Parked regen

[R.Wold]

Originally Posted by Retired tom

Just did a stationary 20 minute 1500 rpm, the check engine light is gone, still have a flashing dpf symbol. Will do a long drive when weather permits

Thats interesting and a long uninterrupted drive under load sounds like a good idea. The check engine light going out is encouraging, but it clearly is still looking for a thorough regen.

If you could keep it around a metro area with some decent shops near by you would reduce your risk of being stranded by a derate.

If you are in Lillian, maybe back and forth between Mobile and Pensacola. Plenty of shops capable of a forced regen on both ends.

How did you manage a 1500 rpm high idle? Brick on the pedal?

[YC1]

Get it to a dealer asap and have them do a manual regen or better yet, have the try to clean the dpf manually.

Based on the dumpster full of the things when ours went bad at about 17K miles they have/had a history of problems in the early years.

Ours cracked when they tried to clean it so of course the cost was pricey enough and the extended warranty that was supposed to be the best one available didn't cover a dime. The cost was close to 5K and downtime was three days.

We have a 2008 Endeavor. Never light footed but we encountered ours trying to regen after a fuel pickup at a little out of the way place. Just could not find fuel in that part of the country at the time. I tried as hard as possible to run it hard but there was no way in the twisting hills.

Besides a new DPF there was several ECM updates at that time. I highly suspect many had to do with changing the cycles for the regen. Mine regens quite differently now and have seen it go for an hour at times but most often just a few minutes.

My HP never seemed to be the same after that and my mileage dropped back about 1 mpg.

Recently I had my HP Uprated from the 400 to 450. Got my power back but the mileage is not as good as it once was.

Even if you can get a good regen the dpf might have some buildup that does not clear.

It is not fun going up a steep hill on a freeway in Albany New York. The folks following us were absolutely incredible for the two miles it took us to get to an exit. Flashing lights surrounded us and it was if they huddled around the poor limping teammate.

Hats off to the kind folks of Albany and for the three days we were their guests. The Cummins dealer there was spotless, courteous, and had a place for us to park at night. No dump or water so was glad we were carrying a full tank and had to watch the water usage like a hawk. It was a real stressful three days.

I felt particularly bad for the customer that made a living with his truck and it was the third dpf issue in a year on his brand new truck.

They claimed on his it was high idle time and claimed the same thing on mine. I do not nor ever did any real idling. But when you think of the air up time, time spent at a rest stop, stop and go traffic etc., it adds up to more than you would think.

I believe it was mostly growing pains for the emission systems and unfortunately we customers paid for the lessons learned. Expensive lessons for sure.

Read any extended warranties closely. The second the Warranty company got any hint of a dpf failure they threw me right under the bus.

Hope this help.

[R.Wold]

YC1 brings another viable option to mind. Interesting story YC btw - your experiences could be helpful to many people and it might be good to start a “care and feeding of your DPF” thread.

But back to the subject at hand, Tom having your DPF baked would be the ultimate treatment for it, and while it may not be absolutely necessary it solves a couple problems:

The first is that the R&R is most likely something you can handle yourself. Its simple basic wrenching, the things are designed to be serviced, and you could leave the coach where it is, have your DPF cleaned, put it back on, and it should clear its codes and MILs and be good to go.

Also given the age and milage of the coach, and the issues its having, its probably close to ready anyway and it may even be necessary at this point. And even if its not, DPF servicing will get everything out - hard soot deposits that wont burn off in a regen and old ash from previous regens, and imcrease the life of your DPF.

My coach os a 2016 and only has 46000 miles on it, but I've considered servicing the DPF early as preventative maintenance just to avoid what YC went through and to avoid needing to leave the coach at some shop for service. And it runs around $300-$500 as opposed to thousands when the thing can no longer be serviced.

So something to think about if you don't want to risk a long drive to a shop that might put you in derate. Read about the R&R procedure, get a friend that can work on vehicles to help and take the DPF to a servicing facility. They would probably want the DOC as well - call a couple DPF cleaning facilities and see what they say.

