MINI, Diesel & DPF maintenance in city driving conditions

minimeD said:

Hi Mike,

Are you talking about pouring Cataclean? If so, it did miracles for my car (or at least my perception is that) and for cleaning the DPF super fast (as you can see from Regeneration #1 - 12 grams to almost nothing in just one regeneration). I didn't try to put it this way, as I was afraid it might end up on the floor, so I bought myself one of these fuel funnels (actually this one) and worked a treat!

Regarding the forced regenerations, do you think it's safe to exercise them with any software every two or three weeks? I would assume that it is, as it's like instead of letting the software choose, you kind of choose it yourself, but does it make more harm than it's trying to prevent at the end? What do you think?

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my stance on it is this and honestly the amount of damage these ill thought about stupid filters cause is massive really is its borderline theft if you see it from a owners point of view ie perfect way to remove old cars as most dont see much north of 100.000 miles with same filter in volvo ford psa jag etc all put a mileage life on them clearly 75.000 miles on a car that spends all its time reving over 2000 revs ie passive regens, the trouble is when they are new yes they collect 99% of carbon but at 70.000 miles help to produce a dam sight more from engines that cant reach the high temps needed to burn the diesel correctly etc,
this all said euro 6 cars are so much better night and day with addblue in them,but still need revs to keep healthy.
cataclean works on a partially blocked filter by rising the temp in side the filter by the diesel burning off hotter, also a partially blocked dpf will cause turbo fails and head gaskets to fail also egr valves clog and that takes out the turbo etc also the burnt fuel bypasses the already carbon filled piston rings and ends up in sump and thins oil down added to this is carbon grinding away at it, really is a engine killer where they could of designed a better system where the diesel fuel had additives that atomises the particulates rather than collect it up for 4 months then burn it off like the dpf filters try,, oil changes on dpf cars 8k use a oil flush like seafoam i like the best melts the carbon,,
cataclean i have used a tin where mot gas check failed and all done add a can drive ofr hour 3k revs come back and goes through the gas test under what the book states its should be

minimeD said:

Yes, that is true indeed! Also, I coded the auto start stop to remember my last setting (as it was always resetting it, even if I turned it off), and cleared a few silly faults related to the anti-theft control. Regardless, all these could be done much cheaper using "autocom" as Mike suggested a couple of posts earlier, although you will need a Windows laptop, which I didn't have unfortunately :/

Mike, I couldn't agree more with you, and buying the diesel version to drive it in the city is something that I regret in the first place (although the upside of this is forcing myself to make a trip here and there in the weekends). However, do you think force regenerating the car very often will damage it (or any other mechanical components) earlier than it would otherwise? Or anything else we should be aware of (e.g. anything ending up in the oil?)

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i have best of both worlds i got no problems with dpf causing any more damage to my latest car deleted and egr valve and 130bhp is now a lot more and the thing still does very good mpg to boot its not a mini by way, i know its mot failure but its only a visual check and done correctly you would never know, i drive 1200-1800 revs everywhere never have a issue also it goes through gas check under what it should be, also the oil is pretty much as clean as when i put it in, .sold both my clubman cooper d one 4 years ago other 3 years ago to people i know see them all time and service their cars for them, just because i done the deletes on them one is on around 140k at mo and still pulls like a house, but both cars were right cars came from bmw trade in through trade and owned by older people as such and were garage queens for first years of their life so by time i got them they were still untouched really but one did do its turbo and ended up rebuilding it 80,000 miles due to filter in oil feed think i paid £1200 for it back then non runner

Hi guys,

For the 5th time, I get the same result. That is:

• Regeneration window of 14 minutes

Between 14:42 (where the data start) and 14:45 I was driving to the nearest highway exit, so 3 minutes of city driving. Then, approximately between 14:45 and 15:06 I was on the highway with a speed of between 60-70 and 4th gear trying to keep the RPMs as high as possible whilst maintaining a constant speed (I achieved that as there was no traffic at that time). This means 21 minutes of pure motorway driving, or about 23 miles. I suppose that this would be perfect for passive regeneration, right? Well, apparently it wasn't, 'cause as you can see the soot was slowly but gradually increasing during that time. So, I stopped at a parking spot and forced regeneration through Carly and driven for another 23 miles of highway back home. In just under 14 minutes, it dropped the soot from 11 grams (this is approximately a 38% clogged DPF) to just over 3 grams (just under 10%).

