New purchase: MK3 2013 1.6 TDCI Zetec

[Telecastermaster]

Hi All. Cool forum you have here. Having driven petrol’s all my life and having spent the last 4 years with an Astra H 1.6 Twinport, I’ve just purchased a MK3 2013 1.6 TDCI Zetec (the 115 hp version) and so far I’m very impressed. 37000 on the clock but looks and feels like new and the whole thing just feels refined and solid as a rock. I’m determined to look after this car and get some longevity out of it so I’m hoping that the good people of this forum will be able to help with some guidance and pointers throughout its lifetime, but I’m also hoping for straightforward services and MOTs, so fingers crossed I won’t need too much help! Anyway, as it’s the first time I’ve driven a Ford or a Diesel for many years, I have a few questions I hope you can help with:

1) The dreaded DPF. I’ve been doing a lot of reading around this and have seen many horror stories about the MK2 but far fewer around the MK3. I understand that the MK3 is ceramic and no longer EOLYS reliant, and as far as I understand it, the MK3 seems to do a much better job at regeneration without so much as anybody really noticing it happening. Is it your opinion and experience then that it is far more reliable in the MK3 and something I don’t really need to worry about? Is there anything I need to know? There does still seems to be a lot of conflicting advice around the DPF. My commute involves 50/50 urban driving and NSL B-Roads, but it will be getting some motorway driving at weekends. Will this do the job? Do I need to give it a good pummelling at high revs when on the motorway or will just normal cruising at 2000 revs or under do the job (again, conflicting advice seems to abound)? Basically, I’m just looking for more on anyone’s experiences. I’ve read a lot of horror stories as I say, but I’m trying to work out if a lot of it is scaremongering and the fact that far less seems to be written about the MK3 would be appear to be a positive I guess.

2) Having come from a petrol and being pretty aggressive with my right foot, obviously I’m now adapting to diesel driving and at the moment, I’m enjoying changing up at 2000 revs, trundling around at 1500 revs letting the torque just roll it along and seeing how many MPG I can squeeze out of it. As I say, there will be plenty of motorway driving to come but so far with urban and B Road driving, the trip computer is giving me about 42 MPG. Is this about what you would expect?

3) Related to the above, in driving this way, again is this going to cause me DPF problems? Again, advice I have read so far seems to be conflicting. Some say that if you are keeping the revs down, you are going to have less soot build up, but some say that the car needs a good hammering to clear the soot (but surely in giving it a good hammering, you are increasing the amount of soot you’re chucking out?)? If it is true that you need to be giving the car a constant ‘Italian tune up’, surely this will heavily impact on your MPG which will defy the whole point of having a diesel? On that subject, if you are constantly giving it some oomph (and hell yes, that low rev grunt is a lot of fun coming over from a petrol and I am constantly tempted to just bury my right foot in the carpet!!), is this going to cause problems of its own? Is the reality that I just need to drive the car somewhere in the middle of the two schools of thought and the MPG will just be what it will be?!

4) If you do need to induce an active regen, would it not just make sense to have fitted a dashboard light telling you to do this? Or a dashboard light to tell you when one is taking place? And why the mystery about when regens do happen?! Does anyone know the intervals or how it decides?

5) Finally, I've read a lot about supermarket diesel v premium diesel and the premium stuff being kinder on the DPF and fuel economy. Anything in this?

6) Am I overthinking all of this?!!!

Thanks for your help!!

[TomsFocus]

6) Absolutely, yes!  

 

You are correct in that the Mk3 uses a coated DPF which is much more efficient. 

Regens are noticeable in these, you'll probably notice it drives badly for a few miles before a regen starts.  If it starts while you're cruising at speed you'll notice a jerk that feels like you've tapped the brake. There is also a change in engine note. If in town or car park you'll hear the engine fan running at max speed.  42mpg on the dash display sounds pretty bad tbh, it should be 50+ with your driving, the dash display is also very optimistic on these so chances are you're in the 30s.

Honestly, just drive it for a few weeks 'normally' and see if you get any issues.  

