"Regen"

Most the time it will do an active regen while your driving. A parked regen can take any where from 20 minutes to an hour or more. Just depends how clogged the DPF is. If its asking for frequent parked regens then there's other issues.

 

Nothing to do for auto regen, but drive. There will be a warning light/display/code if a parked regen is required. With my truck (2011 Prostar Cummins ISX), if the parked regen warning comes on but I am ready to go, I just drive and it still takes care of it.

 

My Cummins ISX takes 30-40 minutes to do a parked regen. However it ALWAYS alerts me it needs a regen when there is no possible way I can spare the time. So I just drive and it does a passive and clears it up. I made it 260,000 miles before I had to get the system serviced and cleaned. If you have gone 250,000 miles without service your on borrowed time. You will notice your trucks normal "regeneration" cycles either happening more frequently or not happening at all. The DPF filter is inside a huge canister and the larger companies will have a few on hand to swap out the first units needing service. Then they will pull the clogged ones out, install a clean one and send the old DPF out to be cleaned. It's really a whole production but these trucks burn very clean and that's a good thing IMO.

 

I had a lot of problems with the DPF system in the 2010 truck I have. Got it with 281k miles, they told me they had just cleaned the filter the month before. About 4 times I had it in the shop for Check Engine light, the codes were pertaining to a dirty filter. Took the cheap route 4 times ($475 bucks) to reflash and force regen then hit the road. Finally the truck derated and put her in the shop, the tech pulled the filter out and 'cleaned' it. He didn't bake it though. It went for several more months before the truck derated again. ($475 bucks for this work).

This time it went into bonafide KW shop who knew what they were doing. All warranty work (whodathunkit) brand new DPF, EGR cooler and 7th injector (still cost me $475 bucks to get out there, weird). Anyway the tech said it will regen while driving but just to make sure that I should every day at the end of the day while the engine is nice and hot, park it and try to do the regen trick. If it doesn't want to do it, it doesn't need it. That was the key piece of info I didn't have before and was probably driving everyday filling that filter up with ash unwittingly. Well that and the filter can only go so many miles anyway. Got the new filter at 400k miles. Sometimes I will get the HEST light and then do a parked regen or like last night for the first time since new filter, got the clogged filter light and did the regen. Long story short, try to do it every day. Those filters cost thousands of dollars I am told.

 

Does anyone know if disregarding a parked regen and just driving through a passive cycle is okay? I would think it is the same exact thing.

 

If you gotta do a parked regen more and likely the truck will derate and make you pull over to do an Regen. Actually a light will come on to tell you that your DPF is clogged.

And you'll know if you need a new one if you start blowing lots of blue/white smoke, usually means its cracked.