dont buy any car fitted with a DPF (diesel particulate filter)

[Hellcat]

Do you not get a warning that the oil needs changing?

I'd also take the chance to ask if your Meriva has a Fiat engine... otherwise you'd probably be best off asking on a Vaux forum.

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

i have a vauxhall meriva, about 6 months ago the engine blew up and had to get another one fitted,, after a month of fighting with vauxhall they paid for it all to be done..
the reasons for my engine to blow were these.
1. the dpf was full.
2. the engine oil life was at 0% life (due to doing to many cold starts)
3. we never had it serviced in the first year,(it was about 3 months over)

Why didn't you service your car?

Whats cold starts got to do with oil life? WTF is oil life?

 

[StevenRB45]

so can anyone please tell me that it is right to say that a car is not suitable for a person because they do a very low milage and to many short Journeys?

we have had the car back for 6 months and the oil life is back to 0%. once again they are saying it is our fault because of our driving conditions ie:short journey's.

A small petrol engine is far more suitable and cheaper for short journeys. A petrol has no DPF to get clogged, will cost you little more in fuel as you don't do many miles anyway and will be on average a grand cheaper to buy. Only issue you are likely to have related to short journeys that is petrol specific is shorter exhaust life spans. You should still change oil more regularly due to all the stop start driving you do though.

Modern diesels are unsuitable for use as short journey cars due to the various bits of crap that they've accumulated in the last decade.

 

[StevenRB45]

Whats cold starts got to do with oil life? WTF is oil life?

I'll take a guess at more cold starts meaning you'll have more metal shavings in the sump due to the engine spending more time cold proportionally with poor oil circulation/protection.

 

[T14086]

i have a vauxhall meriva,

oh well theres your problem straight away!

the dpf was full, the engine oil life was at 0% life (due to doing to many cold starts

thats cause vauxhall dpf is crap

we never had it serviced in the first year,(it was about 3 months over)

your fault then

dont know why people moan about dpf's because you better get used to them for euro 5 and especially euro 6 emission laws....either that or buy a pushbike!

 

[seboni121]

I bought my little 899cc seicenco specifically for the sort journey to and from work 3 miles there and 3 miles back costs me about £10 week in petrol as I did not want to use my new skoda superb 2 tdi because it would not be economically viable to make such a sort journey with a big diesel engine it would not have warmed up enough before I get to work :slayer:

 

[T14086]

walk!

 

[fenton_jd]

I've had ZERO dpf issues and heres why:

By day a 60 mile daily commute, driven sensibly - high gear low revs.
By night - driven like a boy racer.

130,000 miles and still no DPF/EGR issues.

 

[Ulpian]

Modern Diesels doing short urban journeys clog up and fail. Norwich City Council has continuing problems with the eco-Polos they bought a gazillion of, even after the AA said don't - because of the DPF issue! The council was trying to look green: fail! Should have bought small petrols instead. Silly ignorant politicos you see.

For short journeys always buy petrol. If you do long runs regularly a Diesel is great.

And lots of short journeys do cause faster oil deterioration, which is why cars used for such journeys should have twice as many oil changes: and not getting a car serviced annually, crawling around town in it, and then blaming it when it fails, is silly.

 

[mazdacampaign]

Hi Guys,

I really hope you knowledgeable people can help me. I own a Mazda 6 2008+ 2.0tdi and i am from London, UK. 1 year ago i have a very frightening experience with my car whilst travelling on a motorway road.

I will try and keep this as breif as possible:

I was travelling at 65mph and everything was fine until suddenly the engine revvs hit maximum on its own and being in fourth gear the car was picking up
speed extremely fast, i ripped the car mat out thinking it could be that because no warning lights were on the dash board but noticed it was still happening and i was 700 yards approaching a roundabout. I was forced to switch the engine off and swerve my way whilst the steering and brakes are heavy inbetween the lanes to force my way to a stop on the lay-by. 10 minutes after that, i tried pulling off again once my nerves calmed down but the same thing happened.

3 hours later, i got recovered to my house and my car was taken to my local Mazda dealer - the following day i received a telephone call from Mazda dealer:

They said I have to pay for a service?? which wasnt due yet.

Being angry with what they were saying, i phoned a few company's up explaining the problem to them and they immediately told me to tell Mazda to take a small oil sample so i can pick it up, because of a possible oil contamination.

So i done exactly that, but Mazda refused to give me this for health and safety reasons and asked why i needed it, i told them its private. 30 minutes later i got a telephone call, sir we have found out what the problem is - you have a large amount of diesel inside your engine oil.... you wont believe what they told me:

1. You must have gone to a petrol station and put diesel inside the engine oil!

2. You ignored any warning lights (which they couldnt stick by because no warning lights are on)

3. I put more engine oil in there than i should have

4. Its overdue a service thats why its that high (at the time my car was on 11,981 miles & only 10 months old from new, mazda state a service is due on
12,500 miles or 1 year which ever comes first, so that made me laugh)

Many of us Mazda drivers in the UK are suffering from DPF problems, only difference with most of them is that on my over-run i could turn my engine off and had no warning lights and didnt get into "limp home mode". Mazda are not blaming the DPF system by saying its the normal operation of the DPF system but they told me i never checked my oil which i do every week as it stated in the handbook, also stating if i see the DPF light solid i should put my foot down to regenerate or if it were flashing to take it straight to the dealer. I have NEVER seen these lights come on but know they are working on the 5 second warning light test when you put the key in.

