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Focus 2.0 TDCi - Cleaning DPF


CALLUMLE
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I posted a thread a week or two ago about my Focus 2.0 TDCi (2008) and its rough start and blue smoke at start up when cold. The result of the investigations concluded that the glow plugs are all non-operative and that the DPF casing has been opened up and the filter smashed out. The car's ECU has also been remapped to effectively delete the DPF. One of the pipes relating to the DPF was split (I have this pipe) and everything was caked in soot inside. It's possible to manually force a regen but the car won't do this automatically.

I'm going through a claims process to return the car, but while I await the paperwork it's got me thinking about whether I should return it and what I could do to get it running properly, especially as I put £300 into a full service and £220 into the investigations. The car is also fantastic to drive after about 5 minutes and in great cosmetic condition. I'm not bothered about the DPF remap for now so long as I can cure this smoke issue. With the casing being physically present I also hope it would pass an MoT.

- Getting the glow plugs replaced will surely help the cold starts, so I can get these booked in for replacement. How far this goes in fixing my problems I can only guess.

- Bearing in mind the amount of soot inside the DPF and making the assumption that this is causing the smoke, how easy is it to get at the system and clear it out? I don't mind spending a weekend doing this -- I just don't know how easy it is to get in there. 

Will get some pictures of the engine bay up ASAP.

 

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Any tampering of the DPF casing is now an MOT fail (if the tester can see it).  The smoke test is now also a lot tighter than a couple of years ago.  Though I'm assuming it must have passed MOT within the last year so, unless it had a dodgy MOT of course.

There wont be any soot in the DPF if it's been smashed though...it's literally just an empty can now.  Do not attempt to force a regen without a DPF core, it shouldn't start one once it's been mapped out but if it did it would quickly overheat and could cause a bay fire, be like boiling your kettle dry!

The glowplugs should cure your smokey rough starts, but bear in mind you'll always get a whisp of black/blue smoke on a cold start with no DPF.

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3 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Any tampering of the DPF casing is now an MOT fail (if the tester can see it).  The smoke test is now also a lot tighter than a couple of years ago.  Though I'm assuming it must have passed MOT within the last year so, unless it had a dodgy MOT of course.

There wont be any soot in the DPF if it's been smashed though...it's literally just an empty can now.  Do not attempt to force a regen without a DPF core, it shouldn't start one once it's been mapped out but if it did it would quickly overheat and could cause a bay fire, be like boiling your kettle dry!

The glowplugs should cure your smokey rough starts, but bear in mind you'll always get a whisp of black/blue smoke on a cold start with no DPF.

Thank you -- understand it's now an MoT fail and has been for a number of years. The DPF casing is fully in place and the garage that investigated the car said a tester would "probably" be none the wiser of its condition. It passed its MOT in June at a separate garage not local to the area. Still a gamble though as you say. 

The garage investigating it did a regen 4 times! He said each one was successful but he had no readings from the ECU and the pressure in the back exhaust was 15psi.

Really don't know what to do. If I hadn't already spent £500 on it I'd have 100% decided on a refund. If having no DPF definitely results in the blue/white smoke I'm getting then it leads me more towards the refund -- was hoping it'd be more down to glow plugs.

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17 minutes ago, CALLUMLE said:

Thank you -- understand it's now an MoT fail and has been for a number of years. The DPF casing is fully in place and the garage that investigated the car said a tester would "probably" be none the wiser of its condition. It passed its MOT in June at a separate garage not local to the area. Still a gamble though as you say. 

The garage investigating it did a regen 4 times! He said each one was successful but he had no readings from the ECU and the pressure in the back exhaust was 15psi.

Really don't know what to do. If I hadn't already spent £500 on it I'd have 100% decided on a refund. If having no DPF definitely results in the blue/white smoke I'm getting then it leads me more towards the refund -- was hoping it'd be more down to glow plugs.

White smoke and rough running is because of the glowplugs.  Black/blue is because of the DPF but only lasts a few seconds and doesn't cause any running issues.  I ran no DPF for a couple of years.

I'm not understanding your garage tbh.  They can't have forced a regen if there's no DPF core present and it's been mapped out and has no Eolys fluid...the ECU won't allow a regen to start without certain parameters being met, even a forced one.  Where was that 15PSI?  If that's differential pressure across the DPF that's a huge amount and would suggest the DPF is still in place and blocked up.

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7 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

White smoke and rough running is because of the glowplugs.  Black/blue is because of the DPF but only lasts a few seconds and doesn't cause any running issues.  I ran no DPF for a couple of years.

