DPF light came on for less than 2 miles?

[gforce1108]

Running a buddy home Saturday while working on his car - DPF malfunction light came on. Still under warranty so wasn't really worried but less than 2 miles later it went off. I've put over 150 since without a code.

I have to scan it and check the soot load - maybe run a regen. Seems odd to come and go so quickly.

 

[Mister]

I would give it a driving session when you keep the rpm’s above 2k for about 20 minutes. Drive it hard. Get the exhaust good and hot. If your regular use are short trips and the engine and exhaust never get to really heat up and/or rpm’s are low from low-speed suburban/urban driving this will cause soot build up. So take it out and thrash it a bit

 

[oilhammer]

I think you just caught it right after it "gave up" and turned the light on, then it attempted a regen right after and it completed successfully.

Probably a good wake up as to your driving style is not meshing well with the DPF's regen needs. I have a customer that lets me drive her car home every 10k miles, because that is the only way it'll ever get a GOOD run out the highway.... usually she drops it off on Friday, I drive it for the weekend, and Monday morning I do its service and she picks it up that afternoon. She is a home health care professional and makes many check in stops throughout the day, in mostly an urban area. Her first TDI, a '98 Jetta, never missed a beat in 1/4 million miles she had it. Her second TDI, a 2004 Jetta, never missed a beat in the 1/4 million miles she had that. The 2010 Jetta she has now, has probably cost all told $5k to keep on the road and it has not even hit 1/4 million miles yet. But at least now we have a good system for avoiding DPF soot loading.

 

[gforce1108]

I had been letting it run in "normal" drive - which gets into 8th gear fairly early. Mostly to see what kind of MPGs I could get. I know I can get into the low 40s on my 47 mile commute. It's high speed, average 60mph which is pretty high considering only about 15 miles is a 65mph limit and 5 miles is 40 or less. 1000' elevation change in the middle. I had thought that the length would be enough to prevent any issues, but the RPMs are pretty low even at 80MPH.

I've switched to running it in sport mode and quite a bit of manual paddle shifting to keep the RPMs (and fun level) up. I honestly don't care that much about the MPGs. It's still double of my truck and a decent amount better than my SLK (on premium).

I'm not one that typically pushes for "deletes". If it works - I leave it. But - I did order a delete kit. Still have 10k left on the warranty. I was kinda hoping that Audi would replace the DPF before the warranty expired. If it makes it long enough, I'll pull it while it's still good since I'll need to swap it back on for inspections (OBDii plug in testing). With all the shops getting nailed with big fines, I figured I better get the stuff now while I can.

 

[Pittdawg]

Did you not already have the upgraded DPF installed through the emissions warranty program?

 

[gforce1108]

Did you not already have the upgraded DPF installed through the emissions warranty program?

Yes - emissions modifications are complete and up to date.

It went into limp mode with DPF failure faults displayed last week. I finally checked the soot level. Calculated 49.1g, measured 52.36g. 835km since last regen (I had just gone on a 500 mile road trip, mostly cruising around 80 and not babying it).
I forced a regen in vcds - both levels came done to near 0. Cleared all codes and it's running beautiful. I just need to track the soot levels to see how quickly this is accumulating. I put 5k miles on it since I bought it (110k now), but I don't know where it was when I bought it. I figured if I brought it in under warranty that this was all they'd do to start anyway.

 

[Pittdawg]

Glad to hear everything is okay now. Oddly enough, my DPF light came on for the first time ever about two weeks ago. I gave it a thrashing on the local freeway and all is well now. I'm at 65k miles and this never happened before.

 

[sbmellen]

As a follow up to this conversation, I had my '14 Q5 TDI (3.0l) in for 105k mile service and a CEL this week. It was the DPF sensor. Apparently, the sensor is not replaced when the DPF is under the emissions warranty.

 

[pdnation]

My particulate sensor was recently replaced under the Emissions warranty at 83k miles. I have a 2014 Q5 TDI. Unfortunately, for them, they broke the sensor off in the exhaust pipe, so I also have a new exhaust and a new Nox sensor.

 

[Pittdawg]

There were two rounds of emissions "fixes". The first one was so long ago now I don't recall the exact details but I believe they only replaced the DPF and a glow plug. The second round was much more involved. I still have the printout; here is the summary:

"Performed campaign 23Z8, install updated exhaust pipe w/ oxidation catalyst and diesel particulate filter and oxygen sensor. Perform software update for engine control unit"

I definitely recall that the first "fix" reduced the engine power and transmission shifting while the second fix appeared to restore that power and perhaps add a bit more.

Also, the second emissions fix was my last time to a dealer because the service manager got all pissy with me for "getting warranty work done" with a tuned/modified engine. I politely reminded him it wasn't "warranty" work but compensation to me and other Audi customers for lying about their emissions in the first place and immediately cratering their resale value