New DS? Dilemma re oil dilution etc

[VeryDiscoSport]

Can't agree with some of the above.

You do not need to have a journey time of at least 45 mins to get better than 6,000 to 8,000 miles between oil changes. My journey's are mostly 30 mins in duration and I managed to get around 13,500 miles before hitting 6%.

Driving hard doesn't mean a lack of respect for speed limits. You are allowed the take the car out of automatic mode to increase the engine rev's instead of just pressing the loud pedal harder to achieve the same thing. 7th gear on the 9-speed auto will keep you above 2,000 rpm without destroying fuel economy completely. It also reduces 'lugging' which is especially prevalent in top gear cruising on a motorway and is compounded further if you then only ever gently accelerate to overtake from say 65-70 as the gearbox may not change down. This style of driving can increase soot generation. You can also accelerate more quickly generating load than always accelerating gently (also helps the auto box realise it needs to change down quicker). It's debatable whether getting up to speed quickly and then maintaining speed is better than taking ages to get there in the first place.

Ian, do you deliberately apply some or all of the driving techniques described in your second paragraph? Do you include one journey of at least an hour every 200 miles or so? If you are doing neither of these things, then you are very lucky to be getting < 0.5% dilution / 1,000 miles on journeys of 30 minutes. In October 2017 even the manufacturer didn't think that that was possible. The following timings are based on the manufacturer's definition of "normal" driving for this model and draw on i) the letter from JLR Executive Office; ii) dealer comments attributed to a named JLR powertrain engineer; and iii) the May 2015 DPF Operation Manual.

10 minutes driving from cold is required to get the whole system up to operating temperature. During the warm-up period it's normal ignition, LP EGR Valve Open, no post-injection, no DOC light up.
10 minutes initial post injection with retarded ignition to light up the DOC and increase the temperature at the front face of the DPF to 580 deg C. (source: JLR powertrain engineer and LR DPF Ops Manual p1)
15-20 minutes post-injection to maintain the oxidation temperature to dispose of all HC/PM particles within the DPF. (source: LR DPF Ops Manual p 1)

Total 35-40 minutes.

My journeys were generally all over 30 minutes and included regular back-to-back 90-120 minute commutes on trunk roads and motorways, avoiding aggressive acceleration (it's not Milan after all) and complying with national speed limits (that's true GPS speeds, i.e. indicated 75 on a M-way). When they sold it to me with a written promise of servicing costs limited to about £500 every two years, no-one mentioned that I was expected to over-rev the engine, delay gear changes, accelerate hard or perform over-take manoeuvres like Lewis Hamilton. As I remember, it was quite the opposite because the car used to chivvy me into changing up earlier than I would normally have done with a little symbol on the IC (mine was a humble 6-speed manual).

This "normal" driving style earned me a dilution rate of 1% per 1,000 miles give or take and I think the posts on here prove that I was not alone. As I have demonstrated, the average distance to an oil change is actually only 8,300 miles.

[PhilMabbots17]

You are allowed the take the car out of automatic mode to increase the engine rev's instead of just pressing the loud pedal harder to achieve the same thing. 7th gear on the 9-speed auto will keep you above 2,000 rpm without destroying fuel economy completely. It also reduces 'lugging' which is especially prevalent in top gear cruising on a motorway and is compounded further if you then only ever gently accelerate to overtake from say 65-70 as the gearbox may not change down. This style of driving can increase soot generation. You can also accelerate more quickly generating load than always accelerating gently (also helps the auto box realise it needs to change down quicker). It's debatable whether getting up to speed quickly and then maintaining speed is better than taking ages to get there in the first place.

A JLR service agent gave similar advice to my friend and said that to prevent the amber DPF light illuminating on her Evoque she has to drive somewhere - whether she needs to go out or not. Other JLR owners have even been told to change their daily commute to avoid motorways and stick to B roads. Practically everyone who has challenged their dealer about this has been told to change their driving style. They don't even crack a smile.

It's 2019 - I get in my car when I want, I push a button to get it started and then I drive it how I see fit. Compared to EV/hybrid technology this might as well be a 21st century steam car: "Performing a regen took about 30 to 35 minutes unless you were really good at it. The main trick was to keep the right amount of power with a proper speed going up and down hills. With that 30 minute minimum journey time I can see why diesel cars weren't a big hit."

