The fun resumes…or not

[Rich W.]

True…I have no track record with one of these things. I thought about starting and stopping…but don’t know how smart it would be to have it start dumping fuel into the ATS, and then stop the procedure with it un-burnt. Wish I knew more bout these things. My ‘98 Dodge didn’t have an after treatment system. And the Coach has been doing it’s thing without help from me…so far.

You can’t hurt anything by doing forced regens. There is no excess fuel being dumped into the DPF - just a specifically measured amount injected by the doser based on all requirements being met. So any diesel injected is immediately burned and if you interrupt a regen, injection stops.

All that said, if you are showing low or no soot levels, there is also nothing to be gained by doing a forced regen. But it is a good idea to monitor your soot level periodically and run a regen when it gets to about 1/2 to avoid the rig requiring a parked regen while traveling. The problem with that is “what is 1/2?” as Neal pointed out. I also don’t get the 200% thing and I’ve never looked into that. I just do occasional forced regens.i

One explanation I’ve read is that when the DPF soot load reaches 100%, it’s at 100% of the regen threshold which is 50% of the DPF soot capacity. This would make sense but doesn’t explain why they don’t just use 50% and 100% so I’m not entirely convinced. Either way though, I would do a forced regen if I saw the soot load approaching 50%. Ideally the system will do its own active regens preventing soot loads this high, but due to driving conditions, it may not be able to do so.

 

[Chuggs]

Along that line, I did come across comments that basically recommended having a set schedule. Particularly if you do a lot of short trips, low speed, start...stop.

 

[team bradfield]

are the forced regens something I need to be doing? Didn't read anything in my DS package. Mine does a DPF Regen every week while traveling, maybe programed into the newer Spartans?

 

[Chuggs]

Normally, while you are doing highway travel...like you say, it goes all on it's own.

You may never need to do a forced regen. They can be used to help clear derates, potentially, when the system gets behind... but if you never need to do it...all the better.

It just seems between the bad digital DEF head saga...and Neals recent fun...always something to be on the lookout for.

 

[Rich W.]

are the forced regens something I need to be doing? Didn't read anything in my DS package. Mine does a DPF Regen every week while traveling, maybe programed into the newer Spartans?

There are a couple schools of thought here and unfortunately most of what you will read on the internet is directed at truck or bus drivers (high milage operators) so it’s hard to draw a conclusion for a motorhome.

If your system is performing active regens weekly, then you are in good shape as far as your DPF goes, but that seems excessive to me so maybe you are producing more soot and ash than normal.

Because Freightliner active regens happen in the background (unless interrupted) it’s hard to say how frequently they occur. What indication does the Spartan system give you that an active regen is in progress?

 

[team bradfield]

There are a couple schools of thought here and unfortunately most of what you will read on the internet is directed at truck or bus drivers (high milage operators) so it’s hard to draw a conclusion for a motorhome.

If your system is performing active regens weekly, then you are in good shape as far as your DPF goes, but that seems excessive to me so maybe you are producing more soot and ash than normal.

Because Freightliner active regens happen in the background (unless interrupted) it’s hard to say how frequently they occur. What indication does the Spartan system give you that an active regen is in progress?

Maybe every 2 weeks or so, really haven't tracked it that close, will pay more attention going forward. It has a message in the INFO space "DPF Regen active" or similar.

 

[NWIP]

When I had my FL I never had an active regen, only passive I assume as there is no message for those. On Spartan I get a regen approximately every 1500 miles, along with the annunciation as @team bradfield stated which lasts exactly 15 minutes at highway speeds

 

[Rich W.]

When I had my FL I never had an active regen, only passive I assume as there is no message for those. On Spartan I get a regen approximately every 1500 miles, along with the annunciation as @team bradfield stated which lasts exactly 15 minutes at highway speeds

You probably had a lot of regens but unless you stopped while it was occurring you’d never know because with Freightliner you only get warnings if you interrupt a regen. It would be nice if the system notified the operator which would save a lot of hassles but as long as you are driving at high enough RPM active regens happen without any indication.

 

[Richpatty]

You probably had a lot of regens but unless you stopped while it was occurring you’d never know because with Freightliner you only get warnings if you interrupt a regen. It would be nice if the system notified the operator which would save a lot of hassles but as long as you are driving at high enough RPM active regens happen without any indication.

I would agree with this as I have never seen a message telling me about a regen in progress.

 

[JRS]

I would agree with this as I have never seen a message telling me about a regen in progress.

I've also never seen a message on a regen occurring