I'd be interested to know how many van drivers come across DPF issues, if at all, considering that many of them are moving from job to job locally, doing very short mileages in between.

Going back awhile, the Post Office had issues with their fleet of Fiat vans and had to issue instructions how to carry out a forced regeneration by the roadside - I aquired a copy in case our Vectra-C needed one for its Fiat diesel engine.

What was the procedure, out of interest? My Mondeo IV 2.0TDCi never needed any help, and I was never able to find a 'cheat' to force regenerations with my two Volvo V60s (although again, I never had any DPF problems with them either),

I don't have a Diesel car modern enough for a dpf (had a Citroen C2 VTS Hdi for a while, like Bromp's Diesel it was trouble free), but interesting how regularly the DPF's on some posters cars are regenerating, one must assume it's not just the system relying on build up, there must be some mileage or maybe type of motoring factored into the schedule.

My lorry has now covered some 250k kms over the last 21 months, i've probably driven 60/70% of that distance, hasn't needed a forced regen at all, to my knowledge (dash warning) its regenerated passively about 4 times, twice i've had to cancel regens soon as they started due to the nature of my work, usually resuming shortly after you start driving again, only once have i needed to prolong a journey for 10 mins or so to allow a regen to complete...so i'd hazard a guess its regenerated a total of maybe 8 times over approx 150k miles.

Lorries are more likely to be ash level only based criteria?

By the way, a new exhaust for the vehicle i drive, should one be needed, is a cool £11k, one wonders how much a full euro 6 exhaust will cost for a fairly large car when the time comes.

Nearly forgot, yes the Astra regen was completed outside on concrete, judging by the direction of smoke whilst initial burn was preumably igniting the exhaust is straight, not directed to floor.

Andrew re fuel used, probably not as much as you might think, for comparsion, a 13 litre lorry engine on fast idle at 700rpm driving two pto's, one of which drives a high volume compressor for tanker discharge, uses about 5 litres of fuel over an hour's typical discharging, so i imagine a surprisingly small amount of extra fuel is used for a typical car regen.

If i was to buy a dpf equipped car again i would make sure i had the use of some software to allow me to conduct regens when needed.

Edited by gordonbennet on 30/09/2020 at 19:40