[VeryDiscoSport]

Ian, I've looked at my original post and believe I should have put it like this:

3. The problem becomes super-critical when journeys are exclusively sub-30 minutes. Now the owner will be lucky to make 4,000-5,000 miles between oil changes. But that's not the worst problem - because now the DPF will start to regularly clog with soot and amber/red DPF lights will appear....

[Ian_S]

Ian, do you deliberately apply some or all of the driving techniques described in your second paragraph? Do you include one journey of at least an hour every 200 miles or so? If you are doing neither of these things, then you are very lucky to be getting < 0.5% dilution / 1,000 miles on journeys of 30 minutes. In October 2017 even the manufacturer didn't think that that was possible. The following timings are based on the manufacturer's definition of "normal" driving for this model and draw on i) the letter from JLR Executive Office; ii) dealer comments attributed to a named JLR powertrain engineer; and iii) the May 2015 DPF Operation Manual.

10 minutes driving from cold is required to get the whole system up to operating temperature. During the warm-up period it's normal ignition, LP EGR Valve Open, no post-injection, no DOC light up.
10 minutes initial post injection with retarded ignition to light up the DOC and increase the temperature at the front face of the DPF to 580 deg C. (source: JLR powertrain engineer and LR DPF Ops Manual p1)
15-20 minutes post-injection to maintain the oxidation temperature to dispose of all HC/PM particles within the DPF. (source: LR DPF Ops Manual p 1)

Total 35-40 minutes.

I can't say I deliberately apply all of them, but I don't drive for economy, and personally I would say the DS is tuned in it's behaviour for economy. 9th gear on a dual carriageway or motorway is not in the engines sweet spot, so I will almost always use the paddles to drop a gear if I need to accelerate. I probably use the paddles in D mode quite a bit and if I'm on a nice country road will also take more charge. I think that's just a by product of forming that habit in my other car which is more tuned for performance, but the way in which you can operate the two is the same.

As for the timings, those are going to be general rather than absolute. The user manual states going for a drive at over 40mph, which isn't actually very fast and might not be at high engine revs either. So you would expect that the regeneration algorithm in the ECU attempts to complete an active regeneration in a wide range of circumstances and that the timings also reflect that wider range.

So for example, if you drive economically, following the change up guides, accelerating gently etc, you may well actually be triggering the regeneration all the time because of soot loading reaching the threshold instead of hitting the 250 mile threshold. In your case I recall your average distance for the last five regions was just over 203 miles. This means your active regeneration always had the triggered soot loading to remove, so would alway also be at the longer end of the time required to burn it off.

I guess it's possible that if your driving style doesn't hit the soot loading threshold and instead you just hit the 250 miles trigger, then the regenerations will occur both less frequently and also take less time to burn off the soot as there is less to burn. The ECU will stop the regeneration when the soot loading is back down to a low level, there's no point burning past that point.

I would also question 10 minutes for a car to 'warm up', what defines reaching mortal operating temperature? Oil temp? Coolant temp? EGR temp? If you get straight onto a dual carriageway a car will warm up a lot faster than one that initially sits in traffic.

There has to be some truth in this as we do see differing behaviour, but nowhere near enough to suggest the whole thing is just driving style. That's just BS. And yes you should just be able to use the car the way you want, which luckily so far I can. It's just very difficult I think to give exact advice on whether your intended usage and driving habits will or won't suit the DS. It's a gamble, which is a shame.

[s7gpt]

Go for the sd4 240 diesel which as others state on this forum is not affected by the dpf issue

[Barnsh]

I had an XC60 D5 AWD loved it
Changed to a DS see signature for history.

After 2 B pillar tickers , I wasn’t going to take the chance on another B pillar ticker!
At the time of changing the last DS, it was in for its annual service , ( I always get an annual service and oil change done at 7000 to 9000 miles, ) it’s non sensible to run a diesel for 2 years or 21k miles without a service in any diesel let alone a DS.

It was registering fuel dilution of 5% when it went in ( checked by millers oil sample) .
My “driving style “ NO trips less than 40 mins all trips driven like I stole it.

