St Day, Cornwall: Mobile DPF Cleaning
With on-site DPF cleaning, we come to the car. The engineer arrives at your address over in St Day and gets to work. The diesel particulate filter is cleaned fitted to the motor, a DPF regeneration runs after it, and you hold on to the filter you started with.
You'll be given a figure by phone before anyone leaves, the clean opening from £299, and the visit taking typically around 2 hours.
The light is on already and the car is low on power — that is how we generally find people, and precisely what this page deals with.
Your DPF light is on — what now?
The filter is not always what is wrong, and that goes first. Cleaning is not where a visit begins. A diagnostic is — a number of faults register as the same warning.
How the motor is driven in the meantime makes a difference too.
- Worth a shot before you ring anything: amber light, vehicle driving as normal, just one even run, no cost.
- A drive will not touch it now — limp mode means that window has by then closed.
- A diesel smell in there, or black smoke under the throttle, is the point to stop arranging long drives and call.
What the motor has been showing you
Belated news, the light. The symptoms usually mount for a while before it arrives:
- less power, especially climbing uphill
- an engine whose revs will not climb as before
- fuel economy getting worse
- stop/start quietly giving up
- the car reeking of diesel, or smoke when you pull away
Any one of those, taken singly, is not evidence. It is a fair guess the filter is loaded once the light is on as well.
Clogged diesel particulate filters near St Day, and the reason
The motoring that comes with a rural village like St Day is the worst type for a DPF. The school run to St Day and Carharrack Community School, Telegraph Street at a crawl at half eight, five minutes to Aldi, the run to Redruth — not one bit of it goes on long enough or gets hot enough for the filter to complete a regeneration. What should clear remains.
Where you sit does not oblige either. The M5 is over 50 miles from St Day and Truro is under 10 miles away, so unless something carries you out that way often, weeks go by without the long steady run that might clear the filter on its own.
Why limp mode prevents a DPF regeneration
It is self-protection: that is all limp mode amounts to. A sustained drive works by starting a regeneration, and that is precisely what limp mode rules out: power capped, revs held down, no regeneration available.
Sensible advice, that motorway run — right up until the day it is not. The filter needs cleaning rather than driving once the vehicle has dropped into limp mode.
Call-out DPF cleaning where the car stands round St Day
The filter does not leave it. That is the detail most drivers do not expect: the job takes place with the DPF yet bolted to the vehicle, on your driveway, in a work car park, anywhere the motor can wait for a few hours.
The ECU is taken first, giving soot load by percentage and by weight, along with a look over of sensor readings, glow plugs and associated components, so nothing is cleaned while another fault is still possible.
Then the cleaning. A cleaning solution is injected through the entry point on that motor and opens out inside the filter, freeing the soot and ash a regeneration by itself will never shift. A second pass is sometimes required on severely blocked filters.
A regeneration is next, burning off what the clean has freed. Stay with the vehicle and it is done as a monitored drive out of St Day. Leave it and the regeneration is done on the spot, with live data checked once it is done.
Then a second check, proving the change, clearing the warning light and logging anything still logged. Both reports are emailed over, so the before and after figures are on record.
What a DPF clean will not touch
One thing is what cleaning fixes — a filter clogged with soot and ash. It does nothing for:
- sensors, pressure or temperature, reporting a block that is not real
- an EGR valve held open
- AdBlue system failures
- faulty glow plugs or injectors, so not one regeneration ever runs
- oil coming through the filter from a worn turbo
Finding that out is the first check's job. Where it proves to be one of those, you are warned before any work begins rather than after you have settled up for it.
Hollowing the filter out is not a fix: without a serviceable DPF a vehicle will fail its MOT, and driving it is an offence. DPF renewal is the wording people search for, though nothing is swapped — your own filter is treated in place and returned into use. Two more worth bearing in mind.
What DPF cleaning comes to across St Day
A call-out charge stands whatever the outcome, and takes in the visit, the booking fee, the scan and the advice passed on. The clean itself opens from £299.
Not one flat rate would be truthful, so the price is fixed by the phone once we know the vehicle and what the filter is going to need. Where you are matters as much as what you run: St Day itself, Tolcarne nearby, or further out within the TR postcode area.
If the scan writes treatment out, there is not a penny to pay for it. You nonetheless pay that charge: someone turned up, carried out the check and passed on you the advice.
A 30-day warranty takes in aftercare on the clean, and that includes an engineer coming back out to St Day if the light comes back inside the window.
Very professional company, i would highly recommend, the DPF tech who came out went above and beyond in fixing a few problems that he didn't need to making sure the trucks filter worked upon completion.
Great Job, Problem sorted fast, booked in arrived on time great guy worked on the van, also total value for money my van has its power back like it had when new in 2013. Thank you.
Logan was a Great honest guy who gave a great service. Arrived on time, explained process and would highly recommend.
The vehicles we clean and the patch we take in around St Day
The filter is done on the vehicle on all of them: cars, panel vans and light commercials, heavy goods vehicles, construction and plant machinery, agricultural machinery. Nothing is carried anywhere.
St Day is seldom a special trip: our engineers are along Telegraph Street week in week out, and the same run takes in Tolcarne, Crofthandy and the villages out past Little Beside. Further out through Cornwall is nonetheless worth a call — coverage is UK-wide, and it is the calendar rather than the distance that decides between today and tomorrow.
A word on St Day
St Day is a village in Cornwall, situated inland at an elevation of 129 metres, approximately 6 miles from the city of Truro. St Day has a population of around 1432 people, with a predominance of terraced housing. St Day is surrounded by other small settlements, including Tolcarne, Vogue, and Tolgullow, in the Cornish countryside. St Day is located about 237 miles west of London, in the South West region of England.
Frequent questions on DPF cleaning in St Day
- Is a long drive enough alone?
- Sometimes, if you catch it in time and the vehicle has not dropped into limp mode. Five minutes to Aldi and back will not be enough; motorway speed, sustained for a while, will.
- About how long does it last?
- Count on typically around 2 hours, with a second clean extending that where the filter is badly loaded.
- What does it come to across St Day?
- Treatment starts from £299, and the call-out charge on top covers the visit, the check and the advice. Quoting is done by phone, since what you drive and where you sit both move the number.
- Do I have to be there?
- You need not stand with it — the motor just wants a spot to wait for a couple of hours. The regeneration can be run as a monitored drive if you would rather be there.
- Travelling to St Day — how soon?
- That comes down to the calendar, but it is often same-day or next-day. Phone 0303 330 1830 and we will let you what is free across the TR area.
- Is the filter taken off the car?
- It is done where it stands, on the on-site service. That work — a filter off, a filter back on — is not a job we do.
- And if the light comes back?
- The 30-day warranty includes aftercare, including an engineer coming back to St Day.
Get a DPF clean booked in St Day
Walk us about what the vehicle is doing on 0303 330 1830, whether that is smoke, limp mode or the light. Before anyone sets off for St Day, you will know both a price and a slot. Email enquiries@dpf-fixer.co.uk outside phone hours and it is answered first thing.
We are ISO 14001 certified, ISO 9001 certified, SSIP Approved and SafeContractor approved, and all our engineers maintain full public liability insurance.
Mobile DPF Cleaner is a trading name of DPF Fixer Ltd, which is rated 4.5 out of 5 from 1,989 reviews on Trustpilot. The rating is held by DPF Fixer Ltd.