MINI, Diesel & DPF maintenance in city driving conditions

mike1967 said:

my clubman had that and would not move i found i could pour the additive over the metal tongue and it fell in to tank as such, another way is next time go fill up sticking it in then ie push pump nozzle just in and pour the additive over the top as such

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Thanks for the help Mike! I was almost about to do this, but I thought I'd give this one a try

www[dot]amazon[dot]co[dot]uk/gp/product/B07RTS2ZDL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(sorry for the [dot] in the URL, I still don't have 15 posts to paste one properly)

It's a diesel fuelling funnel that is supposed to be given with Ford Diesel cars (located in their boot), and it worked a treat! Flap opens exactly like I'm putting diesel in it, so whoever's interested I totally recommend that and it's just 14 quid!

I just did a 100 mile return trip to Guildford (no additives inside) but I'm sure the DPF was cleaned as much as possible. So, before I fill up my tank, I'll put some Wynn's inside so that it can lower the temperature in which soot is burned to 450 Celcius. Do you think that in city driving conditions (although 15-20 minute driving) would be enough to slightly regenerate according to these conditions?

Also, I'd like to put Cataclean inside when my tank reaches a quarter (as per the instructions), but would it be OK if I now put inside the tank the Wynn's DPF additive? I don't want to overdo it with both tbh.

Thanks a lot in advance Mike!

minimeD said:

Thanks for the help Mike! I was almost about to do this, but I thought I'd give this one a try

www[dot]amazon[dot]co[dot]uk/gp/product/B07RTS2ZDL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(sorry for the [dot] in the URL, I still don't have 15 posts to paste one properly)

It's a diesel fuelling funnel that is supposed to be given with Ford Diesel cars (located in their boot), and it worked a treat! Flap opens exactly like I'm putting diesel in it, so whoever's interested I totally recommend that and it's just 14 quid!

I just did a 100 mile return trip to Guildford (no additives inside) but I'm sure the DPF was cleaned as much as possible. So, before I fill up my tank, I'll put some Wynn's inside so that it can lower the temperature in which soot is burned to 450 Celcius. Do you think that in city driving conditions (although 15-20 minute driving) would be enough to slightly regenerate according to these conditions?

Also, I'd like to put Cataclean inside when my tank reaches a quarter (as per the instructions), but would it be OK if I now put inside the tank the Wynn's DPF additive? I don't want to overdo it with both tbh.

Thanks a lot in advance Mike!

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i just bought a vauxhall insignia 2.0cdti with 55.000 miles on it has been driven local all its life has a dpf problem already, these will damage them selves really badly if i was to keep driving it, done a check via autocom on dpf filter pressures and filter is 75% blocked its at that point where it will never clear it self as cant generate enough heat even when being driven at 70mph on a motorway for 2 hours, the bi product of this is it trys to add more diesel to regen but cant burn it this diesel ends up in the oil and this kills the main bearings all the time. my local engine builders the other day had 5 of these engines in with same problem main bearings screwed because or dpf and also the other stupid design issue the O-ring between the oil pump and oil pick up tube as this is part of the sump,, anyway i have done the ring and changed the oil and added seafoam to the fuel tank and added cataclean dpf cleaner as well and forced 3 regens with the software one after the other and have got filter cleared again,, the difference is i used a autocom and this on regen cycle takes 40 minutes per forced regen and holds the revs at 3400 revs while retarding the injection point and adding long cycles of fuel this is what turns the exhaust in to a furnace which is what is needed,, this next bit is my point here i know even after 3 forced regens chances are this car needs a new filter to be on safe side and will get one now i know everything else is ok on it,, the makers say 75000 miles replace the filter if dont what has happened to these vauxhalls will and does happen to all diesels run like it .. the gen 2 mini with the psa diesel engine the filters are cheap £115 the later n47 engines are more money but still are not for ever 75k is the designed capacity it does seem,, anyone who dont take this seriously or thinks i just made it up go search on line about what driving with block dpf filter will cause all makes are the same,

