Please can anybody help us understand our problem? We bought our first ever diesel new car 3 months ago. We were told that with Mark only working round the corner we would have to give the car good runs to keep the filter clear. This we do every weekend, last weekend we drove to Wales and back doing over 200 miles so today we were surprised when the filter light came on. The car had loss of engine Power and there was a code 84 notice on the dash along with a spanner symbol. We rang the garage and they told us to drive the car for 5 miles keeping revs at 2.5000 or more in a lower gear. We did this and it wasn't until the car had been turned off for an hour then back on did the lights go out. We are baffled by all of this and are left wondering if giving the car a long run is enough to keep the filter from blocking, any info will be greatly appreciated. Ellen.

The simple answer is it can be a multitude of things, some say dirty fuel, others just blame the dpf for everything! No doubt others will be along with their reasoning for you to ponder over

We feel sure that the garage is going to put any blame with us and so I expect the problem will not be covered by warranty.

Thank you so much for your help, our car is a Chevrolet Orlando, I will hunt out the owners forum. Mark thinks that like you mentioned we could be driving it wrongly for a modern diesel. Fingers x that the lights don't re-appear.

The other thing to look at is where you buy your fuel, try to use somewhere with a high turnover, that way you are less likely to suffer from contaminants in the fuel.

Quite right about 6th gear cruising etc not achieving high exhaust temperatures, but using your car as a tow car (not sure if you do) should alleviate the problem somewhat. Saying that it is obvious from reading other threads lots of people don't use their vans much (not a critisism just something i've observed)

We buy our diesel from Asda which of course will have a high turnover of customers. A mechanic advised us to buy from either morrissons or the larger shell garages, is this diesel better quality? We thought we had solved the problem we are having as the car was fine on saturday yet yesterday when the engine was switched on the dpf light came on again resulting in Mark having to take the car on a run up the motorway after his nights work, oh dear. As it's getting close to the meet at Gloucester we are hoping that this problem stops, we buy new cars as we are not at all car savvy and so rely on advice given by the garage, big mistake. When Mark range the garage to say the car had lost power he had 3 totally different views as to what we should do. No.1. was. Dont worry we will take a look at it when it has its first service in 3 weeks. No. 2. Was. Phone the breakdown service and get them to bring it to us and when we have time we will look at it. No.3 was. Drive it home in low gear getting the revs over 2.500. Nearly forgot, on Saturday morning he was told by no. 4 that we should drive the car on a weekly basis in low gear with high revs to keep the filter from blocking. All 4 people dishing out their words of wisdom were in the same department, the garage. . If you don't laugh you cry.

Lots of differing views on supermarket fuel with lots of people producing reports, statistics etc very meaningless unless you have a petrochemical background

A high fuel turnover garage usually means you would be unlucky to have the same problem twice. Towing with the car should alsomeanyou reach high exhaust temperatures imho

Most of us take our vehicles for granted, I really do hope you get to the bottoom of it and get it sorted