So, in my small experience I believe that there are 3 possible outcomes:

1. Passive regeneration doesn't work or doesn't exist in my '63 plate Mini Cooper D
2. Passive regeneration needs at least 24 miles of highway driving to be triggered [I shall experiment with that in the near future, i.e. make the round trip ~ 48 miles of highway driving without force regenerating it myself]
3. Passive regeneration is a mild forced regeneration through the ECU (e.g. instead of injecting lots of diesel in the DPF, it only injects small amounts) when the soot increases above a given threshold

In any case, the 14 minute regeneration window seems to be fairly consistent, plus in my manual, where the DPF maintenance is, it says that regeneration only takes a few minutes to be achieved.

One observation is for sure, softwares such as "Autocomm" and "Carly" work (I've tried the latter, Mike has tried the former).

So, the only question that remains is the following:

• Is it safe to force regenerating your DPF (bi)weekly?

@mike1967 Isn't diesel only potentially ending in the oil (thus contaminating it) only in the case of unsuccessful DPF regens? If that's the case then this poses no problem as they are successful (and controlled). yep on a brand new filter as filter gets older this increases ie on first part of regen when the heat is low and carbon build up is high some blow past happens some cars are worse than others, most car dpf filters are part of exhaust manifold to help lower this time span, but some are not ie further down the exhaust where it struggles to get as hot as fast, car makers redesigned this on euro6 diesel and adding add blue as well. psa try'd to deal with this with additive tank but was not that successful really,
vauxhall have had this issue with all their 2.0cdti engines and 1.3 fiat shared engines. tell tail signs are oil always thin oil always above full mark when checked, as another little trick is engine will burn off the build up so looks to the owner like never uses oil etc, have seen many peoples disbelief when explained the engine is nailed due to this, but after they see the crankshaft bearings damage they then get it, better to be aware of it keep eye on it change oil more and know its a bi product of the systems

Hi guys,

I hope you're all well! This is the latest "evidence" I present of a regeneration, which is interesting (and value-adding) compared to those I shared with you before for two reasons.

• This regeneration was requested by the car, not myself.
• This is the first time I'm adding more information, such as temperature around the DPF (pre and post-DPF to be more accurate).

Today, when I came home from a trip around town, I noticed that there was a bit of a hesitation when I was pressing the acceleration pedal, whilst I had the impression that the engine was sounding a bit more rough. I plugged in the OBD2 adaptor straightway, and monitored the Soot levels (15 grams) and whether the engine requested acceleration (it had! in Carly, that's "Requested Regeneration 6.00" by the way, whereas a value "4.00" means that it is undergoing regeneration). So, having pressed the option to record these data, I went on the highway for a ride (22 miles of highway each way) and I observed the following:

• Regeneration window was still 14 minutes (i.e. the same to what happens when I force it) - You can see the soot sharply falling (blue solid line)
• As soon as the engine was in temperature (around the 86 degrees mark), you can see the temperature of the exhaust (right before and right after - two orange lines, one solid one dotted accordingly) rising from 220 to 550 degrees Celcius).
• As soon as the regeneration finished (14 minutes window), the temperature went back to around 250 degrees Celcius, despite I changed nothing on my part (revs kept up constantly about 3,000, speed at 70mph, highway driving).
• There are some fluctuations in the exhaust temperature anything from 250 to 380, but nothing went up again even after 30 miles of highway driving.
• The car's temp (dotted blue line) is divided by 10 for simplicity in illustration, so 8 means 80 etc. You can see that the car was constantly just under 90 degrees.

