There are a number of posts on Briskoda  about DPF.

What is not clear to me is this.

How many short trips can you make, before you get problems because of it?

There is alot of factors,

 

the car to start with and what engine it has in it,

how many short journeys you do,

your driving style,

the weather mainly outside temp,

 

what you class as a problem,

 

Basically doing short journeys will clog the filter faster and eventually lead to it flashing a warning light up tell you to take it for a decent drive so it can regen itself,

 

Usually a dpf car regens around every 300 miles but again alot depends how its used, if its a rep mobile that lives on motorway then it will be alot longer as it can naturally reach temps to burn the soot off,

 

I have a friend whos bought a newish astra diesel a couple of months ago and traded his older non dpf diesel in, his wife uses it for work and she is a care worker round local area so alot of stop/start journeys, phone me other day "dpf lights on what do i do", told him to take it for a blast down motorway and not heard owt since.

 

If car gets a decent run once every couple of week i would say you would probably be ok but if all it does is goes 5 miles to shops and back then a modern diesel isn't for you

There are a number of posts on Briskoda  about DPF.

What is not clear to me is this.

How many short trips can you make, before you get problems because of it?

 

I don't think it's as straight forward as how many short trips, there are too many variables. What distances, temp it's getting up to etc. The other day I was 550 miles into a long journey all motorway up until that point and I stopped and it was in middle of a regen..... Had been driving 90% on cruise control in 6th gear at speed limit, obviously that wasn't high enough lol. 

 

Do you have a diesel car as well as the Roomster? 

Here's how the dpf works.

http://www.natef.org/NATEF/media/NATEFMedia/VW%20Files/2-0-TDI-SSP.pdf

Its towards the back circa page 60. As above it depends on a number of factors but there are a number of different types it does before you see any lights. The passive when it's up to temperature which is a business as usual constant process, an active based on the soot level thats built up within the dpf and then the distance related one when it does one based on the miles since it did the last one both of which you get the increased rpm on tickover an fans on if you switch off and interupt the cycle, the latter is probably what Fubar had. Have a read-I found it very interesting....but then I do have a number of anoraks!

Thanks for the replies. The link is very interesting and I have saved it for future reference. 

To answer the questions. I am swapping the Roomster  (sorry!) for a Yeti SE 2.0 TDI 140 4x4. DSG.

I often do up to 6 very short (2 mile) trips a week. That is my concern.

But then it will get a run of 20+ or 50+  miles on the open road. I wonder if, on the longer runs, sometimes running the DSG in S and therefore keeping the revs up, may be a good idea?

I note the point about the outside temp. Yes the fact is those short runs tend to be in the winter, when the weather is too horrid to use my bicycle.

Personally I'd just drive it as normal and see how you go. One thing you might want to consider is to avoid supermarket fuel if you can get a branded fuel locally for about the same price. Although they have the same bassic ingredients the branded fuels do have different additives to supermarket fuel so will probably burn a bit cleaner. I use shell regular and add miller ecoboost as it costs about 2p per litre extra which is loads cheaper than buying the top end premium diesel and mine seems to run beter on it.

Again from my perspective I get a bit fed up with the scare stories banded about regarding dpfs in VAG engines as I've yet to actually hear of any real occasions of dpf failure. There are no doubt problems with modern diesels, the 1.6 hdi unit used in many peugots and fords is a know problem, but don't think its appropriate to tar the CR engine with the same brush.