It was pretty obvious to me the DS was not going to be a keeper .

Note the XC60 would quite happily run short trips with no DPF or oil dilution issues whilst serviced annually .
It out accelerated the DS massively , it didn’t hesitate at junctions either.

I would have bought a petrol DS , but at the time the. B pillar issue was not yet resolved.

So I tried out an FPace ,
Rest is history
Far better engine than the diesel , and as you’ll notice no complaints on here about the petrol at all, petrol owners have in fact sailed off into oblivion with a big smile on their faces.

I didn’t need 7 seats so the FPace did me fine.
It goes like stink
It’s nailed to the road

My suggestion;

Take the petrol DS out for a test back to back with the DS diesel
Take an FPace diesel out back to back with the petrol FPace.

One thing you will notice , the gearbox in the FPace is a ZF8 not the awful hesitant ZF9 that you need “ to learn to drive “

In a nutshell
The old XC60 is a very forgiving car as it didn’t have to meet new EU6 standards, don’t fall into the trap I did by thinking “ I’ve had a diesel, it will be fine”.

Having driven diesels for 40 odd years , it’s a pleasant surprise to go back to petrol , they free Rev throughout the range with constant pulling power there is no narrow band or “peaky “ engine issues.

Oh and there are still far too few D240 owners on here to get a clear view of no dilution issues.

No one can tell you what to buy , it’s your money, spend it wisely but please take them all out for a LONG test drive first. NOT 30 mins, get the car for a day and do your usual routes.

I’ve lost count of the vociferous “I’ve had my car (less than 6 months ) and there’s nothing wrong with it “ folks, We’ve all been one of them at first. We all loved our cars at first .......give it time and look at the owners who have had theirs over 2/3 years. There will be a few who work round the problems and are happy, that’s fine, there will be a few who expect better and jumped ship.

Best of luck with your choice

If it was mine .....get a petrol then you can come back on here and just read about diesel problems

[VeryDiscoSport]

Does anyone know if they have improved the set up on the 2020 model (or the new Evoke as thats now out?

That is the question we all want an answer to... will take some time for it to pan out. There's little excuse though for not sorting it out on the new models!

I visited my friendly dealer this afternoon and picked up the exhaust parts diagram for the L551 2019 Range Rover Evoque.

The L551 exhaust appears to be identical to the outgoing L538 and staff said they see little chance that the "refresh" 20MY L550 Discovery Sport will be any different.

[DiscoDriver]

That doesn’t appear to be the new exhaust system. That is for the older AJ200D not the new AJ200 LF DSL MD NFE HARN. This can be seen in the bottom right hand corner along with the 2018 date. Incidentally, the new Evoque starts at MY20.

[Gary s]

Hi Troon,
looking positive going by your mileage, 21k is a lot of miles to keep the same oil in, but if I were you I would not really be too bothered if a service was requested at anything around the 16k mark, drove diesels all my days and none have ever reached the quoted service mileage before indications of a service. Had my D180 since March, just over 6.5k on it and driven daily on reasonable journeys and no town plodding, I check the oil weekly and have a feel and a smell of it, no consumption of oil to speak of and certainly no diesel smell as yet so fingers crossed, to be honest I never done any research on the diesel engine and only found out when I joined this forum before my car was delivered, but loads of great advice on here and I think you just have to go in with an open mind and see how things go, If I get to 13k like you have with no issues I would not be too upset if I had a service notification and change to some nice fresh oil

[VeryDiscoSport]

That doesn’t appear to be the new exhaust system. That is for the older AJ200D not the new AJ200 LF DSL MD NFE HARN. This can be seen in the bottom right hand corner along with the 2018 date. Incidentally, the new Evoque starts at MY20.

Fair points. But I asked to be shown the exhaust system for the "new" 2019 L551 and what you see above is what came off the printer. Feel free to prove that they made a mistake because this is important information for potential diesel buyers.

Incidentally, from wiki regarding the Range Rover Evoque.

Second generation (L551; 2018-present)

The second generation Evoque was revealed at an event in London on 22 November 2018.

Surely the Evoque cars being delivered now are 19.5 MY. Normally it ticks over only after the summer holidays.