DPF Regen

Dean Fletcher

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Well according to MB;

"Note
If DPF regeneration is interrupted as a result of
short-distance trips, the process is spread out
over several driving cycles. Until the specified
regeneration temperature is reached several
heating-up phases are required.
Regeneration occurs unnoticed by the customer."

This was taken from the OM651 System Description AJ found recently.
I read this on Sunday. I can't smell feel see or anything when my om651 regens.
 

rf065

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I read this on Sunday. I can't smell feel see or anything when my om651 regens.
You and me both!

I can, when you step out of the car there is a lot more heat than usual coming from underneath, sometimes a very slight burning smell and if you check your fuel consumption it's a lot lower than usual.
If it completes the regen before you arrive home though, you would never know.
 

Eddie fh

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What I’ve noticed in the past 2 years on my euro 6 2.2 b class is ; roughly every 290 - 330 miles it will do a regen . The exhaust goes a bit tinny and rough running , also it slightly holds onto the lower gears a bit more . This is when using supermarket diesel and once a month millers ecomax and a product called dipetine ( spelt wrong )
 
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Capra

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I've been reading outside of this forum about standard diesel and expensive ones and cannot see any benefit. One site said it might help with keeping the engine and valves cleaner. if Shell V-power helps with the DPF would that indicate lower levels of soot?
 

Tony Dyson

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I don't know is the short answer, if we believed everything we were told about Shell V Power or BP Ultimate with Active technology our engines would turn immortal and last forever and well they bl00dy well should at an extra eye watering £10-12 every fill :D I have regen figures from using ASDA diesel and I'm going to monitor how long it takes the DPF to fill using the expensive stuff so time will tell.
I'm expecting no difference as all fuels in the UK are produced to the same exacting standards and the base product of all premium diesel fuels is Diesel! so I can see myself going back to ASDA in the near future unless of course I find ASDA are still selling diesel from the Russian suppliers they turned to in the 70's when the UK refineries refused to supply a supermarket chain with fuel! that stuff could block any filter.
 

ajlsl600

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Does make you wonder why they don't simply include some form of "Regen in progress" warning light or display message?


too blxxdy simple that !! and might add 50 cents to car build cost. and this is the maker thats dumped sump/fill plugs and made us pump oil up a tube at 40 to guage the trans level ! if i was sure it was happening i would endeavor to keep going until it finished (the non existent warning hopefully indicating the process is done ) i am fairly sure one COULD ? fit a descreet mini indicator light/led that shows the process IS ongoing.
 

malcolm E53 AMG

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I don't know is the short answer, if we believed everything we were told about Shell V Power or BP Ultimate with Active technology our engines would turn immortal and last forever and well they bl00dy well should at an extra eye watering £10-12 every fill :D I have regen figures from using ASDA diesel and I'm going to monitor how long it takes the DPF to fill using the expensive stuff so time will tell.
I'm expecting no difference as all fuels in the UK are produced to the same exacting standards and the base product of all premium diesel fuels is Diesel! so I can see myself going back to ASDA in the near future unless of course I find ASDA are still selling diesel from the Russian suppliers they turned to in the 70's when the UK refineries refused to supply a supermarket chain with fuel! that stuff could block any filter.

Anything that makes diesel burn cleaner can only be a good thing, the emissions apparatus can clog up so quickly and be troublesome which is the Achilles heel of all modern diesels. Direct Injection petrol engines suffer in a similar way as there is no fuel washing over the inlet valves to keep them clean so they like diesels need to be revved (some would call it an Italian tune-up) occasionally.

I’ll be very interested in your feedback from using both fuels
 

Eddie fh

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I don't know is the short answer, if we believed everything we were told about Shell V Power or BP Ultimate with Active technology our engines would turn immortal and last forever and well they bl00dy well should at an extra eye watering £10-12 every fill :D I have regen figures from using ASDA diesel and I'm going to monitor how long it takes the DPF to fill using the expensive stuff so time will tell.
I'm expecting no difference as all fuels in the UK are produced to the same exacting standards and the base product of all premium diesel fuels is Diesel! so I can see myself going back to ASDA in the near future unless of course I find ASDA are still selling diesel from the Russian suppliers they turned to in the 70's when the UK refineries refused to supply a supermarket chain with fuel! that stuff could block any filter.
When the last off my millers runs out I’m going to do the same to see if there’s any range difference between burn offs
 
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Capra

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Doing a long run doesn't mean that you've cleared the car from a required regen. Drove back from London on Sunday, got close to home and realised that the car was clearing out the PDF, so I did some extra driving for this to complete. This was after 125 non-stop driving.
 

allybassman

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Doing a long run doesn't mean that you've cleared the car from a required regen. Drove back from London on Sunday, got close to home and realised that the car was clearing out the PDF, so I did some extra driving for this to complete. This was after 125 non-stop driving.

