DPF is a well known problem for diesels. I thought that mine was quite healthy (lots of long distance trips and one computer guy told me that) but now it's dead. Yeah, almost. In a weeks time

 

Last Saturday I saw idle revs at ~1k - I understood that regeneration is going on but I didn't look if it's finished or not. I never do that and everything is usually fine because like I said before - lots of long trips.

On Sunday I saw the same thing again. Obviously the car wanted to repeat the regeneration. I had a longer trip in the city and then DPF light flashed the first time in my life (25k km driven with this car; now it's ~159 k km in total). I tried to drive on high revs the way back but it didn't disappear. Whatever, I thought, I'll do it the other time. It was late hour and I wanted to return home...

During that week I had like ~3 trips in the city and that's all. Yesterday after work I decided to go fishing somewhere further to do required regeneration. Well, it was too late. While I was waiting in traffic jam 2 more lights started flashing - the well known "check engine" and glowplug symbol. Damn! At first I wasn't sure if it's connected to DPF because I had my timing belt changed on Thuesday and I suspected that maybe mechanics have done something wrong. So I tried to get to a garage where somebody could at least find the problem (yeah, my bad. I have always delayed purchase of needed equipment :(). Everyone was on vacation but at least I got a number of another mechanic who was able to see me next day.

 

At home I started reading and it seemed like DPF has reached such level of saturation that only forced regeneration might be the cure if it wasn't too late. And only ~3 trips in the city after the light started flashing... The guy at the garage confirmed that DPF has to be blamed. He was able to start forced regeneration, though. I became happy but after some while he said that it's impossible to finish because DPF seems to be too full with soot. Tried it again but with the same result. Obviously DPF is half dead and it has to go + remap. Sadly I can't do right now because tomorrow begins my 2 week vacation. Damn!

 

In the end the mechanic erased all DPF related errors and suggested me to do that fishing today (it's ~50 km from my location and the driving happens on the main road) j. So I drove at higher revs. No errors so far but it's still on ~1k rpm. I hope to be able to drive some long trips even with lights and errors (if they happen to appear) - even if it's malfunctioning, it's still able to burn something out.

 

I don't even understand what to think about that. Would a healthy DPF die so soon after a warning light goes on? Maybe I used a bad diesel? Maybe oil change has affected something (Castrol EDGE, 5w-30 - seems like it's fine for  my engine)? Anyway, guys, be careful with that thing!

 

If I don't see any improvements then I'm going to do some actions after my vacation. EGR has gone. Now it's time for this crap.

 

P.S. That mechanic said an interesting thing that I hadn't thought about previously. DPF is designed as though to preserve better air and so on. What difference is between a diesel sending the soot in the air in small portions all the time and a diesel who does it sometimes but in large amounts (in regeneration process)? There ain't a real difference, I guess. Even in our annual technical inspection (our version of MOT) there isn't much difference in testing diesel with or without DPF.

It's all about our money. 

To Re-Gen you have to drive at constant rpm between 2k and 2.5k revs. Driving at high revs will take longer to regen and won't work if you are doing a forced regeneration.

Get terraclean EGR/DPF clean carried out, roughly £200 and it'll restore it to as new.

My garage in Glasgow offer this service and haven't ever had to replace a DPF.

G

Yes, agree with TaxiG, you can order special cleaning for dpf, and much cheaper then a new one.

Btw, it is better timely check via vcds how much regeneration was successful, so you can be prepared.

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And 159k km is a normal time to clean the dpf.

It should be some unlucky situation that after yellow lamp the forced way is not working.

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For £200 I can get my DPF completely removed (with mapping) so I'll better stick to this option. I have never thought about buying a new DPF because it's not only useless but it's also bothering a lot. Not talking about the price of a new one

That garage guy said that some people choose to clean their DPFs but it's only temporary solution and usually they are soon back to do something more

And 159k km is a normal time to clean the dpf.

 

 

Personally I'd say 159k km is a bit early. I now have 137k miles (220.5k km) with no sign of DPF problems.

One of my versions, as stated above, is bad diesel fuel. I remember that the last time before DPF failure I visited one of the small fuel station. During the trip I saw higher fuel consumption (~5 l/100km instead of ~4l /100km). It seemed to be a regeneration but I was a long one - maybe an hour or a bit less.

But anyway it's not helping much. I'm getting rid of that DPF after my vacation and I hope I'll be able to do my driving properly and without all possible errors flashing

What were the fault codes?

 

The DPF is only as good as the sensors that surround it that are telling it what to do and when to do it.

 

If one of the sensors suffers and intermittent issue (and therefore not trigger an on-dash warning) then the DPF might not be working properly. If it isn't working properly it won't be able to regenerate.

 

There are plenty of threads on here about faulty sensors leading to DPF issues. The only model that suffered significant DPF issues was the PD170 engine.

 

DPF failures on the later CR engines are rare.

 

The garage that performed the forced-regen, did they check the fault codes first?

I am sure I read a post a while back stating that with a laptop plugged into the car, it showed optimum regen was at a steady 1800 - 2000rpm.

Sorry, no idea about the codes. That guy is said to know stuff about VAG cars so I assume that he knew what he was doing.

Today I had ~200 km trip. At first (while in the city and suburb) it flashed that DPF warning (idle revs at 1k were immediately after starting the car). When I reached the highway and drove at ~2200 rpm for ~15 minutes, warning light disappeared. Maybe both forced regeneration (even if they weren't finished) + this trip might have solved everything. At least temporarily...

Let's see what might happen in future

 Get rid of Dpf , simples  , youll never look back .  (except to see a bit of black smoke in the mirror) 

Well, my vacation is almost over. I've driven like 1-1,5k km and it seems like there is nothing wrong with DPF anymore. It works fine... Yeah, this time somehow everything has ended pretty fine despite the hopeless beginning.

 

But anyway I'm removing that thing the next time it troubles me.