mike1967 said:

i just bought a vauxhall insignia 2.0cdti with 55.000 miles on it has been driven local all its life has a dpf problem already, these will damage them selves really badly if i was to keep driving it, done a check via autocom on dpf filter pressures and filter is 75% blocked its at that point where it will never clear it self as cant generate enough heat even when being driven at 70mph on a motorway for 2 hours, the bi product of this is it trys to add more diesel to regen but cant burn it this diesel ends up in the oil and this kills the main bearings all the time. my local engine builders the other day had 5 of these engines in with same problem main bearings screwed because or dpf and also the other stupid design issue the O-ring between the oil pump and oil pick up tube as this is part of the sump,, anyway i have done the ring and changed the oil and added seafoam to the fuel tank and added cataclean dpf cleaner as well and forced 3 regens with the software one after the other and have got filter cleared again,, the difference is i used a autocom and this on regen cycle takes 40 minutes per forced regen and holds the revs at 3400 revs while retarding the injection point and adding long cycles of fuel this is what turns the exhaust in to a furnace which is what is needed,, this next bit is my point here i know even after 3 forced regens chances are this car needs a new filter to be on safe side and will get one now i know everything else is ok on it,, the makers say 75000 miles replace the filter if dont what has happened to these vauxhalls will and does happen to all diesels run like it .. the gen 2 mini with the psa diesel engine the filters are cheap £115 the later n47 engines are more money but still are not for ever 75k is the designed capacity it does seem,, anyone who dont take this seriously or thinks i just made it up go search on line about what driving with block dpf filter will cause all makes are the same,

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Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response, this is actually very interesting. I completely agree with you on the fact that diesels with DPF are not meant to be used for city-driving; for sure! I'd expect the 75,000 miles DPF change to apply only to those diesels that have highway miles or mixed city/highway miles (more of the latter than the former though), so generally speaking, yes, I would expect the DPF for a city-driven car to be changed much sooner, as it would create these problems that you say (and more of course). My questions here though would be the following:

- Wouldn't a service like Terraclean clean the DPF of its ash (off the car though) in a much cheaper rate than to renew it and get another 25-30k miles out of it, so that you can then change it at its 75k mark?

- Would an additive like Wynn's (DPF cleaner, not cataclean) that lowers the temperature to just 450 degrees be much better for this reason? Maybe even slightly regenerate in city-driving conditions (provided that the trip is at least 10 miles) as I suppose 450 degrees should be reached in city-driving conditions.

- Is it safe to force regenerate the car myself using Autocom (or Carly) ? I've heard some stories that the engine temperature kept going beyond 95-98 degrees to even past 100 for some fellas.

minimeD said:

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response, this is actually very interesting. I completely agree with you on the fact that diesels with DPF are not meant to be used for city-driving; for sure! I'd expect the 75,000 miles DPF change to apply only to those diesels that have highway miles or mixed city/highway miles (more of the latter than the former though), so generally speaking, yes, I would expect the DPF for a city-driven car to be changed much sooner, as it would create these problems that you say (and more of course). My questions here though would be the following:

- Wouldn't a service like Terraclean clean the DPF of its ash (off the car though) in a much cheaper rate than to renew it and get another 25-30k miles out of it, so that you can then change it at its 75k mark?

- Would an additive like Wynn's (DPF cleaner, not cataclean) that lowers the temperature to just 450 degrees be much better for this reason? Maybe even slightly regenerate in city-driving conditions (provided that the trip is at least 10 miles) as I suppose 450 degrees should be reached in city-driving conditions.

- Is it safe to force regenerate the car myself using Autocom (or Carly) ? I've heard some stories that the engine temperature kept going beyond 95-98 degrees to even past 100 for some fellas.

