Mobile DPF Cleaning around Hand and Pen and Devon
With on-site DPF cleaning, we drive out to the car. No garage, no filter leaving. A fitter travels to your door over in Hand and Pen, clears the diesel particulate filter as it sits, runs a DPF regeneration, and you end up with the filter you came with.
The visit takes typically around 2 hours, the clean begins from £299, and the price is settled over the phone before anyone leaves.
The light is showing and the vehicle is low on power — that is how we normally find people, and roughly what this page is about.
Your DPF light is on — what then?
Not the DPF, always. First thing to note. A check goes before all work, because that same panel light has several candidate faults behind it.
It tells what you manage with the vehicle between now and the visit.
- Amber light, vehicle still driving normally — a long even run can still clear it on its own. Costs nothing, and worth attempting before you call anything.
- Once the motor is in limp mode, motoring will not shift it. The window has gone.
- Diesel smell in the car, or black smoke under the throttle — stop arranging long drives and get it checked.
The motor has been showing you already
Symptoms have usually been mounting for some time before the light even arrives. Last news, in other words:
- less power, especially going uphill
- you notice the revs fall short of where they once went
- fuel use that is worse than it was
- stop/start without a word bowing out
- the interior smelling of diesel, or smoke when you press on
Alone, none of that is conclusive. Next to the light, it is a fair assumption the filter is blocked.
What clogs diesel particulate filters round Hand and Pen
For a DPF, the worst driving is the sort you get in a small village such as Hand and Pen. Run through a normal week: Whimple Primary School and home, Hand and Pen Lane at a crawl before the hour, a short hop to Morrisons, a dash to Whimple. None of it there goes on long enough or gets hot enough to see through a regeneration. Unburnt soot that should clear banks up instead.
Unless you have a standing cause to head out to the M5, under 5 miles from Hand and Pen, or over to Exeter under 10 miles away, entire weeks slip past without a sustained drive. Geography is unhelpful.
Why limp mode blocks a DPF regeneration
It is self-preservation: that is all limp mode amounts to. A sustained drive works by triggering a regeneration, and that is precisely what limp mode prevents: power capped, revs kept low, no regeneration available.
So the usual advice to take it up the motorway is sensible advice, until it stops being. In limp mode you are past that line: treatment is what will do it, not more road work.
DPF cleaning at the motor across Hand and Pen
Nothing comes off the car. That catches out people. The DPF sits fitted where it is and the work goes on around it, on a forecourt, in a works car park, anywhere it can wait for a few hours.
Nothing is started until other faults are eliminated. That means a diagnostic first: real-time data off the ECU, soot load by percent and by mass, and a check of the sensors, glow plugs and connected components.
Then comes the clean itself: solution in through the vehicle's own access port, spreading inside the filter and lifting what a regeneration never can. Badly clogged filters sometimes take a second pass.
What the clean has lifted is then driven off by a regeneration. Stay with the motor and it becomes a monitored drive out of Hand and Pen. Leave it and the regeneration goes statically, with live data verified once it is done.
Then a second scan, proving the change, resetting the warning light and logging anything still outstanding. Both sets of figures are sent over, so the before and after figures are recorded.
Where treatment is not the solution
Only one fault is fixed by a clean: the filter clogged with ash and soot. It does nothing for:
- a pressure sensor reporting a restriction that is not there
- the EGR valve jammed open
- the AdBlue system failing
- failed glow plugs or injectors, so no regeneration ever runs
- turbo trouble, with oil entering the filter
Which is why the scan happens first. When one of those proves the fault, you find out about it at the outset rather than once the money has gone altogether.
Two things more worth bearing in mind. Having the filter cut out is not a remedy — a vehicle without a working DPF cannot pass its MOT and driving it is an offence. And cleaning is sometimes described as DPF renewal: nothing is replaced, your own filter is cleared in place and sent back into use.
What DPF cleaning comes to around Hand and Pen
A call-out charge stands whatever follows, and takes in the visit, the booking fee, the check and the advice passed on. The clean itself starts from £299.
No flat rate would be truthful, so the figure is fixed on the phone once we have the vehicle and what the filter is going to need. Two separate things move it: what you run, and where you are — Hand and Pen itself, over at Allercombe, or farther out within the EX postcode area.
If the check writes treatment out, there is nothing to pay for it. What nonetheless holds is the call-out charge, since the visit took place, the check was carried out and the advice was offered.
A 30-day warranty takes in aftercare on the job, and that includes an engineer heading back out to Hand and Pen if the light returns inside the time.
Had one of there reps come to my address and work on my car was very helpful and sorted the problem would recommend them to anyone.
Great service. No garages would touch the issue so to find this company that comes to your house was brilliant. Effective communication and booked in quickly which I appreciated. The job was completed before I could offer them a cuppa! I would recommend this company.
Allies was the dpf guy that came to do my van VAUXHALL VIVARO very professionally done the job very happy would definitely recommend him.
The vehicles we clean and the patch we cover round Hand and Pen
The filter is treated on the vehicle on all of them: private cars, vans and light commercials, heavy goods vehicles, plant and construction machinery, farm vehicles. Nothing is carried anywhere.
Nearly every week there is usually someone on Hand and Pen Lane, so Hand and Pen rarely means a special trip, and Allercombe, Whimple and the spots past Rockbeare follow. It is the diary, not the distance, that picks whether it is one day or the next, and coverage runs UK-wide — so ring still from even further out through Devon.
Hand and Pen itself
Hand and Pen is a small locality in Devon, situated inland at an elevation of 63 metres, approximately 8 miles from Exeter. Hand and Pen is characterized by its predominantly detached housing stock, reflecting its rural setting. Hand and Pen sits near other small places such as Strete Ralegh and Allercombe, in the wider countryside of the South West region.
Things Hand and Pen drivers ask about DPF cleaning
- Is a long drive enough on its own?
- Sometimes, if you get it in time and the car has not dropped into limp mode. A steady run at motorway speed is what it wants — not ten minutes flat to Morrisons and back.
- Does the visit take long?
- It is typically around 2 hours. A badly clogged filter can need a second clean, which lengthens that.
- How much does it cost around Hand and Pen?
- Beginning from £299, with a charge for travelling that takes in the check and advice on what to do next. Both the vehicle and where you are shift it, which is why quoting goes by phone.
- Do I have to be there?
- Nobody expects you to stand with it — the motor simply needs a spot to wait for a couple of hours. If you would sooner come along, the regeneration can be run as a supervised drive instead.
- When can someone come to Hand and Pen?
- That comes down to the schedule, but it is often same-day or next-day. Call 0303 330 1830 and we will say to you what is free across the EX area.
- Is the filter taken off the vehicle?
- On the call-out service, no: the filter is done in place. Neither job — a filter off, a filter back on — is not a job we do.
- The light comes back — then what?
- The 30-day warranty covers aftercare, including an engineer coming back to Hand and Pen.
Book a DPF clean in Hand and Pen
Tell us round what the motor is doing on 0303 330 1830, whether that is smoke, limp mode or the light. The figure goes first, and so does the date, before anyone heads off for Hand and Pen. Anything sent to enquiries@dpf-fixer.co.uk out of hours is dealt with first thing.
Full public liability cover is carried by the engineers, and we are ISO 14001 certified, ISO 9001 certified, SSIP Approved and SafeContractor approved.
DPF Fixer Ltd is rated 4.5 out of 5 from 1,989 reviews on Trustpilot. Mobile DPF Cleaner is a trading name of DPF Fixer Ltd; the rating is held by DPF Fixer.