I’ve been feeling a little under the weather recently. I seem to have picked up some kind of infection which has left me with a bit of nasal congestion over the last couple of weeks. I was hoping that it wasn’t contagious but on Sunday, Grace decided to flash a warning at me on the way to work.
A big red warning lit up the dashboard reading: *DPF FULL: CONTACT DEALER*
Gracie’s got a bit bunged up too! Too many short trips have led to her diesel particulate filter getting caked in soot.
Now, whilst I trust the people that I got Grace from – after all, she’s in very good nick for her age – I checked what’s covered under the after-care package that they sold me, and it does not include the DPF, or any other filters for that matter.
So I did what any sensible person like me would do.
I panicked. For a brief while.
“The car’s gonna be off the road! What will I do?”
Calm down, for one thing. Second thing, check online whether the world has ended.
It hasn’t. Gracie’s good to use carefully for a short while, while I sort out getting the DPF fixed.
“It’s gonna be expensive. I can’t afford it…”
Calm down again. A new filter will cost around a grand or so I’m led to believe, BUT…
…there are companies out there who can clean rather than replace the thing for far less.
So that’s who I got in touch with, and at half past eleven this morning I had the guy from Auto Assist flat on his back underneath Grace. I half expected him to come up later sucking his teeth and telling me it’s going to cost me… but to both our surprise, Gracie is in excellent condition, and has even had some known issues “futureproofed” (the throttle body for one thing is a known issue on the XF, so has been preemptively replaced with a sturdier version). Her underside is near spotless, and the exhaust pipes are still nice and shiny.
As for any fault codes coming up on the magic diagnostics machine? Only the one for the stuffed-up DPF. Everything else is as good as when she came off the factory floor if not better.
On to cleaning out the filter then:
Ideally the filter should have less than 2g of particulates before any detrimental effect shows in terms of performance. Grace’s had 64g, but I was assured that this was in no way the worst the technician had seen, and it would only take a litre of cleaning fluid to clear it rather than the usual 2 litres.
After he’d tried putting the cleaner through the filter for ten minutes though, nothing seemed to be happening. The problem was that his pump had been used so much recently that – get this – it had got bunged up with soot…
Ten minutes of tinkering, blowing, squirting and more tinkering and it was back up and running again and a few more minutes later the job was all but done. All that was left was to run the engine for a while to warm up and clear the remnants of the cleaning fluid out of the system:
And as you can see now, Gracie is apparently a West Ham fan… *grrr*
The main thing is the foam came out white, which means there’s no more excessive soot in the exhaust system and nothing else that could be harmful to her overall performance.
And then the test drive to make sure no more warning lights have been set off by this process left me in no doubt that the particulate problem had been slowly building up over the last few weeks, but so gradually as to be almost imperceptible.
Now she goes like shit off a shovel she’s never had a problem at all…
And all for the grand sum of a few pennies shy of £300.
Confusion Reigns Supreme 
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