I'm not understanding your garage tbh.  They can't have forced a regen if there's no DPF core present and it's been mapped out and has no Eolys fluid...the ECU won't allow a regen to start without certain parameters being met, even a forced one.  Where was that 15PSI?  If that's differential pressure across the DPF that's a huge amount and would suggest the DPF is still in place and blocked up.

That ties in with my symptoms. The smoke on start up lasts up to 30 seconds if the car has been sat a good while, otherwise it's usually gone in less than 10-15 seconds.

The 15psi was mentioned in the "back exhaust" and from memory was mentioned after he said there was a lot of soot in there. May be wrong though -- I had a week of calls from him exploring different areas.

If it helps, below is the entire extract of the report the garage gave me after investigations.

"CARRY OUT INVESTIGATION INTO VEHICLE EXCESSIVELY BLUE/GREY SMOKING WHEN STARTED AND CONSTANTLY GIVING A BLUE HAZE WHILST ENGINE RUNNING CARRY OUT FULL VEHICLE ELECTRONIC DIAGNOSTIC FOUND GLOW PLUG SYSTEM INOPERATIVE CAUSING LUMPY START UP FOUND DPF PRESSURE SENSOR GIVING A STATIC READING WHEN ENGINE RUNNING AN ACCELERATED,THIS CAUSED CONCERN,TRACED AND FOUND DPF PRESSURE SENSOR PIPE SPLIT (REPLACED) ALLOWING PRESSURE TO ESCAPE ALSO CAUSING CONCERN AS ENGINE ECU SHOULD HAVE CREATED A FAULT CODE AS A RESULT. CARRIED OUT FURTHER TESTS/CHECKS AND FOUND DPF BEEN SMASHED OUT OF CASE AND ENGINE ECU HAS BEEN RE-MAPPED TO DELETE ALL DPF SENSORS AND SIGNALS TO ECU AS TO NOT SHOW ANY FAULTS."

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I have no idea what they think they were measuring at the 'back exhaust'... :laugh:  

They haven't proved anything there.  What tests did they do to prove DPF core was smashed out?  Is the pressure sensor giving any readings now? 

Do you trust this garage?  :unsure: 

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9 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

I have no idea what they think they were measuring at the 'back exhaust'... :laugh:  

They haven't proved anything there.  What tests did they do to prove DPF core was smashed out?  Is the pressure sensor giving any readings now? 

Do you trust this garage?  :unsure: 

They opened the casing of the DPF up and found that the filter has been smashed out. He did take pictures of it (which he is sending me). I really didn't understand the detail of what he was saying when he rang so I may be missing out key bits here! All conversations were while I've been at work, worrying about costs and after paying a deposit on my weeding.

The garage has many, many goood reviews and has been around for a long while. The guy even dropped the key off at my home for me to collect as he was passing through where I live for a curry!

In the meantime the garage I bought the car from have offered to take it back, minus £300 to which I've said no. None of the issues I'm facing here are my fault so I don't want to add to teh £500 I've already put in 😪

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23 minutes ago, CALLUMLE said:

They opened the casing of the DPF up and found that the filter has been smashed out. He did take pictures of it (which he is sending me). I really didn't understand the detail of what he was saying when he rang so I may be missing out key bits here! All conversations were while I've been at work, worrying about costs and after paying a deposit on my weeding.

The garage has many, many goood reviews and has been around for a long while. The guy even dropped the key off at my home for me to collect as he was passing through where I live for a curry!

In the meantime the garage I bought the car from have offered to take it back, minus £300 to which I've said no. None of the issues I'm facing here are my fault so I don't want to add to teh £500 I've already put in 😪

Ok, I'll assume some things are getting lost in translation here then. :smile: 

The only way to open a DPF casing is to cut it, so now they'd have to weld it up again if you were to keep it non-DPF and that would be very obvious to any MOT tester with a third set of welds (factory, removal, then this opening).  But if that's the case it seems very odd, the 2.0 TDCi DPF is a straight ended one (unlike the 1.6 TDCI DPF) so you can just remove it and shine a torch into it to see if the DPF is still present.

They're also contradicting themselves.  If the DPF is now empty, there's nowhere for soot to get stuck, so impossible to build up and cause excess pressure in the system, that's the whole point of removing it!  Plus as I said earlier, you can't force a regen on an empty DPF...firstly it needs to know the pressure differential so it can stop at the correct time to avoid overheating, secondly it wont start a regen if it knows there's no Eolys because the soot simply wouldn't burn at a low enough temperature.  And thirdly if they were able to start it, it should fail quickly because the DPF temp sensor would sense it overheating with nothing there to absorb the extra heat.

I'll be honest, I am a bit sceptical about this garage, but also appreciate some things may be getting misunderstood.  At this point, I'd just ask them to change the glowplugs and get it back. Then make a decision on what to do next.

