Hi , 

I am waiting for my mechanic to do a forced re-gen on my focus .

anyone have any recomendations or experience of the mobile process where they do the clean on your car , and how much . I am in the Northampton area .

Thanks .

How do you know it's blocked?  Modern DPF's rarely block up unless there's another problem.  I'd be suspecting vaporiser, EGR or pressure pipes myself.  

If it is genuinely blocked, it can't be cleaned on the car.  Can only be flushed back out the way it came in so needs to be removed for that.  If it just needs a forced regen, that can be done by anyone, anywhere, as long as they have the correct software.

 

Hi , 

mechanic plugged in his laptop and it said high soot / ash content .

Has been playing up for a while doing re-gens every 20 - 30 miles , it then stopped doing the re-gens and now its in limp mode .

My exhaust tailpipe is squeaky clean and i can blow harder than the amount of air that comes out the exhaust .

 

Ok, it's important to know whether it's ash or soot that's blocking it. 

Ash particles are too large to pass through the filter.  They can only be pushed back out the way it came in.  No way to clear ash while fitted to the car.

Soot gets burnt during regen (leaving a small amount of ash each time), so if the soot isn't too solid, it can be loosened up with chemicals, then you have some chance of burning it in a regen to clear the blockage.

I must admit, I'd strongly advise against attempting to force a regen with such a major blockage that you can barely feel gas at the tail pipe.  The back pressure at high RPMs can cause damage to the turbo.

How many miles has it done?  And were there any other fault codes found?

I will ask the mechanic ,

No other fault codes and the car has done 192,000 miles .

is there any tutorials on how to remove the DPF ?

There is a local company that will clean it in a machine , but you have to take the DPF to them .

i thought their price wasn`t bad £275 ish .

Just a pain taking DPF off?

thanks.

With 192k it's a fairly safe bet that the DPF will be full of ash by now.  

DPF on the 2.0 is underneath the car, so it depends if you have suitable access to get underneath or not?  Once you're under there it's just nuts and bolts. 

The alternative to professional cleaning is simply to replace it with a new one.  Have you checked the price for your model?  Might not be as much as you think.

 

*Edit* Just had a quick look on eBay.  Roughly £400 for a new one from BM Cats now, though there is one for £330 here.  You would have to double check compatibility.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/403703849739

13 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Have you checked the price for your model?  Might not be as much as you think.

Just had a look online for my own curiosity. They are available from as little as £150 to as much as £450. Most seem to be around £240 so if those prices are true then it would be as cheap to fit a new one rather than getting the old one serviced.

Just now, unofix said:

Just had a look online for my own curiosity. They are available from as little as £150 to as much as £450. Most seem to be around £240 so if those prices are true then it would be as cheap to fit a new one rather than getting the old one serviced.

Just edited my post as we were looking at the same time!  If it's the one I think it is in this model, they're around £400 new aftermarket.

hi , 

the cheapest i could find for my car ( ford part number 1877035 ) was around £350 on ebay .There are a couple on there from germany but they are Euro 4 spec , mine is euro 5 , thats why there is such a big difference in price .

I did ask Ford while I was getting the part number and strangley enough they had some in stock at £1600

I would prefer to keep the original part , the company that cleans it said once they have been cleaned they are back at 98%  of original capacity .

I am no  DPF expert and I dont know if they degrade at all or if a proper off car clean makes them almost as good as new .

 

50 minutes ago, David. said:

I am no  DPF expert and I dont know if they degrade at all or if a proper off car clean makes them almost as good as new.

They don't degrade in the same way that a cat does, and fortunately the cat & DPF are separate on this model.  So professional cleaning will make the DPF almost as good as new again. 

 

👍

20 hours ago, David. said:

My exhaust tailpipe is squeaky clean and i can blow harder than the amount of air that comes out the exhaust .

 

How did you test this??!! 😉

A note of caution about aftermarket DPF's...A few Mondeo owners ( on here and on Talkford.com) have replaced their original DPF with an aftermarket unit ( as it's cheaper) and encountered other problems like more frequent regens, can't remember the details but some concluded that the aftermarket DPF couldn't hold as much as the original and hence more frequent regens.

Maybe yours does need replacing but it would be interesting to see the error messages and DPF values from your mechanics diagnostic hardware/software. If he's reset them then you'd probably have to take it for a drive again so that it tries to regen in order to get the error to come up again. Though that's difficult if it's in limp mode, mine was dead slow.

This was the reading from Forscan software of my Mondeo when it went in to limp mode due to failed regens and consequently high soot data (I stopped driving the car when this happened). Others with Mondeos (one was about 150K miles) have seen 300% (which seems to be the max), did a forced regen and it worked. They don't always work though. In my case I had other error codes which pointed to the the Vaporiser ( I tried pressure sensor first), once replaced and the 'learned values' reset, it started the regen within a few miles in to a test drive. I now use Millers Ecomax with every fill up or Premium diesel like Shell Vpower (expensive!) to keep the vaporiser clean as the original was blocked due to carbon build up.

This is my old vaporiser (I think yours is the same). The larger pipes were completely blocked with carbon deposits (hard), so no fuel could be sprayed in to the exhaust to increase the temps to allow for a regen 620C + on the Mondeo's. The pipe (top left) with the threaded nut goes in to the exhaust pipe and has a hole to allow for the vaporised fuel to be injected. At the red wire is a glow plug to vaporise the fuel sent from the fuel line on the far right pipe. These glow plugs can fail too which can lead to poor regens. Additionally there is a little pump, under the car, attached to the fuel line, they can fail too or blow a fuse. Basically if any of these fail (including the electrical wiring to the glow plug) then the exhaust temperature cannot reach the 620C+ required for a regen, When it tries and fails a warning is given on the dash, which goes away when the car is switched off but returns when it tries again, so the DPF just keeps filling up until it reaches a point where limp mode is applied. Error codes are normally stored after a failed regen (hence why I asked above).

As mentioned by Tom EGR failure will also cause regen problems, but I don't know anything about that. The above is basically what I've learned from troublshooting my own regen problem on my first Diesel car....I won't be getting another again! Had this 9 years to date and the dpf problems were back in March 2017 (not blocked since although have had electrical issues twice (open circuit) since Covid due to lack of use).

Not sure if any of the above is applicable to your situation but should be useful info for troubleshooting.

 

Thank you for the  replies .

I will hopefully be taking the DPF off tomorrow .

I am trying to keep the original part so will go for a clean rather than a replacement .

Hopefully this will cure the problem.

Sods law says it wont and another problem/s will show up when refitted.

Fuel vaporiser is the first place I would be looking esp if the dpf isn't getting hot enough to work. 

On 12/27/2022 at 1:10 PM, David. said:

Thank you for the  replies .

I will hopefully be taking the DPF off tomorrow .

I am trying to keep the original part so will go for a clean rather than a replacement .

Hopefully this will cure the problem.

Sods law says it wont and another problem/s will show up when refitted.

Let us know how u get on