Agreed, although I have found that if you're pressing on and 'making progress' ;) you can extend the active regen interval presumably because passive regeneration is taking place.

I spanked it from Manchester - Glasgow and back again the other day, near enough 500 miles in one day. Next time I used the car an active regen took place.
 
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Capra

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Agreed, although I have found that if you're pressing on and 'making progress' ;) you can extend the active regen interval presumably because passive regeneration is taking place.

I spanked it from Manchester - Glasgow and back again the other day, near enough 500 miles in one day. Next time I used the car an active regen took place.
It looks like until the car wants a regen, you are just collecting soot in the DPF. It kind of makes the idea of doing a long run now and again pointless, because you might find that when you drive the car post long drive it then want to regen. I suppose as long as the car is driven so that the regen can finish that all good.
 

Eddie fh

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It looks like until the car wants a regen, you are just collecting soot in the DPF. It kind of makes the idea of doing a long run now and again pointless, because you might find that when you drive the car post long drive it then want to regen. I suppose as long as the car is driven so that the regen can finish that all good.
Many times I’ve been on a long motorway commute and I get to within 10 miles coming of the motorway on a, B roads and I here the exhaust going what I call tinny and I know it’s doing a regen , I prefer to go a bit further for it to be completed , I normally then reset the clock so I know roughly when it’s going to do it again in 300 mile . Mine normally does a regen within 10 miles
 

400ixl

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It looks like until the car wants a regen, you are just collecting soot in the DPF. It kind of makes the idea of doing a long run now and again pointless, because you might find that when you drive the car post long drive it then want to regen. I suppose as long as the car is driven so that the regen can finish that all good.

That depends on whether the regen is over due and is just not hitting the right conditions. If you have been doing sub 5 miles journeys for 300 miles then doing a run will most likely trigger a regen. If you had done 50 miles since the last regen, then one won't happen.

So you have to consider what type of driving you have been doing for how long to decide whether a run is required of not.

Even a 20 minute drive in traffic is enough to trigger a regen these days. This is why there are relatively so few issues with DPF's on modern cars. Its really only those who do short journeys all the time who run a high risk of issues.
 

Tony Dyson

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I don't know is the short answer, if we believed everything we were told about Shell V Power or BP Ultimate with Active technology our engines would turn immortal and last forever and well they bl00dy well should at an extra eye watering £10-12 every fill :D I have regen figures from using ASDA diesel and I'm going to monitor how long it takes the DPF to fill using the expensive stuff so time will tell.
I'm expecting no difference as all fuels in the UK are produced to the same exacting standards and the base product of all premium diesel fuels is Diesel! so I can see myself going back to ASDA in the near future unless of course I find ASDA are still selling diesel from the Russian suppliers they turned to in the 70's when the UK refineries refused to supply a supermarket chain with fuel! that stuff could block any filter.
...
I’ll be very interested in your feedback from using both fuels

So, running the risk of boring you all to tears, an update on the DPF performance on my W204 OM 651 engine, from the details in the attached Check DPF 2 file I started logging the 14 parameters associated with the DPF live data stream when the DPF was 99% full;
  • Frame 20, 100% Fill level reached
  • Frame 21, B19/9 and B19/11 Upstream temp sensors start to increase
  • Frame 64, Fill level %full starts to rapidly decrease
  • Frame 85, Engine and Regeneration stopped at 34% full by S/S Function
  • Otherwise no other indications.
I planned to stop during the Regeneration in order to confirm if the Stop/Start feature would be disabled during the regen and the regen would restart, as the MB system description found by @ajlsl600, I pulled up and when I came to a halt the S/S function cut in and stopped the engine and the regen, I set off again and to my surprise the Regeneration didn’t restart from 34% but the fill level started to increase as it usually would.

