Enhancing Diesel Cars Performance

If you’ve been around long enough, you will remember many diesel vehicles as being slow and churning out a lot of dirty black smoke.

But times have changed, and in Australia, diesel vehicles are very popular. Engines now have turbos fitted and diesel particulate filters.

The DPF is a filter that captures and stores exhaust soot in order to reduce emissions. The soot then needs to be cleanly burned off. This can be done effectively by taking the vehicle on a good run at highway speeds. This is known as passive regeneration.

Unfortunately, many diesel vehicles are used predominantly for short runs around town and this builds up the soot but does not burn it off, thus blocking the filter. This can result in sluggish performance, black smoke under acceleration, DPF warning lights and the vehicle going in to limp mode. This has become so commonplace now, it has lead to repairers carrying out a forced regeneration process as part of regular servicing of diesel engines.

In some cases, where vehicles are not serviced regularly and the DPF cleaned, the DPF will need replacing and that can be very costly.

So it is very important for modern diesel car drivers to be aware of their driving habits, and remember to take their car regularly on a good run. If they can’t do that, then they need to be sure to ask their mechanic to run a regeneration process on their vehicle. Regular servicing using the correctly specified oil will also assist in maintaining the DPF.

*Photo by Jasper Garratt