Talk to me about dpf......bit late I know

[HDAV]

So I have a D4 xc60 purchased as I opted out of company car scheme.

I tend to drive long journey on motorway typically 100+ miles at a time some short trips 4 miles to the station when getting the train.... I try not to do short trips and walk to the shops but sometimes it happens....

Now I was perhaps foolishly under the impression that long motorway trips would be great for the D4, it sits nicely on cruise and I tend to keep to 50-60 to try and squeeze my fuel costs to the afr rate of 11p a mile

However reading up a bit it seems this is as bad? Moving to an suv doing spirited driving is less likely than it was before that and I don’t want to pay 14-15p a mile for business use.

Annual mileage is probably 18-20k 15k business personal 5k possibly more so could do 25k a year a few thousand of that may be towing (35 miles each way on motorway regularly occasionally longer)

So as car has only 6k on it what can I try and do to prevent egr and dpf issues in future hoping to keep the car for a good few years (last one before 9 months of company car was 8) company policy is 7 years old max realistically 5 minimum (100-125k)

[Chief inspector]

My driving sounds a lot like yours, though sometimes a good bit faster, it can also do 2 miles to and from the station some days.

Its nearly 3 years old and Ive never had a DPF issue or warning on the XC60

[benr7310]

I have a d5 and do 2 x 20 min journeys a day 5 days a week and a guaranteed 450 mile round trip (motorway) once every 4-6 weeks. Not usually any particularly long journeys for the other weekends.

I've done this for over 3 years. Ive never had isses with DPF or EGR.

You can get things done like terraclean, but you wouldnt have to worry about this until much higher milage unless this engine is particularly prone to egr issues.

If you have vida/dice then you can force regeneration of dpf, but given how you use the car I doubt this is necessary as I have never had to do this.

[steadvex]

should be booted now and then just to keep the turbo's happy imo, but the car will regen when it needs to do so, doesn't matter if your parked outside a school or on the motorway. It just does its thing in the background...

[HDAV]

I tend to give it the beans once or twice on a journey i did today then realised I had to get more fuel for tomorrow and worked out it was over 14p a mile so back to driving like a nun on Sunday....

[MacV50]

The HMRC rate is 45p / mile. That might drop a bit with the sort of mileage your doing.

Did you know that you can claim the difference back? My company just gives me 11p so I claim the rest back on my annual tax return. If you don't do one, there is a form just for mileage and I don't think you have to wait until the end of the tax year to do it. I do 5-6k business mileage each year so it's definitely worth claiming

Check the HMRC website or just give them a call

[HDAV]

Yeah I know I can claim the difference that 34p is hopefully going to pay for my car shame it’s only the first 10k after that 25p not 45

0.34*10000=3400
0.14*5000= 700
4100*3 nearly 12.5k pays my balloon (in theory at least) will never work .......

But I needed a way to convince myself I wasn't throwing away £££ every month...

[mordred1973]

Again a different engine, but my D5 has done loads of short trips village to village with the odd longer trip. I agree its not driven like Miss Daisy and a few times a year tows, but never had a DPF message in 83000 miles....

[Bloke]

I think sometimes the DPF can be down to bad luck. My car does over an hour each way to work during the week and mostly 20min+ journeys of a weekend and I had problems with the EGR and the fix done when it went in with the issue.

The work journey is quite often stop start so they may have contributed but I don't drive like a nun when I get the chance, although by the same token I don't drive like I stole it either!

Paul.

[Grimble]

I have a D4.
Commute is 160miles round trip, a mixture of slow (stop/start) and fast (cruise set to 75) motorways (roadworks, dont get me started!)

Consistently get 45mpg and over. I think one of the biggest factors is the way the wind is blowing!

Never had an issue with the DPF.