My dpf lives on a shelf in my garage. Best place for it.

I've never taken it to a specifically dodgy mot place its gone to a local garage or halfords or another local garage and not one of them has ever noticed or failed it for dpf or emissions. Makes me think garages dont have the equipment to test if a car has a dpf fitted or not...unless it visibly chucks out smoke it'll pass.

That just shows that the garage is not doing it's job properly. Not that I'd expect anyone to report a MOT tester for not noticing that their car was deliberatly illegal. Be aware though, if you have an accident and a loss adjuster notices it you could be in trouble.

Even before they got as bad as they are now I had a loss adjuster try to pull a fast one. I was driving at about 10MPH (3rd of 4th car back from traffic light on main road that had just turned green) when a metro pulled out of their drive ant T boned my car. I claimed for a 26GHz spectrum analyser that was in the boot and was damaged. The at fault drivers insurance tried to claim that as this was "professional" equipment I must have been using the car for business and I wasn't insured for business. Well it was a bit of hobby kit (my work at that time didn't have anything so complex), which I could prove, and I was with MFU Mutual who at that time automatically covered you for business use (with a few limitations like motor trade) so I was covered. It hgot my back up so rather than getting a quote for a older used spectrum analyser costing several hundered pounds, I complied with there request to send the damaged unit to a repair agency for the maker who said it was beyond economic repair and quoted a price for a current model of £56,000. Obvously the one I had was old (very old) so I settled on 90% depreciation. About 6 months later the repair agent rang me and said the insurance company ha told them to dispose of the damaged unit at their discretion and did I want it back for the cost of postage? I had it back and a while later found another scrap unit and made one good one.

Robert G8RPI.

These insurance company assessors/loss adjusters/etc. will go to great lengths to wriggle out of anything they can.

Quite a few years ago a builders truck/van lost control, mounted the pavement, ran across my front garden and hit my Uno SX. The insurance assessor went over my car in great detail. Test tyre depths, lights, etc. etc. He claimed this was standard practice to check vehicles for being road legal and not defective. I quietly pointed out that my vehicle did not have to be road legal (it was) as it was not on the road. Guy was just looking for every opportunity to dodge paying out and/or possibly establish a reduced value write-off position.

I also had some required motor sport safety additions all documented and approved by my insurance company. These were noted down. Road legal race harness (as well as seat belt), taped glass lights, ignition off signs, extinguisher even the required yellow tape on the battery negative lead.

If anybody doubts that insurance companies will not want or try to pick up on *anything* non production standard to potentially wriggle out of or reduce a claim then you better just hope that you are never involved in an accident even if the accident is not your fault!

On my Croma when she was young (less than two years old) I caught my DPF and heat shield on a rock in Italy. Dented the DPF, tore a section of the heat shield and cut through the DPF temperature sensor lead.

After I had repaired everything other than the dent in the DPF I'm convinced that over time (as indicated on MES) the time between DPF regenerations increased and the time to regenerated decreased. Also when she got to 10 years old there was a more noticeable soot residue in the exhaust.

My speculation / theory is that the dent in the DPF damaged the internal element which then over time disintegrated with it being blown out through the exhaust. The pressure differential was very much reduced thus telling the ECU that clogging was low etc.

So by accident I guess my DPF removed itself internally.