Diesel cars

[miasmum]

apparently they have a DPF filter, and every so often this gets clogged up and your DPF light comes on. In the manual it says to drive at above 37.5mph until the light goes out. So I did but after my third trip up and down the A45 I took it into Nissan. Apparently they can't tell how long or how far you need to drive for and you have to drive at high speeds without stopping. So I tomorrow I have to spend £90 letting them change my DPF filter as if I continue to drive it with the light on, I will damage the the car and it will cost in excess of £2k. They can't tell me how long before this happens again either.

The moral of this story? Unless you drive in excess of 12-15000 miles per year, do not have a diesel

[meriad]

I also was under the impression that a diesel car is only worth having if you drive longer distances in one go; ie 8 hours of stop start city driving are no good vs 1 hour of steady motor way?

But not 100% sure on that

[Kaz]

Mick has had diesel cars for cars - first a Peugeot and now an Audi and never had any trouble with either

[miasmum]

Tim has too, a Peugeot for 8 years and a Toyota for 8 years, but they weren't fitted with DPF's which is what makes the difference plus they did a fair amount of mileage too


http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/201 ... lters.html

[Kaz]

Oh well I've just read that article, and probably the fact that Mick drives to Surrey and back four times a month means the car gets a good run - it's motorway for most of the way

What an expensive nuisance for you Shell

[pederito1]

Mine is like that too. I just have to drive at 2000 rpm for about ten minutes till the light goes out which I do on the motorway near here. I have done it several times now but the first time I thought the speedo was in km and came back part of the way at 112 mph which i thought was 70.

[Suff]

Hi mm

Mrs S has a Citroen C8 now. When she bought it, the car had done 29,000 miles in 7 years. Looking through the history we saw that the DPF had been changed in it's first two years. Simply put it was the driving.

So after one run down the M1 at 80mph (which is, I'm sure, faster than the car had ever gone before), the dpf light came on. It goes on and off as it wishes and bears no real relation to the driving or fuel we put in it. We've had the garage in France take it apart and it's completely clean which means to me the sensor is borked.

There is a treatment for this from Redex, you can get it from Halfords and costs about £16. We used 4 of them to treat the car over a period of time so the light was out when it went to MOT. It's back on again.

Also we noted that if we bought premium diesel it went out for a time.

There is no way we're going to change it, on this car it's £700.

The Diesel Particulate Filter is just a device for burning up diesel particles before they are pushed out of the exhaust into the atmosphere. You almost need a DPF now to comply with the new green zones, however it's not needed for any other reason.

A clogged DPF will not damage your engine. It will reduce performance, use more fuel, but, otherwise, will do no other damage.

Sometimes I hate garages.....

[miasmum]

Thanks Suff, I wondered what the outcome would be if I did nothing. They said that if would go into limp home mode and I would be completely stuffed, which was why I paid to have it done. She said because of the low mileage it does it will come on again and next time it will need the whole filter system changing at £700 same as Mrs Suff. So can I basically ignore it, if it comes on again?

So I just get that stuff from Halfords and treat it myself?

[Suff]

MM, you can get the suff from Halfords and treat it yourself. One bottle to a 50 litre tank of diesel.

It should last for a while. Basically all the bottle does is raise the temperature in the DPF so that it burns the particles off rather than sticking in the filter. It's the low mileage that does it. The sensor clogs up but not, necessarily, the filter.

Things never really change. My Grandfather owned a Garage in FIFE. In the 60's he had a customer with a Jaguar. Every 3 months the customer would bring the jag in with another 1,000 miles on the clock and running very badly indeed. My Grandfather kept it for the day, drove it round the roads of FIFE at the speeds it was intended for at very high revs and in low gears. Then he gave it back at the end of the day, purring like a kitten and running/starting perfectly.... For a fee of course.

The only cars designed to crawl around cities at an average speed of 15mph, 70 miles per week, are electric... All others suffer.