 

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I understood most of what was being relayed, but the car was in for 5 days and each day I had a 15-20 minute debrief which was a lot of information sometimes! My other car (which I only use in summer) is a Hillman Super Minx from 1965. This is a car I'm far more clued up on but can't rely on in the winter!

What you've said makes perfect sense. He first looked into the DPF when he was getting strange readings from it so when he found it (he said it was a pig to get at) he said he saw rusty screws which had been used to seal it back up. In opening them up, that's when he found the state of it inside.

I've bit the bullet and booked the car in for a glow plug change (with a different garage). The quote was £183 which initially sounds a lot to me, but understand they are using Bosch plugs and the labour involved is fairly intense. I get rough running only when cold, so there's that plus the fact that some garages I've phoned (in getting quotes for the glow plugs) have said the smoke could be unburnt fuel from the dodgy plugs.

Genuine thank you to what you've taught me! Helps knowing this in going forward.

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Had the glow plugs changed and picked the car up at 16:00 after being sat since 13:00. Started up and smoked a bit, ran rough as before until the end of the road (2 mins.). After that it was okay just like before. Got home and pulled back onto the drive. Switched the car off and restarted and it started straight away, no smoke or lumpy idle.

If I'm honest it just feels the same 🤷‍♂️

Real test is tomorrow morning at 06:30. Not holding out any hope! 

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£183 does sound a lot for a set of plugs!  Sure mine cost less than £40 for decent brand and I changed them within an hour.  That was a 1.6 though, maybe the 2.0 is more difficult.

If the smoke really is just for 2 minutes I wouldn't personally spend any more trying to rectify it now.  

Possibly a daft question but are you letting the plugs heat or just switching the engine on straight away?

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1 minute ago, TomsFocus said:

£183 does sound a lot for a set of plugs!  Sure mine cost less than £40 for decent brand and I changed them within an hour.  That was a 1.6 though, maybe the 2.0 is more difficult.

If the smoke really is just for 2 minutes I wouldn't personally spend any more trying to rectify it now.  

Possibly a daft question but are you letting the plugs heat or just switching the engine on straight away?

I remember changing mine on the 1.8 and that was difficult, but possible with care and time. These are located right at the back of the 2.0 under the scuttle panel and EGR system so I think a lot of the cost was labour.

I've literally just started the car up after it being sat for 1.5 hours and there was no smoke. I do always let the plugs warm for 10 seconds (while putting belt on, etc.) and always take it easy on the revs until the engine is warmish. 

I'll live with it for a few days and monitor while I'm still within the 30 days, maybe it is something that can just be lived with? Thanks for your pointers and help -- real asset to these forums. Coincidentally, I've had a new Golf diesel as a hire car with work and it's a great car!

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Been using the car this week. Got stuck in 2 hours of traffic due to all the flooding our way (usually takes 15 mins to get home!) and apart from the usual rough idle and smoke at start up the car ran fine for the whole 2 hours of horrible stop and start. I also took it up an A road early Sunday morning, car ran very responsive.

Given how much I've put into it I've decided to keep and save up for the next round of investigation. After lots of reading and discussion the 3 eventual jobs are:

- New DPF and remap

- Injector test

- EGR clean

I can put up with the plume of smoke for now given it's only a short-lived thing.

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Update to any following. I've booked the car in for an injector leak off test and a battery test. I know a leak off test is possible at home, but I don't see daylight this time of year! 

Dropping it off tomorrow morning and will hopefully hear back. I wonder if one or more of the injectors are leaking and unburnt fuel is causing the smoke at start up. Having the battery tested because the cranking sounds a bit slow to me -- only a precautionary thing.

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On 11/19/2019 at 1:01 PM, CALLUMLE said:

Update to any following. I've booked the car in for an injector leak off test and a battery test. I know a leak off test is possible at home, but I don't see daylight this time of year! 

Dropping it off tomorrow morning and will hopefully hear back. I wonder if one or more of the injectors are leaking and unburnt fuel is causing the smoke at start up. Having the battery tested because the cranking sounds a bit slow to me -- only a precautionary thing.

Keep us posted mate 👍

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Literally just phoned the garage for an update... they said the battery checked out absolutely fine but they did not perform a leak off test. Reason being the pipes which go to each injector involve a plastic clip which can get very brittle over time. He said as there were no stored codes relating to injectors or the EGR he didn't see the worth in the risk of breaking anything.

He said it smoked "like anything" when starting which is what I've come to know so well, so he recognises the problem and recommended I take it to one of the diesel specialists who could look a reconditioning each injector at about £150 each. Sounds a gamble!

Might stick a can of BG244 through it? Sounds a bit of a desperate bid I know...

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Booked in at a diesel specialist for 2nd December, going to get the injectors looked at there properly.

