[Pauljohnflynn]

Hi,

I recently bought a 2nd hand Discovery Sport, 2016. Had a number of issues which were resolved (leaking coolant pipe, ad blue system blocked.) Recently on 25km drive to work, exhaust filter nearly full and then 5 mins later, red light for filter full came on. Went to LR dealer who did a full regeneration on it. Next day, came back for checkup (travelling to France that weekend) and it registered as 19 on the DPF tests. Drove it for 80km and back down to 2.

Just thought the high result was the short drive to garage from home, even with clean DPF. Got boat, drove 1200km across France with no problem. In Switzerland, have driven 30km in last couple of days around local town and amber, exhaust nearly full light on again!

Is this normal? Surely after 1200km of various motorway blasts the filter can take 30km of local road usage? Since the first issue, I've also been using dipetane to clear the filter and clean the engine.

Drove it for 60km on motorway ( like a fool on holidays!) And it's cleared the amber light.

Is there anyone else with this issue? Seems a useless car that can't do any town driving after a full clean. I suppose, I'm fearing the DPF filter isn't working prope.ly and needing a costly replacement.

Paul

 

[Ian_S]

If you go to a Land Rover dealer the only things they can do with the DPF are force a regen or replace it, the latter being quite expensive.

You are probably better off taking it to a DPF specialist to get it cleaned out properly. They will also be able to give you a better idea of the actual health of the DPF too, which could be useful if it's actually end-of-life if you bought it from a dealer.

In terms of should the car be able to handle short drives, that really depends. If in normal use you only do short drives apart from holidays/trips then you are probably in trouble. The short story is that the exhaust architecture has design flaws that mean it virtually never manages any kind of passive regeneration, and the active regenerations that it tries every 250 miles take longer than they should have too.

So, in order to keep the car happy, it needs fairly regular 30 min drives where an active regeneration has some chance of completing, or at the very least making a reasonable dent in the soot loading.

If you're not in that happy place, then you'll get frequent DPF warnings, and worse very diluted oil which leads to a lot of trouble engine wise. Unfortunately on the 2016 models the car itself does NOT tell you the oil needs changing. The only way to accurately see what statute car thinks the oil is in is to subscribe to InControl (£36/year) and use the Land Rover Remote app (new version) which tells you when the car thinks it needs an oil change with a count-down. The further bad news here is, on cars doing just short trips this can be as low as every 4000 miles. Miss the oil changes when required and it can be terminal for the engine.

Not the news you were hoping for I expect. I would get the DPF cleaned at a specialist and see what that does. If it makes no change then I think you have the wrong engine for your usage. If you bought from a Land Rover dealer, you may have some recourse to change the car as it was probably mis-sold if they didn't question you about journey types. Don't take the line that "It's your driving style sir...", that's horse poop. Driving style makes only a small difference, and it's the type of journeys that matters.

 

[gynecologie8]

In April I was driving on the motorway and suddenly lost power. Turns out it was a blocked DPF. Quotes for a proper clean were in excess of my budget at the time so I opted for Halfords 'deep clean' service, which is apparently just a bit of additive and a forced regen. Six weeks on and I've lost power again. Just took it up and down the motorway to see if that would unblock it but no dice.

 

[Andy131]

DPFs have a service life. They collect soot, and then periodically burn it (regeneration), this burnt soot leaves an ash in the DPF that cannot be burnt off. Depending on the architecture you might be able to backwash it through instrument ports in the exhaust, but the only really guaranteed way is to take off the DPF and wash it out with detergents, then dry it (in an oven?) for a day or so then refit.

Depending on who you speak to they are designed for 100,000 to 150,000 miles of the "correct driving style" ie 30 minutes or more on a regular basis.

Forced regens with or without fuel additives cannot get rid of the ash, once it builds up you either flush or replace the DPF - unfortunately if you cannot afford either then the only legal option is to park up the car. Then again you could always find someone willing to carry out an illegal (in the UK) "DPF delete" which removes the DPF and associated software. Problem with DPF delete is that soot then passes from the empty DPF to the SCRF - the unit that uses Adblue to clean the NOX out of the exhaust, and may well block this.