"If you can then sense heat under the car you need to drive the car for another 5 - 10 miles to ensure active regeneration is complete, otherwise the extra diesel fed into the engine to actively regenerate the DPF will sink into the sump." While I appreciate this advice is correct and should be followed with modern diesels, it strikes me (as a driver of a petrol engine) that the situation is frankly untenable. What if you just returned home in poor weather? Or with small children ready for the land of Nod? It also seemed that regular unnecessary 10 mile journeys will negate some of the mileage advantages of the diesel engine too, it will be half gallon of fuel wasted based on the example in the question.

I agree 100% and this could be avoided if Manufacturers fitted (a) Warning Lights which indicated when a regeneration was taking place, and (b) controls which enabled the owner to actually start a regeneration manually when at a steady speed on the Motorway with no plans to stop in the next 20 minutes, these systems exist on some HGV's and Coaches, so its not exactly a ground breaking idea.

I work for an Electronics Manufacturer and fortunately one of our design engineers has built me a "Black Box" which plugs into the Diagnostic Socket, the box simply contains an Atmel chip containing some custom written code and software to communicate with the Car ECU, a few other Ic's to communicate with the OBD, an LED which lights when the DPF is regenerating and a small push switch to enable me to start the regen process manually, all of the normal DPF protection parameters set by the manufacturer are still retained, so a manual regen won't start if the car isn't up to operating temp and hasn't covered a minimum of xxx miles since the last regen etc..

The cost for this one off? - £7 in Electronic Components and several Beer Tokens for the Design Engineer. I imagine a mass produced system added by the Car Manufacturers would cost less than a few £ to add in a Factory environment if I can get an 'aftermarket' one cobbled together for £7!, but then again a sceptic may say that a few quids worth of Electronics and a bit of software, would prevent all of those new £1000+ DPF from being sold when they block!. Hmmm, draw your own conclusions!.

Perhaps its time the motoring press took up this matter!.

Edited by Chris James on 30/01/2018 at 21:22

Ive heard the new fiesta has torque converter as will the new focus and the face lift mondeo is this true? djd

yes the new Fiesta has a new torque auto, no Powershift. I'd imagine the new Focus due in June should have the same new auto box.