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- Wouldn't a service like Terraclean clean the DPF of its ash (off the car though) in a much cheaper rate than to renew it and get another 25-30k miles out of it, so that you can then change it at its 75k mark? simply no it would not, dpf filter does not block up do to dirt as such its a very fine sand dust type stuff left from the very high temps the soot is furnaces at, its this that builds up, the filter is a saturation type and not a open type filter as such.

terra clean is more of a fuel system and inlet system cleaner costs a few quid, i get same effect if not better in my view by using seafoam and inlet spray and can in fuel tank and can in engine oil 50 miles before change, by far a better way and it really does clean out all the crud more so that a faint mist would on a heavy duty inlet track,
as for the view that a motorway car will not suffer as soon as a town car would, its heat and pressure and time that makes them work, i have had cars that at 70mph on motorway its barely reving above 1900 revs, which is barely enough to get a passive regen working,

- Would an additive like Wynn's (DPF cleaner, not cataclean) that lowers the temperature to just 450 degrees be much better for this reason? Maybe even slightly regenerate in city-driving conditions (provided that the trip is at least 10 miles) as I suppose 450 degrees should be reached in city-driving conditions. you want high temps its the heat that makes a dpf and cat work and also regens it when added to pressure, ie reving engine,


- Is it safe to force regenerate the car myself using Autocom (or Carly) ? I've heard some stories that the engine temperature kept going beyond 95-98 degrees to even past 100 for some fellas.[/QUOTE]
hmmm trouble is with all these terrible stories i always remind myself about stupidty of folk,, ie doing this with low engine oil, yep bang it goes, low water yep bang it goes, doing it on a totally shagged engine bang again, doing on a car with any fault all but the dpf full codes,, ie seen a muppet do it on a car with a faulty cooling fan, while regen in progress the fan must be running and will running for 5 minutes after, doing a forced regen with bonnet closed all adds a level of extra heat, could argue doing it on a very hot day would also add more heat load to the process, that said its designed on a healthy serviced car to do that function. i have done loads of them never had a problem,, as always while its doing it i'm checking it temperature and any strange noises of water leaking etc,, then if dont feel right just press the cancel button on the software and end the process and fix what needs fixing,
i will not comment on carly app never used one cant see it would be anywhere near as good as autocom or wurth snooper and i only use proper trade gear as such,
its funny seafoam also has some internet hits where people moan about it ie it broke my engine,, then you read between the lines and this idiot has just poured a can straight in to the inlet breather pipe on a diesel or a petrol engine and liquid dont compress,, where half a brain cells would make most be think just spray a small amount in see how its goes etc,

Dear Mike,

I can't thank you enough for the wealth of knowledge that you share with us in this forum! For my complete lack of mechanic experience with cars, I'd avoid this, but damn, that would be a dream; a diesel car with no worries about its DPF! By the way, do you know of any map that would help reducing these particles? (i.e. if you can't burn them, reduce 'em! haha) or any map for what matters; my Dooper is still in its default map, so I suppose that there's always a more efficient one.

==================================================================
Just to sum up everything for those not reading all previous posts, advice shared so far are the following:

- Frequent oil changes (if mainly city driving, check that often - maybe every 6k miles) and good service/maintenance needed.
- A good all-in-one additive like Cataclean could be used every 3-4 months (put it when you have a quarter of diesel left in your tank).
- If possible, give it a nice go once a week for 20/30 miles, revs up above 2.5k.
- The previous could be combined with a forced regeneration (provided that your car is in good condition - no faults etc.) that can be made using AUTOCOM (see mike's post above) - I'll use Carly soon and let you know if and how well it works. That's 'cause I have ordered this already, otherwise I'd go with mike's suggestion.
- The estimated average "good" life of the car is 75k miles, after that DPF will soon need replacing, along with timing chain in n47 models and/or turbo a bit down the road.
===================================================== Credits go to mike!