[Ryan_Tango]

6. Yup

I owned a MK3 same as yours for 2.5 years and it was a brilliant car, never had any issues with my DPF I did 40k miles in mine in the time I owned it, 42mpg seems about right if you're giving it the boot quite often, regens are a bit of a mystery I think I clocked mine doing it every 400-500 miles. 

I would say don't use supermarket diesel but don't pay out for premium just go to another garage like BP or Shell, chances are you'll only pay a extra 2p per litre which in your tank is only a extra £1.10 per tank.

I don't think with your driving you'll have any issues with the DPF but if you ever do just get it cleaned rather than replaced as with these DPF's the cleaning process seems to be adequate enough.

As far as the car as a whole it's brilliant with being able to do so much to it in the ways of modifications, I had mine remapped to 150bhp, 350NM, full Zetec S bodykit, rear disc conversion, centre console armrest from the Titanium X, converted rear manual wind up windows to electric converting all front and rear to one touch up and down, retrofitted cruise control with ASL and finally replaced the audio system with a double din pioneer nav system. 

[Telecastermaster]

Thanks for the replies. Guess I'll just drive and see what happens! I guess there is always something that could go bang with any car - part of owning one I suppose. 

Great car though. I've wanted a Focus ever since the mark 1 came out and somehow I've never quite got round to it. Glad I waited until the MK3 now though!

[madmole]

I'm at same mileage in mine, never notice the regent happening unless I pull up when one is on and the fan stays on. Mines run on Shell Super all its life and has a Spider Arachnid chip, and gets an Archoil 6400D regularly

The lowest mpg I've ever got was 48mpg and that was in town in heavy traffic. On normal cruises I get 55-60 and I've managed 70mpg once on an all motorway trip with load of 50 mph sections

[Telecastermaster]

So, just a small update. Am loving the car more and more with each day that passes. MPG is up to 45.5 and still rising which I think is a combination of me gradually making the switch from petrol in learning how to drive a diesel more efficiently and also because it had 60 miles on the motorway yesterday. On that subject, again having come from petrol, I was amazed at the motorway performance. Sat doing 80 at 2500 revs and couldn't believe how quiet it was and how the engine was barely working. I couldn't hear myself think in my Astra at those sort of speeds. I guess I'm understanding why people choose diesels for motorway munching! 

A couple of things I've noticed:

1) Since that run out yesterday, I guess I could be imagining this, but I swear to god that the throttle response has changed a bit. It actually feels a bit worse, a little bit sludgy and delayed maybe. Is this possible? Is this something that the computer could gradually be changing in response to my driving style or something?

2) Start/Stop is still not working. I'm not sure how much I care as I'm not sure how good for the car all that stopping and re-starting really is anyway, but I am kind of curious to get it working. I figured that maybe the battery has not been 100% as it may have been sat on a forecourt for a while and had viewers playing with various things and draining the battery. But I half expected that a good motorway thrashing like yesterday would re-charge the battery and Start/Stop might suddenly start working. No such luck. Any ideas? Any way to diagnose the issue?

3) 2500 revs is about the right number for a DPF regen right? My usual motorway cruising speed is 80 which is bang on 2500 revs in 6th in this car. So that should do the business right? I think it may have been doing this yesterday as fuel consumption for the first 15 minutes of the run barely changed and then it began to rapidly rise. 

Thanks!

[TomsFocus]

1.  Sounds like it's due a regen tbh.  

2.  Check the battery indicator.  Reset the battery monitor (I've posted the instructions for that on a few threads recently).

3.  It doesn't really work like that.  The modern cDPFs can regen under 2k rpm.  But ultimately the ECU decides when to start a regen, this often seems to be on a short, town drive the day after a long drive!

[Telecastermaster]

26 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

1.  Sounds like it's due a regen tbh.  

2.  Check the battery indicator.  Reset the battery monitor (I've posted the instructions for that on a few threads recently).

3.  It doesn't really work like that.  The modern cDPFs can regen under 2k rpm.  But ultimately the ECU decides when to start a regen, this often seems to be on a short, town drive the day after a long drive!

