I drive around the neighborhood for what seems like forever. It's the last thing I want to do after driving home from work, but I do it. A while ago, I let my car idle in the driveway to let it finish on it's own. Unfortunately, however, I forgot all about my car. The next morning it was still idling in the driveway. It idled for about 16 hours. It didn't hurt anything, but I don't leave it idling anymore. Now I drive around!
It would be nice to rip all that stuff off one of these days. It would be great to not have regens and get better mpg and performance too!
Sorry to hear about your long idle. I had a similar experience with my tractor...left it idling for hours...*walk of shame* Sounded good, though...
About finishing the regen, you typically have to run the car up above 50 mph for 20 minutes to get a reliable "ending" to the regen. It's recommended by a lot of people who've run diesels with SCR systems for hundreds of thousands of miles to get these cars up to highway speeds for at least 20 minutes a week if you do a lot of short trips. This keeps everything happy in the emissions system.
I do one 120 mile trip per week and in the 2.5 years that I've had my 2015 TDI, I've only noticed it in the middle of a regen at idle (while I was unloading groceries) once. It definitely idled at a little higher rpm (1000 vs. the usual 800) and the smell was awful (that's relative, I know). It smelled like burning, but not burning diesel. I can't remember if the fan was on, though.