Guys to be honest, my hair almost got grey reading and searching through these things. So much that it takes off the super fun that is driving this thing up and down (especially in country roads with many turns). What I'll do is to monitor the particles (soot) using Carly (since I bought this anyway, otherwise AUTOCOM) to see when regeneration is due (or to force one if I am to take a trip and passive regeneration won't help much), and keep it in tip-top shape by always giving it a V-Power fuel, CataClean once every quarter and frequent oil changes. But aside from that, I can't do much and if I'm not lucky it will fail anyway. Sometimes we're so deep into looking for these failures to come that they take away from the super fun driving these lovely MINI cars!

Sometimes we're so deep into looking for these failures to come that they take away from the super fun driving these lovely MINI cars!
ha ha welcome to my world it would be nice to own a car and just drive it with out a care in the world, i remember all all the nasty repair jobs that have done in the past and how how some faults keep coming to the top, i know a guy who does custom maps for dpf egr and 50/50 eco and power map ie brings the power band lower so get a big hit of power early in the rev band, i've a had a lot off him over the years he's a automotive electrical repairer, all the cars he has done for me have gone through mot emissions checks lower on the gas machine, which is bi- product of getting the amount of fuel and air/boost just right within the map,,
was speaking to him last week he thanked me for sending a guy off here who had a gen 1 cooper s mini and had modified it big time but had fitted bigger injectors off something else to find they would not work with the competition ecu this bloke had taken it to a couple rolling rolling places and they told him it cant be done,,, dale and the rolling road company he works with sorted it out,
big difference between people who copy code and people who can make code as such, and also repair and clone anything hmm except the mini bc1 as its silly protected
i will drop his number here for anyone who needs something like what i said above doing, a bonus ball is is that he can also do a send your ecu's in by post and he flips them around fairly fast, i always use this service ie UPS over night it,
DALE PHONE NUMBER 07807 222262

A quick update

Hi everybody,

One week after my last post the Carly adapter arrived! I can say that it is almost perfect! Why almost? Because it provides all information I need (plus much more I don't actually, but maybe others would) except from the % of how full the DPF is (it only gives the grams of soot/ash the DPF is filled with, but not actual percentages.

I did 1 hour of city driving (with an already regenerated DPF through my last trip - the soot levels were down to 6 grams), and this is what it looks like (attachment 1). From 14:22 (6 grams of soot) till 17:15 (17.8 grams of soot), there were 9 grams of soot added. But, what I noticed is the fact that there seems to exist a threshold at right about 18 grams, reaching which the car causes a kind of regeneration / soot-burning to reduce these soots, or at least keep them right below that. I don't know if anybody can find/assume why. It was city-driving only, mainly 2nd or 3rd gear (revs usually between 1700 and 2500 revs, speed between 26 and 34 mph, engine already warm constantly around the 85-86 degrees mark throughout all this ride).

In attachment 2 is the level of soot (for only a small time window) benchmarked against the revs, whilst in attachment 3 is the level of soot compared against the exhaust gas temperature upstream of the particle filter (in Celcius). I don't know if you guys can explain this?

By the way I should mention that I started recording right as I have filled up my tank, putting 1 bottle of Wynn's DPF cleaner (if that helps at all anyway). Also, there's only 13 grams of Ash in my DPF, so I suppose that it is still in good condition, right?

What do you think?


P.S. The Carly adaptor has already paid its money as it helped me code the auto start/stop button to remember the last setting (i.e. if I set it to off, then next time the engine starts it will remember that it is "off") and it has a few other codings that I'll do, such as how many seconds the light indicator to stay on etc. etc.