As a conclusion I leave the following two statements:

• I am not convinced about this car's passive regeneration capacity (I cannot generalise based on this set of data, talking about other models in general), as even if you do lots of highway miles, you won't get the temp up to 500+ degrees. Plus, nobody in his righteous mind will constantly keep the revs up, as the reason for getting a diesel car in the first place is to have an extraordinary fuel consumption with a conservative driving schedule in a high (6th) gear.
• I am certainly convinced about this car's active regeneration capacity, as it is super-quick, effective and it is always greatly calculated by the car to initiate it when needed. Last, but not least, on the same note, I copy a statement from Wikipedia's link on DPF:
  
  "Running the [regeneration] cycle too often while keeping the back pressure in the exhaust system low will result in high fuel consumption. Not running the regeneration cycle soon enough increases the risk of engine damage and/or uncontrolled regeneration (thermal runaway) and possible DPF failure."
  
  And based on this statement, I am actually convinced on managing my car's regeneration schedule when convenient for me (i.e. on my way back from a trip or a short Sunday drive), as even if you go somewhere far, chances are your car will not regenerate when you really want to (i.e. just before you reach home). The downside of this? Much higher consumption... so be it.

Hi all,

My suspicion came true. Normal driving conditions no matter the miles (see description below) does not trigger a regeneration.

I did 80 miles each way yesterday (so 160 in total), going steadily between 60 (outside big junctions) and 70mph with 5th and 6th gear, so that is 2,000 revs, and, in times, shifting down to 5th or 4th gear to overtake vehicles in front of me. That is how one would normally drive a car, call it economic driving or otherwise, I'd say this is the norm.

The image below shows the following:

• 80 miles drive from destination A to B, conditions as I said above. Temperature maxed at around 420 degrees at times, normally averaging around the 300+ mark, definitely below the soot burning temp. The soot increased from 6 grams to 9.5, which, given the miles I covered is definitely great (in city driving conditions, after 80 miles this would have definitely gone way higher, maybe around the 12 grams mark if not more). But... no passive regeneration.
• During the first big box (grey area) the car was parked, so neglect these data (everything remains steady soot-wise, of course the exhaust temperature fell to 0 at that time, but data were interpolated).
• On my way back, after 1 hour of driving (about 58-60 miles), the soot went from 9.5 to 12.5 (3 grams added) - neglect the small grey area, the tablet was accidentally disconnected and data for that period went a bit crazy when interpolated.
• Just 20 miles before I reached home, I stopped at a parking, forced a regen, took 14 minutes (as usual) and emptied the whole thing to just under 4 grams. [This part you cannot see that on this graph, 'cause I didn't collect the data - just monitored the soot before and after regeneration]

See, there are two conclusions here:

• If I hadn't monitored the DPF, I would have reached home with about 13 grams, and 2 grams later the car would have liked to regenerate (although wouldn't be blocked, as it would be way till the 23-24 grams where the light comes on), and I wouldn't have known that. So, passive regeneration with the above conditions does not work.
• Maybe passive regeneration works if one "thrashes" the car, so that the exhaust temp can go at least 550 degrees, you know going 3rd-4th gear 70mph, or have a bottle of whatever DPF cleaner works that lowers the temp the soot burns. But, that's not me; I'd like to take my car's engine smoother than that, and I'd assume that most drivers would agree with me here.

My verdict?

• In my model (Mini Cooper D 1.6 post-facelift '63 registration - I cannot talk about other MINI models or other cars), 3 months of collecting data on my DPF shows that the car does not passively regenerate, and only 'actively' does that when it really needs to!

Two other important and interesting things I'd like to try:

• When one "thrashes" the car, the soot goes up like crazy, so maybe a mechanic's impression of "thrashing" the car so that it "unloads" the soot is simply a DPF that was almost full and gotten full due to the crazy driving increasing the soot tremendously, and an active regeneration was initiated because of that! Simple as that?! I don't know, I cannot claim that and I'd need to collect more data to back this hypothesis up.
• In my perception, when I'm putting Shell V-Power, the soot goes up slower than when I'm putting the Fuel Save one. I have to collect more data on that and do some statistical analysis, but we'll get there eventually!

I hope all this has been somehow enlightening for you as it has been for me, but, bottom line is, to really understand your car, you need to collect its data. And, seemingly, that's what data on my car shows