[jacwjames]

Here is a response I did on another forum


Back in ~2006 I was involved in a restart of mines that had been shut down for ~4 years. Eventually (somehow) I was promoted to Maintenance Manager. The equipment that was still there and usable did not meet the new Mine Health and Safety Administration (MSHA) diesel particulate criteria. We had to test and maintain records along with ventilation surveys etc. Even most of the new equipment did not meet the criteria. We had to install DPF on pretty much all the equipment and purchase the equipment to be able to clean the DPF which was a high temperature oven and a vibrating table that would shake the soot out of the DPF while it was baking. We monitored all the equipment with computer, would download the data at every service (essentially weekly), some of the newer equipment that came equipped with the DPF's did regenerate and we could actually see it on the printouts. We had to keep detailed records of all of this On the equipment, as the back pressure climbed on the exhaust system, we'e ultimately pull the DPF and put one of the spares. Each engine by make, model, size had different DPF's. We spent +$1M on all of this to bring the mines in compliance.
What we learned over time is that the equipment that was run hard and hot would benefit from the DPF's and that they would have to pulled and cleaned a lot less frequently then some of the other equipment. We also found that some equipment it would not work at all, we had to remove and operators would have to wear personal protective equipment (masks etc) to protect against the diesel particulate.
So when all these types of systems were being developed the first generation of engines performed poorly. This probably includes motorhomes that started to have this equipment installed. I knew the Knoxville Cummins Manager and would stop in and talk to him and he commented that the engine manufacturers were scrambling to develop engine to meet the EPA requirement (Tier engines) and it seemed that just when they got the bugs worked out of engines they would release a new Tier and they'd start all over again.
So if you own a coach with this type of equipment I'd suggest you do your research and be proactive to maintain it.
I guess I'll keep my 2002 with a ISC 8.3



This is an interesting thread with comments from very sharp people, might be worth the read, Monacoers.org
https://www.monacoers.org/topic/2979...1966/#comments

[Retired tom]

Originally Posted by R.Wold

Thats interesting and a long uninterrupted drive under load sounds like a good idea. The check engine light going out is encouraging, but it clearly is still looking for a thorough regen.

If you could keep it around a metro area with some decent shops near by you would reduce your risk of being stranded by a derate.

If you are in Lillian, maybe back and forth between Mobile and Pensacola. Plenty of shops capable of a forced regen on both ends.

How did you manage a 1500 rpm high idle? Brick on the pedal?

Ou uh

[Retired tom]

Originally Posted by Retired tom

Ou uh

On my coach turn cruise control on, push resume button, rpm will increase with each push

[moisheh]

MH's have an ecm with different parameters in the software. Unlike an otr truck they are not setup for a switched parked force regen. Probably so you don't set grass on fire. When you take your unit to a Cummims shop for say a drive ability complaint they may want to check all your ecm settings. They are supposed to download and save the existing settings and maybe find the problem. Perhaps when they reload your settings not all of them are installed correctly. On my 08 Dynasty I was having check engine light issues. Cummins did a forced regen as the dpf was plugged . Then the shop foreman did a print out of the ecm. Turns out the settings for when to do a regen were not correct. In the last 6 months it had started dozens of regens but they were cancelled as the engine temps did not remain high enough. It wasn't gor a highway truck. Settings were changed and never had that problem again. You should go to Cumins and have everything changed. I doubt you need a new dpf.

[R.Wold]

One more thing to consider. If you do remove your DPF and take it in for cleaning, you’ll still need someone with ecm commands capability to reset the soot level readings. So either way you are going in and if you think you can make the drive that would be the easiest approach and a forced regen will very likely clear things up for now. Long term you just want to try to support the regens when they start.

Here’s a q&a item from OTR on the subject:

The main question that we get asked is, if the DPF is baked or washed out, do the soot levels need to be reset?

