' you're not burning any fuel!'

LOL, wish you were right with diesel at almost £6.50 a gallon.

I think the car handbook takes priority over chatroom advice, the manufacturer knows how it is programmed. This will be different for alternative manufacturers.

Surely Skidpan is correct on this one. If the handboook says 30 minutes at 2000 rpm to clear a warning light that must be correct. They do 1,000's of hours of testing and they write the ECU programmes after all. This info is likely to be far more reliable than a load of pub talk.

Just imagine the scenario, your DPF warning light starts to flash and you ignore the handbook. After the car finally goes into limp mode and is towed to the dealer who asks "did you follow the routine in the handbook for a flashing DPF light", you say no, I followed the advice on Honest John, a bloke on there says the handbook advice is nonsense. Think any chance of a warranty fix has just disappered.

Then again, if people read their handbooks there would be no need for sites like this in a lot of cases.

Our handbook says "When the malfunction indicator light blinks, it may stop blinking by driving the vehicle at more than 60km/h (37mph) or at more than 2nd gear with 1500 - 2000 engine rpm for a certain time (for about 25 minutes).

This is pretty much what Skidpan says, the 60km/h is exactly what it says above.

Our car uses a bit of extra diesel during a regen, the instant readout on the fuel confuser says so at anyrate but it soon returns to normal levels.

On every website I have visited there are the usual "I drive mine for 1/2 an hour at 4000 rpm every week" crowd, on one website a contributor said he never ever used 5th and 6th gears, he was convinced it was better for the car driving at 3000 rpm everywhere.

I once tried touching the tailpipe after I thought the car had done a regen, nearly lost my finger ends. Normally the tailpipe is quite cool even after a motorway run.

We're comparing apples with oranges. Skidpan and Thunderbird are talking about what to do if the trap saturates-I'm talking about what to do to prevent the trap saturating in the first place.

Heavy duty engines never see 2000 RPM. They do see heavy load. This is what allows trucks to use DPFs without any active regeneration (although it is easy to programme common rail engines to have the facility with little additional effort). If the average exhaust gas temperature is above a critical temperature (about 350C), the trap will regenerate itself.

In contrast, I was discussing the problem with the powertrain engineers at JCB. They do have problems with DPFs-and their engines will run to 3000 RPM or more. But excavator engines see a lot of idling time-and active regen is needed and is a big problem.

Of course I am talking about passenger vehicles and not HGV's, that is what the OP asked about and its is what I expect most people who come on here find relevant.

And I am fully aware that the proceedure I described on my last post is what you do when the DPF becomes saturated to a pre-determined level above that which a normal regen will sort, that is what the flashing light indicates and I pesume exactly the same thing is happeneing continually on the OPs Polo.

We have had cars with DPF's for over 4 years now and using them in a manner that includes a mix of driving we have yet to see a light on the dash. It seems to me that some manufacturers are less capable of producing a car that can cope with this technology.