P.S. 2 I'll monitor this again in my next ride to let you know some more

Hi everyone,

I thought to share my experience with the DPF (according to its monitoring with Carly, at least for those who use it), as well as some question marks I got and a general advice. Here it is:

1) First of all, Carly measures the soot/ash in grams, although I guess that it's just an estimation based on the sensors before and after the DPF (those measuring the pressure). It is solid and robust, as no matter when I measure it, it always gives me the same grams (i.e. it never gives me a measurement and then when I go back I have a different measurement or whatever. That said, I don't know how exactly it measures the grams inside, but it's consistent)

2) It took me a while to understand what kind of thresholds are good or bad for a MINI Cooper 1.6D DPF, but here's what I've found so far:

* 18 grams of soot is the limit where active regeneration starts happening (so that's why it hardly passes the 18g threshold). This happens even in city driving conditions, although it only gets down to 16g at most, and then up it goes again until it reaches 18g. It usually takes me about two weeks of city driving in stop/start conditions to reach this limit from say, about 3 grams.

* Usually 25 grams is where the DPF light comes on the dashboard to give you an indication to get into a highway and offload it (it has never happened to me so far)

*Between 30 and 40 grams of soot, regeneration while driving/standing is possible

* Though between 40 and 44 grams regeneration is only forced (i.e. through Carly or a different OBD2 connector) and only through driving conditions (i.e. not while standing)

* Anything from 45 grams and above it goes to limp mode.

I've never surpassed the 18.5g threshold, so I can't guarantee anything about the above limits, but that's what I've found searching around in several forums, articles etc.


3) If you force regeneration through Carly, and for the 1.6D facelift Cooper model at least, from the time it actually starts regenerating, it needs exactly 10 minutes and then it stops (no matter if it still has soot to burn). That period is actually 14 minutes from the time you actually push it to regenerate (i.e. it needs about 4 minutes of highway driving to start actually regenerating, as I pushed the button while standing right outside a highway - done that twice). You can see my first attached picture.

4) If you see the first graph, it regenerates really fast! i.e. in 10 minutes it dropped down from 18 to 7g. But... the second time I tried regenerating, it was going really slow, i.e. in 10 minutes it dropped down from 7.5g to 5.50g (it was regenerating the whole time as the "requested regeneration mode" was on in Carly). Thus, my take is that it depends on how "essential" the regeneration is, as in order to heat the DPF and burn that thing, it usually also injects diesel, so it either didn't inject diesel to save fuel, or it was just burning real slow for reasons of efficiency (?) i.e. not increasing the DPF temperature at a really high value.

5) The revs don't play so much of a role. If you see the graph no.2 that I upload here, with blue is the histogram of the revs recording in the first regeneration (where it burned the soot really quick), and with orange the revs of my second regeneration (where it was burning the soot real slow). In the former case, the revs were usually between 2500 and 2700 and occasionally around the 3000 mark, whereas in the second regeneration, the revs were more around the 3000 to 3250 mark. Moreover the engine was already at temperature, as well as the DPF, as the second regeneration was enabled while I went to a roundabout and back on the same highway, thus the temperature was already up from the previous trip.

6) As you can see, passive regeneration after the requested one did not do anything (although I'm not sure if this is mainly because a forced regen was requested before), but it roughly kept the soot at the same level for the time driving the car.


That said, my first general advice would be don't get too frustrated with your DPF, but monitor that maybe once a week, and if it's near the 18g threshold, just take it for a ride and have a coffee at a city near you that involves at least 15 miles of highway and you'll be fine

My second general advice would be, while Carly is nice in itself, the app costs about 50£ and the adaptor another 62£ and it doesn't show you the % of soot in the DPF. Mike has proposed the AUTOCOM which, among other things, has some really powerful tools including the DPF. So if you have a Windows laptop, and you don't want to spare 100+ quid for Carly, this is your option to go! (Thanks a lot Mike!)