Apart from all of this, i have not driven the car since and none of my family will either - the case has been with a solicitor for the past year and we are
now at the stage of getting the engine stripped down to find out the problem, whether this helps or not i am taking mazda to court as because the car has been sitting on my drive with a 62% oil/diesel mix i will need a new engine which i am not prepared to pay for when this is not my fault.
What do you guys have that can help me? any info would be fantastic. Please feel free to have a look at the campaign site i have started:

I can only include my campaign site once i have 5 posts but you can google mazda campaign and it should be the first one.

Thank you for taking the time to read this & i would really appreciate any advice.

 

[Ulpian]

Hello, thank you for posting, even though you haven't got a Fiat

This seems like a technical issue - obviously. However, point No. 3 of their possible explanations states that you might have assed too much engine oil. If this has been done then the problems you describe can indeed arise with Diesel engines.

I am assuming you never topped up your engine oil: this is important. If you didn't, and the oil in the engine is exactly the same oil the car came with, and hasn't been adulterated/over filled with something else, then you can have done nothing wrong.

No warning lights, no interference with the car, nothing but normal driving, and then the car plays this very dangerous trick on you.

I have read of similar occurrences, so you are not alone. Usually though, as far as I know, it is caused by excess oil in the engine forcing its way into the injection process and causing the engine to run madly on it's own lubricant.

Repeat: if you have never topped up, you have no case to answer and it is up to the dealer/Mazda to fix.

Only my opinion, but a strongly held one.

Good luck.

 

[T14086]

As I have said many times Fiats DPF is one of the best, manufacturers didnt want Fiats design so made their own, seems like VW & mazda made a boo boo.

 

[s130]

Think I might have to agree with you on this

I'm coming up to 40K miles on my Croma and NO DPF issues. Others are well ahead of me and generally no DPF issues.

Having said this I think the whole DPF philosophy, or should I be more specific and finger the designs, implementations and merits, is very questionable.

Quite a few cars, especially "school run" & "town shoppers" are having oil dilution problems and siezing engines. How green is that? Also the fuel burnt to regen the DPF is very wasteful. Again far from green.

Diesel electric cars would allow a very clean, fixed rpm engine speed which would reduce soot emmisions greatly. No "out of band" coughing and choking that diesel engines always get into.

Add decent replaceable serviceable filters that get recycled.

Centrifugal filter where the mass of the particles causes them the be spun off into collection chambers.

Best oil filter I've seen is the centrifugal oil filter of the Fiat 600D engine. Very effective, easy to clean, no elements to be binned and provided a good indication of engine wear.

 

[fenton_jd]

When it comes to engines...cant really fault Fiat.


Look at VW's original 1.4 TSI engine. Supercharged and Turbo charged and it was considered by everyone, a piece of crap.

You NEVER hear bad reviews of Fiat's Diesels or their T-Jet engines.

Dig out some reviews for the Fiat Stilo and look at the massive praise the 1.9 JTD recieved as being by far the best engine in the range.

DPF systems are a tad controversial but if ANYONE can get it right then surely fiat, who supposidly invented common rail technology, can.

 

[ChrisUK]

Fiat have been renowned since the 70's for leading engineering especially when it comes to engines

 

[bBrad]

Hi, I have a Fiat Grande Putno, 1.9 TDI and while i am traveling at 80MPH, in 4th gear and doing 3500RPM i loose power and the car goes into limp mode. But once the car is turned off and then back on the power comes back. could any one help??

 

[rallycinq]

If its gone limp, it should have left a footprint in the ECU that can be read by examiner.

Cheers

D

 

[The Beard]

Not actually sure if my Panda MJ has a DPF, but if it has, then she's just coming up to 55K and no issues.

Having said that, I was talking to an IVECO mechanic the other day who was buying a TurboDaily to convert to a motorhome and he was saying that he was going to buy one of the older pre-facelift models precicesly because it doesn't have a DPF. He reckons the newer models have frequent problems with that component.

 

[payney1]

I'm a bit worried now about all this don't buy a car with a DPF!

Whilst the Mjet doesn't have one, the car i am thinking of buying next will have one for sure, which is the Octavia VRS TDI. I believe the VRS uses a DPF having looked on the briskoda.net forum.

My daily commute to work and home consists of about a 70 mile round trip, Motorway's and A - Roads. I work 4 / 5 days a week, i generally have 3 / 4 days off after my working week and will normally only do town sort of mileage with the odd run up the Motorway to visit friends / family.

I know T said VW have made a boo boo with their DPF engines and the Octavia uses the VW PD engine.

Does anyone have experience with these engines using DPF?
And do i really need to be worried given the mileage i do each week?

One of my work colleagues has a golf which uses the PD engine, but i don't think it's one which uses the DPF.

Thanks

 

[scubadude1976]

Well all diesel cars are now fitted with dpf but generaly dont cause any isues but and here it comes alot is dependent on using the correct oil in the engine as most specify a low ash oil which is hard to get and dearer than most generally best to get oil from the dealer only! Secondly there is the issue of driving around doing short journeys and not lettin the dpf warm up so it burns off emmisions! and to be fair there are others eg some systems rely on fluid which is put into a special tank under the car and this is also really expensive.

I have recently had a guy with a peugeot 407 unfortunately he uses as a taxi its not high mileage about 120k on an 06 but because of constant running and short journeys he has had 2 dpf's already and 5 turbo's the last one going because the dpf blocked and caused excessive back presure in the exaust. its all politics with euro 4 emmisions and nothing we can do only thing is best is to drive it properly and not chug around and use dealer oil only this is by far the largest cause of dpf failures :0)