Practically Classics Forum

tractorman wrote:Perhaps the black smoke is poor servicing - or some clever person has removed the DPF!

On vehicles less than 3 years old of the company car type? I doubt that. Your average CC driver will have the servicing for free, so they'll take it in when there is any issue - The lease company insist on it.
It may be a similar issue to what you see on diesel engined Mondeo's and Jags built on the same floorpan. The ECU forgets the individual settings for the injectors and defaults to full flow instead.

Hence a vehicle that smokes more than a beagle

Thats down to poorly developed electronic trickery IMHO. All this DPF and common rail technology may give impressive results when its working correctly but honestly I'm not convinced the tech is properly mature or has either been built to decent standards.

As for DPF's look on the BMW forums to see some of the opinions on the reliability of that technology

I suspect you can go on any forum and read about DPF problems - but never read of the ones that don't give problems! My Golf had 120K or so on the clock when the original engine failed (oil pump drive seizes on the BLS engine - according to forums!) and will "tell" you to drop a gear or two now and then (the DPF is "cleaning itself"). No problems - though it is doing it a little more often now I have a nice new engine! The problem is that people "know better" than the car, so ignore such warnings - the DPF light then comes on as the DPF can't regenerate (too full and not allowed to regenerate when it was able to do so). Suddenly people are faced with £1K+ bills and complain that it is the car at fault!

I can't say about other makes as I rarely go in anything other than the Golf or my tractors (though a friend has a Transit and a Scenic with them - and has never had a problem). However, my Golf was a fleet car - leased - and only had two oil changes in the first 112K miles (and that is on the lease company's spreadsheet!). I don't like this "variable service" thing - I am old school and oil is still cheaper than new engines (I know that only too well!).

tractorman wrote:....However, my Golf was a fleet car - leased - and only had two oil changes in the first 112K miles (and that is on the lease company's spreadsheet!). I don't like this "variable service" thing - I am old school and oil is still cheaper than new engines (I know that only too well!).

Did they drain it or peel it off?
My experience with newish, albeit not that new, good condition lower mileage engines is that the oil change limit is when the performance starts to drop off a bit, and get a bit sluggish as it's having to rotate in treacle.

Brand new fresh oil in the sump perks them up quite nicely

Modern lumps with fancy synthetic / semi synth oil may not experience this

I agree fresh oil is considerably cheaper than fresh metal