Yes! The engine ECM has various timers and soot counters that memorize when the last time the regen occurred. If you clean the filters but do not reset the soot, then the fault codes for high soot levels will not clear. You have to reset these values at the dealer level in order to clear your fault codes.

[YC1]

Taking it to a dealer should get you ECM updates as mentioned and mine has performed much better since. No problems since and I have noticed the difference in Regens. Sometimes a long one, sometimes just a short one.

But they definitely were tweaking the parameters in those early days.

[R.Wold]

Originally Posted by R.Wold

One more thing to consider. If you do remove your DPF and take it in for cleaning, you’ll still need someone with ecm commands capability to reset the soot level readings. So either way you are going in and if you think you can make the drive that would be the easiest approach and a forced regen will very likely clear things up for now. Long term you just want to try to support the regens when they start.

Here’s a q&a item from OTR on the subject:

The main question that we get asked is, if the DPF is baked or washed out, do the soot levels need to be reset?

Yes! The engine ECM has various timers and soot counters that memorize when the last time the regen occurred. If you clean the filters but do not reset the soot, then the fault codes for high soot levels will not clear. You have to reset these values at the dealer level in order to clear your fault codes.

I was busy getting tires for the jeep so I never finished this.

The alternative is to arm yourself with either the OTR reset tool or OTR diagnostics, or something similar. Both allow you to do forced regens and reset emissions codes.I balked at the price early on but having had it for 8 months now I think its paid for itself three times over between diagnostics saving me money and the ability to do my own forced regens and code resets. And then there is real time monitoring including % soot accumulation in the DPF. Monitoring and managing that alone could save thousands and also prevent even the threat of a derate. Its also helped me understand the entire emissions system including the DEF side of things so I can better manage it.

[Retired tom]

Originally Posted by R.Wold

One more thing to consider. If you do remove your DPF and take it in for cleaning, you’ll still need someone with ecm commands capability to reset the soot level readings. So either way you are going in and if you think you can make the drive that would be the easiest approach and a forced regen will very likely clear things up for now. Long term you just want to try to support the regens when they start.

Here’s a q&a item from OTR on the subject:

The main question that we get asked is, if the DPF is baked or washed out, do the soot levels need to be reset?

Yes! The engine ECM has various timers and soot counters that memorize when the last time the regen occurred. If you clean the filters but do not reset the soot, then the fault codes for high soot levels will not clear. You have to reset these values at the dealer level in order to clear your fault codes.

So, if it cleans itself is this still true, I'm confused, how does it know if you took dpf off and cleaned it or if it cleaned itself?

[R.Wold]

Originally Posted by Retired tom

So, if it cleans itself is this still true, I'm confused, how does it know if you took dpf off and cleaned it or if it cleaned itself?

The ECM reads back pressure in the DPF and expresses it in terms of percent soot load. If you burn off the soot throuh a regen, it resets that number, hopefully to zero. If it doesn't get to zero with one regen, I do it again.

The ECM stores that back pressure data and Ive read that it needs to be reset after externally cleaning the DPF. It seems to me that it would just read the lack of back pressure and reset itself. When you replace a bad DEF head, the ECM reads the new and acceptable values and clears the codes.

So Im not clear on that. It seems like it would clear itself, but I just read that it doesn't. I can reset emissions settings with OTR so I never looked into it further. That would be worse case, but you’d want to be prepared for that.

[Timaz]

I'm soooo glad I don't have any of that crap on my motorhome.

Tim

[Retired tom]

Originally Posted by Timaz

I'm soooo glad I don't have any of that crap on my motorhome.

Tim

If I had known these problems before hand I would never buy a motor home that stands a big chance of leaving you on the side of the road. The design of these systems is pitiful, diesel shops are making a killing off motor home owners. The motor home market will hurt badly if people understand what they will be facing. Any way I have the otr reset tool coming, I will keep everyone posted if this gets me back on the road. Thank God I was able to get home or I would be out thousands of dollars.