Lockdown and DPF Filters

What to do with a badly blocked DPF filter during Lockdown…

So you’re in lockdown and can’t leave home, or you can only drive for essential travel. Make sure your restricted driving isn’t slowly blocking your DPF filter!

Or more importantly, what can you do once restrictions are lifted, to ensure your DPF Filter doesn’t start causing you problems?

When a diesel vehicle is restricted to only doing short trips, lots of stop start, city driving, the DPF filter should be collecting all the excessive soot particles, and trying to burn them cleanly. But more often than not, your DPF filter is slowly starting to block up. Unfortunately you won’t know there is a problem, until it far too late ..

If your diesel car does a lot of city work, it could do with decarbonizing…especially if it is fitted with a diesel particulate filter (DPF)

Lock down driving restrictions creating DPF worries?

Normally, a good highway run is what helps keep these DPF filters working properly. But there’s even a better, more effective way to do it, and you can do it easily while at home. All you need is a small bottle of FTC Decarbonizer.

The easiest and most effective way to clean and maintain your DPF Filter is to use FTC Decarbonizer.

How to clean a heavily blocked DPF Filter…

For vehicles with a heavily blocked DPF filter, this process can be followed:

Add 4 times the standard dose of FTC. (1 Ltr to 400 L of diesel)
The idea is to maintain the engine in the higher rev band for extended periods, as this is when decarbonizing is most effective. Be kind to the engine. Let it warm up a bit, then progressively increase revs, step by step until about ¾ the way to redline.
You can vary the revs a bit, give it a few sharp bursts, or even do it for 10 minutes a time, a few times a day, or several times a week.
When possible, take the vehicle for an minimum 45 minute drive

Of course, if you’ve been using FTC for a good while, your engines should have very little carbon internally.

Another DPF maintenance tip from CEM:

A lot of DPF problems are blamed on a faulty “5^th injector”, that is the extra injector that directly feeds extra diesel upstream of your DPF during regens. In almost all cases, it’s not faulty…it’s fouled internally, causing it to leak and continually dribble fuel into the exhaust stream. A big cause of white smoke!

FTC Decarbonizer works during combustion, so since combustion can’t happen inside the injector, you need a good, effective injector cleaner, such as CRD Fuel Enhancer to clean it up. Keep in mind that the extra injector only passes fuel for a very short time, compared to the main injectors, so inferior injector cleaners won’t cut it!

For more information on how to maintain you DPF filter during lockdown give the team at Cost Effective Maintenance a call on 07 3376 6188