DPF Doctor Barry Lawson, from Ewan Lawson Motors is back! This month, he is tackling a 2.2l Ford Transit Custom with 145k miles on the clock.
Vehicle information: 2.2l Ford Transit Custom – 145,000 miles
Our customer had travelled from Dunfermline to our workshop in Larbert. Before this he had taken his vehicle to a local garage several times in a bid to get it out of limp mode. He collected the van after being told a DPF regeneration had been conducted only for the engine management light to illuminate within a few miles.
Frustrated he called us and booked the van in for a DPF assessment. He had come to the right people. We have been members of the DPF Doctor network for five years and draw freely on the wealth of knowledge which is being added to all the time. Darren Darling has been working behind the scenes on an excellent portal which makes it easy for us to look up faults and find testing advice. So, armed with comprehensive information gathered from the customer on the previous work on his van, we were able to start fault finding.
There were seven logged fault codes:
- P0671 Cylinder 1 glow plug circuit open
- P0673 Cylinder 3 glow plug circuit open
- P0674 Cylinder 4 glow plug circuit open
- P2002 Particulate filter efficiency below threshold
- P2463 Particulate filter restriction soot accumulation
- P246C Particulate filter forced limited power
- P24A4 Particulate filter restriction soot accumulation too high
With this we were able to bring up some live data PIDs gathering more information as to where the problem lay. Not all the faults we find are listed as P codes. We were looking to see what state the DPF was in. Was it blocked? Could we clean it with the JLM Lubricants’ DPF cleaner or had it been blocked by too many forced regens and additives to the point that it had melted?
It is only through spending hours looking at live data, sharing it with other DPF Doctors that we can decide with absolute confidence whether or not a DPF has been damaged beyond repair or whether it can still be cleaned. This saves the customer money and the workshop time.
Along with the live data checks, we conducted a few basic circuit tests and these confirmed the vaporiser had a high resistance. All the previous forced regens were futile as they would never complete without the vaporiser. This may have saved the DPF from becoming irreversibly damaged. Three glow plugs confirmed Open Circuit using a H7 bulb. A fault with the coolant system meant the engine wasn’t up to running temperature. Add on top of this a poor service history and there you have the DPF blockage. The soot level rose until the lights came on with the PCM restricting power to prevent further damage. Don’t ever clear codes until you know it’s not going to cause issues.
Armed with this thorough information, we explained the real problems to the customer, the cost of the repairs and the consequences should he opt for a partial repair.
All repairs undertaken, we then cleaned the DPF on the vehicle, bringing the pressure down from 400 millibar to 40 millibar, keeping the temperature nice and stable to prevent damage. This was an excellent result on a high mileage van. We advised our customer to use a JLM Diesel Treatment every three months as a preventative measure.
Products used:
- JLM Lubricants Engine Flush
- JLM DPF cleaner
- JLM Diesel treatment
