will fail the MOT's you have in the UK, unless you swap it back to stock and bolt the DPF etc back in each year for inspection. That's a PITA. The car will make healthy power with the DPF in place, better to add the 170 turbo and get that tuned instead of deleting the DPF, soot is a product of not enough air flow to the fuel. More turbo flow allows for higher air density and less soot, but hard to negate it in the laggy off boost area. The stock 170pd turbo tunes up nicely however, and at low soot levels.