Thanks for your reply Tom. I've found one of your posts about the battery and will have a go at this. 

I'm sure you're much more knowledgeable than me around the whole DPF thing, and I'm still confused so maybe you can help clear this up for me. If a regen can kick in at any time under any driving style, why does the owners manual advise a good run in a lower gear every now and again? Is this a failsafe just in case you are doing such pathetically short runs all the time that the car never gets a chance to complete a regen? 

And if what you are saying is correct (which I'm sure it is) where does that leave all this stuff about 'passive' regen and 'active' regens. My previous reading on the subject lead me to believe that if you are always doing the motorway miles, it's more likely that the car is constantly undergoing 'passive' regen and therefore wouldn't need to force 'active' regens. But if I'm understanding you correctly, there is no such thing as 'passive' regen and the car is always going to commence an 'active' regen whenever it needs one, correct?

[TomsFocus]

1 hour ago, Telecastermaster said:

Thanks for your reply Tom. I've found one of your posts about the battery and will have a go at this. 

I'm sure you're much more knowledgeable than me around the whole DPF thing, and I'm still confused so maybe you can help clear this up for me. If a regen can kick in at any time under any driving style, why does the owners manual advise a good run in a lower gear every now and again? Is this a failsafe just in case you are doing such pathetically short runs all the time that the car never gets a chance to complete a regen? 

And if what you are saying is correct (which I'm sure it is) where does that leave all this stuff about 'passive' regen and 'active' regens. My previous reading on the subject lead me to believe that if you are always doing the motorway miles, it's more likely that the car is constantly undergoing 'passive' regen and therefore wouldn't need to force 'active' regens. But if I'm understanding you correctly, there is no such thing as 'passive' regen and the car is always going to commence an 'active' regen whenever it needs one, correct?

Although a regen can start under various conditions, it won't complete if you can't maintain a steady speed.  And it does need around 1500rpm to complete within a reasonable time, it'll fail if it takes too long so as not to risk damage from excess heat.  The manual recommendation is just a very broad recommendation to cover all DPF types.  It won't hurt to do a high rpm run but from my experience it's very difficult to 'force' a regen by doing that so you're just wasting fuel tbh.

Passive regen doesn't seem to happen under real world conditions, the DPF just doesn't get hot enough under normal driving to burn off the soot.  The PCM starts an active regen when it senses soot levels are at a certain saturation point, trouble is it can't guess how or where you'll be driving which is why it often starts on a short trip.  An active regen mainly uses post injections to add diesel after the main explosion, this diesel isn't fully burnt in the cylinder, it passes the exhaust valve, hits the hot cat and burns inside the DPF core, creating the extra heat for the regen.  There are also other things happening during active regen, the intercooler is bypassed and the EGR is closed etc.  It creates far more heat like that than you could ever hope to under normal driving conditions.    When a regen does a start on a short trip, it's not a major issue, it'll start again next time you drive.  I do a lot of short trips and can go for days with the DPF trying to regen before it finally completes one, but will then be fine for 2 or 3 weeks.  I am in the process of changing to a petrol lol.

[Telecastermaster]

31 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Although a regen can start under various conditions, it won't complete if you can't maintain a steady speed.  And it does need around 1500rpm to complete within a reasonable time, it'll fail if it takes too long so as not to risk damage from excess heat.  The manual recommendation is just a very broad recommendation to cover all DPF types.  It won't hurt to do a high rpm run but from my experience it's very difficult to 'force' a regen by doing that so you're just wasting fuel tbh.

Passive regen doesn't seem to happen under real world conditions, the DPF just doesn't get hot enough under normal driving to burn off the soot.  The PCM starts an active regen when it senses soot levels are at a certain saturation point, trouble is it can't guess how or where you'll be driving which is why it often starts on a short trip.  An active regen mainly uses post injections to add diesel after the main explosion, this diesel isn't fully burnt in the cylinder, it passes the exhaust valve, hits the hot cat and burns inside the DPF core, creating the extra heat for the regen.  There are also other things happening during active regen, the intercooler is bypassed and the EGR is closed etc.  It creates far more heat like that than you could ever hope to under normal driving conditions.    When a regen does a start on a short trip, it's not a major issue, it'll start again next time you drive.  I do a lot of short trips and can go for days with the DPF trying to regen before it finally completes one, but will then be fine for 2 or 3 weeks.  I am in the process of changing to a petrol lol.