Your consumer laws are somewhat different to ours, Ellen, but if I were you I'd give some serious thought to consulting Citizens Advise and asking how you would go about claiming that the vehicle wasn't fit for the use it was intended for. At this point in time you are receiving so much unhelpful advice from the garage that I am not surprised one bit that you are utterly confused.
I won't offer you yet another opinion as to the cause but rather my own personal experience having owned several diesel fuelled cars ranging from Citroens x 2, BMW's x 1, VW's x 3 and a Mitsubishi Shogun and have only once observed the DPF filter light come on which I had been somewhat expecting when I took into consideration the type of driving that I had been doing during the previous 10 days.
I will add though, from reading your original post, that I believe you were ill advised or mistaken in your belief that a diesel fuelled car was the right one under the circumstances taking into consideration that your old man simply drives it around the corner on a daily basis. Diesel cars take an awfully long time to warm up - in the winter here I can drive 12km to the next town and still the temparature guage is registering only slightly above the zero mark. Until up to temperature they can produce an awful lot of soot which isn't helped by cheap fuel. So what makes a so-called 'good' fuel? Well essentially it comes down to the additives that each seller request the refinery to add to the mix. A tanker full of diesel heading for a Tesco forecourt may not necessarily have the same mix as one heading for a Shell forecourt in terms of additives. Once again, I don't know how fuel is advertised/sold on your forecourts but you should really be looking for, and if available, a fuel that is being presented as Ultra-Low Sulphur Diesel. Sulphur, a natural part of the crude oil from which diesel fuel is derived, is one of the key causes of particulates or soot in diesel. Soot is the main culprit of diesel engines' noxious black exhaust fumes, and is among the prime contributors to air pollution. Where I used to live (an island in the Med) the raw fuel was so bad that anyone with a decent car wouldn't touch it and a colleague of mine owning a BMW series 5 series used to put his car on the ferry, travel over to Scicily on the ferry for the day and then return with a full tank. In the Mitsubishi Shogun that I owned whilst there I'd add a pint of engine oil into the fuel tank at every fill up but of course that was in the days before filters and most diesels ran like Tractors.
All in all though, Ellen, at this point in time and before the car gets much older, you really need to seek some qualified advise in terms of what your rights are and the CA can do this. From what I read you have tried all the various methods offered by the garage to deal with the problem without really getting anywhere and this should stand you in good stead for getting the car exchanged. Best of luck with whatever you decide.
Oh, just to add one more small point - petrol engine technology has progressed leaps and bounds over the years and although torque, which is a measure of how much power it takes on an object in order for it to rotate, is better with a diesel engine it's not generally by a considable amount and is easily compensated for by the next engine size up which will probably still be cheaper than a diesel fuelled car. Diesel engines are used in trucks because of their longevity and this is in part down to the cast iron camshaft. Earlier diesel cars also had a a cast iron camshaft but this has now been replaced with a steel version in order to cut down on the weight. In my opinion this is to the detriment of the diesel engine and when taking into consideration the higher purchase price of a diesel fuelled car, the higher tax and the ever increasing cost of diesel fuel there really isn't much of an advantage to buying a diesel fuelled car unless you're a travelling salesman travelling tens of thousands of miles per year.

Thank you. Funnily enough I was on the citizens advice website last night "just incase". What upsets me the most is that I pursued the question "is a diesel car suitable for us" to the point that one garage said I needed to get out more instead of researching about modern diesel engines. What a good job it wasn't a man from the garage we bought this car from. Thank you for the support everyone. quick update. Just rang the garage and told them how let down we feel and that we have no confidence in the car right now and they tell us the problem is all down to our low mileage. Problem is of course that we cannot prove that time after time we told them that we do not do regular long journeys. Looks like it's the usual case of them not giving a dam once the vehicle has been sold. We really do love this car so will do our best to sort the problem out but unless Mark changes his job for one a journey away I am not sure how this problem will end.

Hi ellen, just out of interest can I ask what colour the inside of your exhaust is? It is a serious question. I run a BMW 320d which was new to us in August 13 but it was previiusly owned, the inside of my exhaust is really really clean! With no black or sooty (sometimes oily) marks. And no I have not cleaned it

In the meantime I wish you luck with your problem.

I will have a look, thank you. Oh heck, just got up off my knees from examining the exhaust to find the window cleaner staring in amazement from across the road. Anyway, the inside is black and when I wiped it on the inside with kitchen towel a very small amount of blackish dust was on the paper. Somehow I have a feeling this is not a good sign.

Sorry to read about the ongoing problems. I find it surprising that the dealer is blaming your usage. We average just 7,000 miles per annum and typically over the periods Nov - March and Jul/Aug, the car will cover a total of just 2,000 miles - so almost all very short (shopping etc) journeys. The other 5,000 miles is accounted for by towing our 1300kg Touring 540 around the UK, France & Spain. Fuel is a mixture of supermarket, Esso or Shell depending on how benevolent I am feeling. In a way I am actually surprised and relieved that we have not had a warning light problem in the three and a half years that we have had the Honda (from new)! Has your dealer run thorough diagnostic check, particularly of the fuelling/injector side of things? Is the engine being over-fuelled? Hope you manage to resolve the situation.

some times the vacuum pipes can block causing overfuelling this happened on an audi the small pipe went from the air filter housing.
could even be a dirty air filter, perhaps mark could remove and vacuum this with the flex hose plus attachment on vacuum?
I would think the dpf would of cleaned with the recent long journey, even with your short journeys taken into account
there are times when the fault code needs deleting for the fault to disappear from the system, you will need a person with a plugin fault code reader with the ability to delete.
wonder if a sensor wire has been eaten by the vermin? we have just replace the brake fluid bottle due to rats again!
it sounds like a headache

hope you get sorted
P