In a bit of crawling traffic today and the car decided to start smoking blue/white smoke out the exhaust. Only did it for about 4 or 5 mins while travelling at between 10-20mph. Temp gauge totally normal.

Will of course update.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi all, for anybody following the car is now with another diesel specialist -- bit further out but supposedly more reputable and certainly been going a long while.

He is taking the injectors out to test them today. He said sometimes putting them back in after retesting resolves issues such as mine as he has seen before but also warned me that they may need rebuilding and if there has been a lot of over-fueling, the con rods may be bent and it then becomes a cylinder head removal job.

I'm wondering if it is over-fueling and thus an injector-related issue. I have been measuring MPG from a full tank and I'm averaging around 28-32 mpg. This is a 7 mile each way commute (in light traffic, early in the morning) and one trip on an A road 10 miles each way, once a week.

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So... got the news today. All 4 injectors have electrical issues and two of them have problems with the solenoids resulting in problems around the "atomisation of fuel", he also mentioned that these are dribbling fuel a little as well. I've been told he is 99% sure this is the issue and it comes at a cost of £850, which is the cost of new injectors, labour, VAT, etc.

I've gone for it, with a heavy stomach. A lot of the reading I've done since posting on this forum has led me to think it's injector-related. I've read other posts where Focus/Mondeo owners with the same engine have had identical symptoms to me and were advised to look at injectors. The last time I drove the car (when I dropped the car off at his garage) the engine dropped to 500rpm and had no throttle response. It had been 'surging' a bit and occasionally the revs when idling would go from 800rpm to 1100rpm as if I'd tapped the throttle.

If this doesn't solve it I'll be moving on I think.

 

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3 minutes ago, CALLUMLE said:

So... got the news today. All 4 injectors have electrical issues and two of them have problems with the solenoids resulting in problems around the "atomisation of fuel", he also mentioned that these are dribbling fuel a little as well. I've been told he is 99% sure this is the issue and it comes at a cost of £850, which is the cost of new injectors, labour, VAT, etc.

I've gone for it, with a heavy stomach. A lot of the reading I've done since posting on this forum has led me to think it's injector-related. I've read other posts where Focus/Mondeo owners with the same engine have had identical symptoms to me and were advised to look at injectors. The last time I drove the car (when I dropped the car off at his garage) the engine dropped to 500rpm and had no throttle response. It had been 'surging' a bit and occasionally the revs when idling would go from 800rpm to 1100rpm as if I'd tapped the throttle.

If this doesn't solve it I'll be moving on I think.

 

Thanks for keeping us updated.  Do you reckon the seller would pay something towards the injectors?  

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2 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Thanks for keeping us updated.  Do you reckon the seller would pay something towards the injectors?  

I'm working on that this evening after work. I'm not holding out hope but I'll give it my all.

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So, got the car back after paying the best part of £1,000 and.... still the same 20-30 seconds of blue smoke at start up. It wasn't as rough as it was before but maybe that's because it's been milder today. To top it off, the bonnet won't open now either but I think this is a common problem (found a guide elsewhere on this forum).

I'm absolutely devastated and broken by it to say the least. I've not gone anywhere in it since I've had it back but will be doing 15 miles on an A road tomorrow so will see how it goes.

My next thoughts take me back to the DPF. I'm considering finding a small garage who could open it up and see if the casing is clogged up. The filter was taken out before I had it, but if it's got sooted up in there it could be this? Is the DPF easy to access on the 2.0 TDCi?

Wish I could bring positive news.

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Does anybody know if you DPF is accessible on the driveway? Even for adding the 9995/9996 DPF Cleaner and Regen fluid?

I've spoken to a garage who said they had a BMW in a while ago which had its DPF filter smashed out but the casing left in place. The complaint from the customer was blue smoke and when they removed the unit the smoke stopped. They said it was completely caked up inside.

The smoking has got worse recently which I'm presuming is down to use.

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Read the codes on the car using Forscan and got this:

 

 

Screen Shot 2019-12-13 at 18.44.01.png

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I still don't know what could possibly get clogged up in an empty pipe...once you've removed the filter it's completely derestricted.  The only exception is the people that just smash a small hole through the centre of the DPF, instead of removing the whole lot but I don't think that's what happened to yours from the sounds of it.

Anyway, 2 of those codes are for the MAF so it would be worth checking that's still plugged in.  The other is a boost code but probably a one-off.  If the MAF is found to be faulty, that's potentially causing the smoke.

The DPF is under the car on the 2.0 so not really accessible unless you've got ramps or axle stands at the very least.

Did the garage that changed the injectors offer any thoughts or advice seeing as they were so sure it would fix the issue...?

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