I can only conclude that this is how it’s intended to behave and am not going to worry about it.

Another thing I looked at was the Regeneration frequency and had I not carried out the tests myself I would seriously question the outcome as follows;

Regen 1 worked out at 6.3 mls driven per DPF 1% Fill level
Regen 2 worked out at 4.1 mls driven per DPF 1% Fill level

Now to all intents and purposes my driving style, distances and frequencies didn’t change, the only variable I changed was the type of fuel, Regen 1 was with cheap ASDA Diesel and 2 was Shell Vpower. So go figure? I’m not going to try and explain this one away, I was convinced there would be little or no difference and if any I would have put money on the cheaper diesel being the dirtier and poorer performing if any anomalies were in fact identified, so at the moment I’m a little confused again, was the tankful of Vpower contaminated? Is Vpower designed to remove more contaminants from the exhaust fumes than untreated diesel?
I’ve decided to continue changing between the two types of fuel and monitoring the DPF to firstly reconfirm my figures above and see what patterns develop.
 

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Rory

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Another thing I looked at was the Regeneration frequency and had I not carried out the tests myself I would seriously question the outcome as follows;

Regen 1 worked out at 6.3 mls driven per DPF 1% Fill level
Regen 2 worked out at 4.1 mls driven per DPF 1% Fill level

Now to all intents and purposes my driving style, distances and frequencies didn’t change, the only variable I changed was the type of fuel, Regen 1 was with cheap ASDA Diesel and 2 was Shell Vpower. So go figure? I’m not going to try and explain this one away, I was convinced there would be little or no difference and if any I would have put money on the cheaper diesel being the dirtier and poorer performing if any anomalies were in fact identified, so at the moment I’m a little confused again, was the tankful of Vpower contaminated? Is Vpower designed to remove more contaminants from the exhaust fumes than untreated diesel?
I’ve decided to continue changing between the two types of fuel and monitoring the DPF to firstly reconfirm my figures above and see what patterns develop.

Maybe the V-Power is cleaning all the crap out? :)

Wife's Tiguan has only ever been run on V-Power as its emissions system is so complicated I'm scared to put anything else in! She only uses a tank full a month, but the cost is a bit of a gulp! moment. It's only used for short journeys and often has a regen interupted, but, touch wood, it's been fine so far in 4yrs / 20K miles. As best I can gather, it's doing them about every 300 miles. Apparently it never passive regens in typical UK use - indeed we did a fast journey over the M62 and back then next day it did a regen on the school run.

VW say the reason there isn't a regen warning light is to stop people driving un-necessarily to complete regens.
 

Eddie fh

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Maybe the V-Power is cleaning all the crap out? :)

Wife's Tiguan has only ever been run on V-Power as its emissions system is so complicated I'm scared to put anything else in! She only uses a tank full a month, but the cost is a bit of a gulp! moment. It's only used for short journeys and often has a regen interupted, but, touch wood, it's been fine so far in 4yrs / 20K miles. As best I can gather, it's doing them about every 300 miles. Apparently it never passive regens in typical UK use - indeed we did a fast journey over the M62 and back then next day it did a regen on the school run.

VW say the reason there isn't a regen warning light is to stop people driving un-necessarily to complete regens.
Journeys like your school run have happened to me even though day before might have been on motorway for hours , today at 220 mile mine started a regen I’d only just set off out of my street cold engine
 

Jim2

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I sometimes drop a couple of gears on the motorway just to keep the revs high for 10 mins (I don't have a dpf , so no regen) just gets everything working nicely .
Don't do what I did a few years ago on a 5 hour journey , I dropped the gears on the motorway , stuck it on cruise and forgot about it for 2 hours :shock: .
Wighty, if it survived that...it will survive anything !!! ( but I bet that it starts shaking when it see's you coming......:D:D:D:D
 

Jim2

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Does make you wonder why they don't simply include some form of "Regen in progress" warning light or display message?
Yes, I have asked that question myself...many times ( but no answer's ) Once it would be clearly explained what is actually happening, then a dash light or notice to the effect " Regen Taking Place". would calm the nerve's of many, who presently only know that they are getting a "funny burning " smell, with the engine stuck on high rev's and if they happen to be standing at the front wing, a wave of very hot air coming from underneath the car at certain times. And this is the only indication that the regen is taking place.
 


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