Even if it was correct, it would be incredibly easy to change or extend the tailpipe to look differently.

I suspect you'd need to look at the V5, which would tell you whether the car was Euro 4 or 5 - 5 being the DPF one.

Of course, that all assumes someone hasn't chopped the DPF out and deleted the fault codes ...

I don't know about VW Group, but many brands had DPFs with Euro 4 - but Euro 5 made them mandatory for all diesels.

Of course, that all assumes someone hasn't chopped the DPF out and deleted the fault codes ...

And that's right, an awful lot of that era of diesels have had the removal carried out, with all kinds of subsequent problems. Far better to avoid DPF vehicles from that period. If you post what car you're looking at, someone on here will know the detail on it.

Ive noticed that lots of diesels, some quite old have really clean shiny insides at the rear tailpipe, I presume this is because of the dpf.

On the other hand I still occasionally see a diesel under 4 years old that smoke heavily under moderate acceleration, I presume this is due to remapping/tuning wirh an illegal dpf delete. As a single car modified this way, generates pollution levels greater than 1000 legal cars, I strongly feel this should be treated as a criminal offence.

Edited by brum on 31/05/2016 at 11:44