 

Lol, sounds like you have had your fill of DPF and Regen nonsense?!!

Thanks for the reply. Good info. 

[TomsFocus]

5 minutes ago, Telecastermaster said:

 

Lol, sounds like you have had your fill of DPF and Regen nonsense?!!

Thanks for the reply. Good info. 

I'm stuck in a catch22 tbh, can only afford the running costs of a diesel...but don't do enough miles for a DPF!  I've owned diesels for the last 8 years, and DPF equipped ones for 4 years now lol, had the first DPF removed but obviously that's no longer an option.  Currently waiting for the facelift 1.0 EcoBoosts to drop into my budget, they're only petrol with running costs that come anywhere close to diesel in a Focus/Golf sized car.

[Telecastermaster]

5 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

I'm stuck in a catch22 tbh, can only afford the running costs of a diesel...but don't do enough miles for a DPF!  I've owned diesels for the last 8 years, and DPF equipped ones for 4 years now lol, had the first DPF removed but obviously that's no longer an option.  Currently waiting for the facelift 1.0 EcoBoosts to drop into my budget, they're only petrol with running costs that come anywhere close to diesel in a Focus/Golf sized car.

I see. The 1.0 EcoBoost was on my radar too but I was put off by their unfortunate habit of setting on fire. I'm informed it's more of a maintenance issue though - either way, seems like an incredible little engine and no doubt is the future...

[TomsFocus]

3 minutes ago, Telecastermaster said:

I see. The 1.0 EcoBoost was on my radar too but I was put off by their unfortunate habit of setting on fire. I'm informed it's more of a maintenance issue though - either way, seems like an incredible little engine and no doubt is the future...

It's the 1.6 EcoBoost that catches fire.  The 1.0 just dumps all of the coolant and cooks the engine.   However that's only the pre-facelifts (I did have one briefly, couldn't trust it!).  The facelift comes with a different pipework system and an electric coolant pump, both of which seem to stop the previous issues.  Would still keep an eye on the plastic coolant reservoir as Ford have never been able to make them well, they've perished and cracked on Fords for as long as I can remember.

[Telecastermaster]

9 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

It's the 1.6 EcoBoost that catches fire.  The 1.0 just dumps all of the coolant and cooks the engine.   However that's only the pre-facelifts (I did have one briefly, couldn't trust it!).  The facelift comes with a different pipework system and an electric coolant pump, both of which seem to stop the previous issues.  Would still keep an eye on the plastic coolant reservoir as Ford have never been able to make them well, they've perished and cracked on Fords for as long as I can remember.

I stand corrected! I hope you find what you're looking for anyway...

[Telecastermaster]

Followed your instructions and Start/Stop is now working. Thanks Tom!

Presumably if this now stops working briefly, it'll be another sign that a regen is taking place?!

[Telecastermaster]

Well, Start/Stop worked for about half a day it seemed and something concerning happened driving to work this morning. It was about 4 degrees C this morning so I was half expecting it not to work but at the first couple of junctions it kicked in fine. Then at another junction I had a particularly long wait and after a while, the red oil light appears and it says 'Manual Restart Required'. Since then, it hasn't worked again but no more oil light either. Do I have a potential oil problem? 

[TomsFocus]

Was the engine off when the oil light came on?  If so, it sounds like the battery charge dropped too low and the engine fully switched off, rather than stop/start 'off'.  

Likely to need a new battery.

[Telecastermaster]

Yes engine was off. If that's the case then I'm less concerned, but if that is the case, what is the relevance of the oil light?! 