P.S. For those wondering, the first trip was 15 miles of (normal to a bit busy traffic conditions) highway, and then a roundabout and back (another 15 miles).

mike1967 said:

devils advocate i have regen'd thousands of diesels over the years and on a 50k car where it is showing the dpf warning on the dash or has gone slow off the mark at least a 40 minute 3400 revs forced regen will improve it and its all about the heat just cant see how 10 minutes under 3k would induce enough heat, guess time will tell keep us informed,, the best £300 anyone could spend is make it gine and egr and drop a 40 bhp extra low down map on it completely transforms the car and also the chain last longer on n47

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Hi Mike, thanks again for your thoughts! All I did was put a bottle of Wynn's DPF cleaning (which reduces the temp of soot burning to approx 450) and also had the aircon ON in order to increase the load and took it for a nice 15 mile highway drive each way (2,500 revs and up, which means either 4th gear or sometimes 3rd gear if the traffic was getting jammed). I am by no means expert in this and only say what I observe so take it with a pinch of salt! My car still has only 42k miles on the clock (so, also a low amount of ash too) and in perfect working condition (i.e. fully serviced, no faults found, thermostat OK etc.) so maybe there's a combination of all the above that counts I suppose. In any case, my point is only concern about the DPF if you see the light on, as my hair got grey from what I've been reading in several forums.

Also, the 10 minute window is the time frame I observed with the forced regeneration, this doesn't mean that the car does not regenerate after that. So maybe, what you say is whilst thrashing the car (i.e. 3,500 revs) for an extended period of time (i.e. as you said about 30 minutes more) it keeps regenerating and burning more soot (whilst, for instance, I pushed it to force regenerate again a second time after the 10 minutes window passed)

That said, and whilst this has never occurred to me, is there a DPF symbol that comes on the dashboard, or is it a generic engine symbol indicating that? Moreover, the tuning you mentioned sounds really good, could you give us some more details?

aircon works the other way round ie when its on it sets the cooling fan running to cool it down, when its heat that turns exhaust in to a furnace to reduce the soot,
basically they cut the dpf filter in a way that cannot be seen and remove the dpf filter and blank off the egr valve then add a 50/50 remap and map out the dpf filter and egr valve, the egr valve adds exhaust gasses and carbon in to the inlet,, by removing the engine replaces the inert carbon dioxide with oxygen and that adds more power also it allows the turbo to spool up early, but its a mot failure to have this removed, that said all mot stations i have worked around only do a visual check so as long as it looks like never been tampered with they will pass it, ironically all the cars that i have seen mot's with it done the gass figures are a lot less than with the filters. as the filters only really work 100% when new and between new and 75k they just get worst. all the cars i have done this to do better mog nicer to drive and the engine oil stays cleaner as nothing causing back pressure forcing carbon and unburnt diesel in the sump, this tends to cost around £300 -£500 depending on the car etc,

Hi guys,

Just another update on this matter. Did two more regens (forced through Carly) and the same pattern appeared. That is, 14 minute regeneration windows. Now, for some more (perceived) insights:


Regeneration #1

• The regeneration lasted 14 minutes
• Revs were on average on the 2,500 mark
• It dropped all the way from 12grams (about 40% of DPF capacity) to 2 grams
• I had put CATACLEAN diesel in this run (I use it once every 6 months)

Regeneration #2:

• The first regeneration lasted 14 minutes
• Revs were on average around the 3,000 mark
• It dropped from 12 grams to 6.5 grams
• I forced another regeneration right after that, which only lasted 10 minutes, but probably because it cleared the DPF.

These said, I've got a question that you could probably help me with:

As this is mainly a city car, and based on my sub-5 miles daily trips it needs about 2 weeks to reach the 12 grams mark (40% of DPF capacity - at about 80% the light comes on). Is it safe, if I "force" regenerate it through Carly (or any software for that matter) every two weeks? I usually take the A3, do 20 miles of highway driving, then roundabout and another 20 miles back, where I usually regenerate on my way back. Do I make any harm on the engine or any other components this way? or is it safe? I mainly do it as I want the car to be always on the safe side (DPF loading wise) and I don't want it to get clogged by not doing any highway trips. What else do I need to make sure to check that everything remains in good condition, aside from fluids (coolant, oil) that are probably affected by regenerating that often?