Another DPF thread! Burns every 120-150 km

[Marvellous_matt Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close Marvellous_matt]

HI All.
Im a Toyota man, on 2nd prado, a 2015 GX manual. Had it for about 2 years, got it about 50000km, now its 85000km. About the same time the software was updated about a year ago I started running my scan gauge II and became interested in DPF burns. I was surprised that they were occurring about 120-150 km. I live in Alice Springs, plenty of long drives at 110 km hour, pretty flat, 2 people not much gear. Ive been bugging the local Dealer about it, with out much joy. They did replace the 5th injector. There current position is that frequency of DPF burns can vary depending in individual driving style. I’m pretty disappointed with this, don't think there are too many ways u can change your style on the highway with cruise control on.
Do you think I am being over sensitive? When the DPF manual says burns should happen every 250-300 is it a problem them happening 2 or 3 times as often. I’m thinking that its extra fuel, and extra emissions, and more wear and tear on everything? At times it has been as low as 70 km, but mostly 120-150, never above 160, from the end of one burn to start of next.
Would love any tips encouraging Toyota to take things seriously if you have any!

[404pug Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close 404pug]

Keep hassling. Escalate from dealer to Toyota customer service. Phone calls and emails aplenty. Make lots of noise. They will come to the party in some way eventually. My 2016 burns about every 270 km give or take a bit depending on where I am driving. Hopefully it stays that way.

[nudgebar Member Find all posts View Profile Close nudgebar]

yeah it sux when the burns are so frequent ,fuel consumption goes through the roof ,and the "fixes" they carry out are not a permanent fix. sounds to me like a buggered DPF

[JohnLynn Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JohnLynn]

To make you feel worse my 2015 GXL manual which has only covered 40,000 Kms currently does around 350 Km between burns, it has even reached 400 Kms and the burns do not take too long to complete. I watch with torque pro running on the head unit and monitor temperatures differential pressure etc but I must say that having been obsessed with whether my DPF is going to fail almost since I bought the car that I have not really noticed much difference in the behaviour of the regenerations after each software update.
What functions do you monitor? do you see the % going up quickly after a burn then mysteriously coming down again as the software appears to recalculate? I have never understood what is going on here, or why it should be programmed like this but normal operation seems to be a rapid increase in % blocked immediately after a burn then a "reset" to a much lower figure then a much more gradual increase up to 100% when I asked why this happens at my dealers they claimed that it doesn't so you can imagine that I have as little faith in them as you.

[RPP Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close RPP]

That is correct. After the ECU update early last year I've seen DPF regens happen around 150Kms at highway speeds. It takes about 30Kms to complete the burn. However, prior to the ECU update, and about every 300Kms, it was taking 70-90Kms plus to complete a burn at highway speeds.

Around the city (and on bush tracks) they still occur every 300Kms or so and much more quickly.

I collected DPF stats for the first 50,000kms on my 2018 GXL with a Scanguage programmed to read DPF% and DPF Temp.
As you can see the data varies quite a lot as the charts show:

https://www.pradopoint.com.au/forum/...ics-0-50-000km

[Bear63 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Bear63]

if your last software was updated a year ago its about 9 months out of date , new software was released and a new procedure to check the integrity of the dpf and the 5th injector , it takes up to 3 hours to do the whole check.

[Marvellous_matt Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close Marvellous_matt]

Thanks JohnLynn, I monitor on the scan gauge II. I have coolant temp, DPF % and exhaust temp. The % generally goes up in a liner fashion, occasional up and down, but that does not stress me. Burns always start at 50%, takes a bit longer on the highway, but again that is not a concern, burn finishes from 4% - 0%. a hand full of times it has gone up quite quickly, under 100km,

404pug, The local dealer is not that on the ball, But I found the customer experience centre had a pretty poor response. Im sure it is a hard job dealing with unhappy people all day, but the first person I spoke suggested that It would not go anywhere, that it was normal (they also did not understand DPF's) I also received terse message because I didn't respond to a text message I didnt receive and today:

'If you are experiencing further concerns we recommend lasing with your dealership who in-take further testing on the DPF and assist you with any possible next steps'

Any one able to interpret what lasing and in-take mean in this context?must be secret Toyota code.

I spoke to Consumer affairs and will send formal complaint when I get time to put some things together. In 3 weeks I will be starting a 5000 plus journey (Alice-Kangaroo Island-Melb- Alice) I don't like my chances of having it resolved before then.

[JohnLynn Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JohnLynn]

A couple of issues raised by the last two posts.

I had no idea that there was a more recent update than over a year ago. I got a letter from Toyota asking me to take it in for an update and I have not heard anything since.

If your regen is happening at 50% then surely either your pids are wrong reading the % or there is something wrong with the vehicle if it is doing a burn at 50% and not 100

I think I can understand what they are getting at in your terse message lol but on a more serious note I hope that you do get the problem sorted before you set off on your journey. I was under the impression, perhaps wrongly that a manual variant may suffer less of an issue with the DPF because it is both lower geared and so would be reving higher cruising on the freeway and when stationary it would be regenerating at 1200 rpm not 900.

[Marvellous_matt Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close Marvellous_matt]

JohnLynn, there are 2 codes (pids) for DPF reading, I think the one that ends in 2 shows DPF full at 100%, the one ending in 1 50%. So I think it is ok.
If you get the update (about a year old) you can ask that they also turn on the light, so you can see when a burn initiates and ends on the dashboard, it will correspond with what you see on your scanguage.

[Marvellous_matt Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close Marvellous_matt]

Thanks Bear63. The dealer has had my vehicle about 8 times, 'testing' but have not mentioned a further update. In September they said they had an new test to run, it may have been part of that. Do you know if there is anyway to check the software update? Can it be read from a scanguage or other OBD device and phone app?

[cuda Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close cuda]

I had this same issue ws doing burns as low as 120km but only when running at 100+km/h. I was constantly complaining to Toyota and did some of my own diagnostics and found that the % full was very instable. Finally Toyota performed more testing and decided to replace the DPF. Problems gone...

This issue started post ECU update. All I can think is that the firmware now uses the feedback from the sensors (differential pressure) more and thats why the increased frequency of burns. Its detected a partial blockage and is trying to remove it.

Thanks
Doug