[TomsFocus]

The oil light always comes on with ignition, then should go out when the engine starts and the oil pressure builds.  It's only on this time because you needed to manually start which is like a 'full' reboot of the ECU etc, rather than start/stop which is like standby.

[Telecastermaster]

6 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

The oil light always comes on with ignition, then should go out when the engine starts and the oil pressure builds.  It's only on this time because you needed to manually start which is like a 'full' reboot of the ECU etc, rather than start/stop which is like standby.

Okay, got ya. So you're saying it's because it was effectively behaving like I had just got in and only switched the ignition on? That would make sense - now I think about it, I think I remember seeing a seatbelt light too. Apologies for being such a pedant but after the last year with my Astra, the sight of any oil or engine management lights strikes fear into my heart LOL!

[TomsFocus]

1 hour ago, Telecastermaster said:

Okay, got ya. So you're saying it's because it was effectively behaving like I had just got in and only switched the ignition on? That would make sense - now I think about it, I think I remember seeing a seatbelt light too. Apologies for being such a pedant but after the last year with my Astra, the sight of any oil or engine management lights strikes fear into my heart LOL!

Yep, exactly that!  

As long as the oil light isn't on with the engine running there's no problem.

[SamCappo]

Helloooo

I purchased a 1.6tdci Zetec S in April this year. It had 13,000 miles on the clock and I was anxious about all of the above things you mentioned.

My DPF seems to regenerate a lot, every now and again it feels like my car misfires. Maybe every 300miles? I'm still adapting to driving it having had Type R's most of my life. I rarely go above 2,500 rpm, don't see a point in revving it because nothing much happens lol (although it is quite pokey for a 1.6!). If you pull up and your engine fan is spinning full pelt, don't be alarmed it's just the DPF doing what it's supposed to do.

I live in Devon, extremely hilly, 25 mile commute and return about 55mpg. I have hit 60s many times but 55 is my overall average.

You must read up on the MK3 focus boot leak thread, it happened to mine!

If your gear changes clunk a bit and your clutch bites high, apparently this is a characteristic of the car and there's nothing to worry about.

Apart from that, I've done 10k miles in 8 months, it hasn't really burnt much oil and been overall quite solid. I'm really pleased with mine!

[Telecastermaster]

1 hour ago, SamCappo said:

Helloooo

I purchased a 1.6tdci Zetec S in April this year. It had 13,000 miles on the clock and I was anxious about all of the above things you mentioned.

My DPF seems to regenerate a lot, every now and again it feels like my car misfires. Maybe every 300miles? I'm still adapting to driving it having had Type R's most of my life. I rarely go above 2,500 rpm, don't see a point in revving it because nothing much happens lol (although it is quite pokey for a 1.6!). If you pull up and your engine fan is spinning full pelt, don't be alarmed it's just the DPF doing what it's supposed to do.

I live in Devon, extremely hilly, 25 mile commute and return about 55mpg. I have hit 60s many times but 55 is my overall average.

You must read up on the MK3 focus boot leak thread, it happened to mine!

If your gear changes clunk a bit and your clutch bites high, apparently this is a characteristic of the car and there's nothing to worry about.

Apart from that, I've done 10k miles in 8 months, it hasn't really burnt much oil and been overall quite solid. I'm really pleased with mine!

Thanks man. All sounds good. As I understand it, every 300 miles is somewhat normal so shouldn't be a worry. Thanks for all the pointers - sounds like your experience has been positive.

[madmole]

I honestly cant tell when mine regens when running. No change in sound or feel

Mind you mine is on a spider arachnid chip and revs out quite nicely to 4.5k before coming off power

 

[Telecastermaster]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

I honestly cant tell when mine regens when running. No change in sound or feel

Mind you mine is on a spider arachnid chip and revs out quite nicely to 4.5k before coming off power

 

Yeah some people have said that it's very noticeable while others have said that they've never noticed a thing. I am starting to wonder as I've done around 400 miles since I've had it now with some good runs in there and haven't noticed anything. That said, as long as the car is doing what it needs to do, I don't suppose it really matters whether it's noticeable or not.