Having driven petrol engine cars all my life, my commute to work doubled to 300 mile per week two years ago and I bought an Octavia VRS LE with a CR 170 TDI engine to replace my petrol TFSI engine.  The CR is such a pleasure to drive in every way and even with the higher cost of diesel, found myself saving about a third of my fuel bills per month.

 

I have now have a new job 5.2 miles from home.  I regularly share lifts with some of my new colleagues meaning I am now only making 2 return journeys per week.  This has slashed my commute from 300 miles to 21 miles per week.

 

While I am enjoying the fuel savings, I am concerned about doing so many short journeys per week.  My commute takes me mainly round the town with a 2/3 mile A road each way.  The engine is not getting very warm, the fuel economy is not as good and I am concerned that the DPF will soon clog up costing me a small fortune to replace or remove.

 

Am I right to be concerned and look to return to a petrol (or non DPF diesel) immediately or hang on and not worry too much?

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

dont think many people with the cr me being one have had any trouble. my commute to work is only 7 mile. i just sometimes come home the long way, take it for a good blast at the weekend. it shouldnt clog unless your in top gear before 30mph and drive like miss daisy all the time. which i might add my uncle does in his cr monte fabia, bet he doesnt do 20 mile a week and it has only regenned a few times.

I shouldnt worry about that too much. The CR engines work much better with DPFs (as CR tech was designed with these filters in mind) so in truth are not problematic.

They are considered a consumable part and will inevitably fail at some point but your driving behaviour should do little to affect its expiration date (the safe life expectancy quoted is 80k but they'll typically go well into the 100's without exhibiting failure symptoms).

If the car is out of warranty if the DPF did go just get a VAG specialist to do it, will save you a packet on dealer prices. I wouldnt personally recommend a DPF delete as Im sure at some point this will become a contentious MOT issue, the cost to reinstate a DPF being likely considerably higher than replacing one.

Just use it as an excuse to take it for a drive on the weekend

 

Seriously it will be fine, don't worry about it.

I had a PD VRS before which had DPF problems, despite the fact that I did a regularly did a reasonable number of decent journeys. However, the CR I have had for the past year has not been the slightest problem, even though I have found myself doing a lot of shorter runs of late. 

I've had two DPF equipped vehicles (my current vRS CR & a Vectra CDTi) and neither has caused any issues with the DPF - both were used on mainly short journeys.

 

The only issues that I've ever heard of with the DPF on the CR engines have actually been a faulty sensor. Keep it and don't worry.

Carry out a search of the Skoda Octavia II forum and let us all know where the CR DPF/short journey/low mileage problem threads are   

It looks overwhelming like I need not worry about this too much!

Thanks for your advice guys!