Black smoke / soot out of exhaust on T6

[Bluscuba]

Hello All,

My 2018 transporter Kombi has an issue where there’s a loss of power on inclines and the acceleration is sluggish but picks up rapidly but blows out a big cloud of smoke. After that smoke blowout the performance / acceleration is better but not perfect. I've noticed there are some exhaust fume smells in the van as well.

I've taken it to a main dealer, local garage and a Indy VW specialist. Each of them diagnosed a different expensive issue ( clutch / turbo / blocked manifold/ DPM clean) and none would guarantee ( understandable) or seemed that confident ( less understandable) that their diagnosis would fix the problem for sure.

Are there any possible faults I could ask them to check? It was remapped to bypass a faulty ad blue system so it maybe that however I think the problem occurred a while after that.

I’d like to trade / sell the van but can’t do it at the moment. It’s lasted like this for 2 years

 

[Howzat]

Sounds like a blocked DPF. Get an OBD dongle like the vgate ipro or carista (handy to have anyway) then a DPF app for your phone (there's a developer on here that has one for the iphone) to read the measurements.
Cleaning the DPF may relieve the sytmptoms (prior to sale) but there may be another issue causing the DPF to block up so you may be back at square one after a few weeks.
Post a screen showing what the DPF app shows if you need further advice about the DPF.

 

[Bluscuba]

Thanks - i think the dpf been cleaned whenever it’s gone to the garage. The self cleaning function seems to work for a bit and then fails so maybe its something related to that.

 

[Chrishall888]

As howzat has mentioned, it may be a blocked dpf. If it’s blocked it may be passing the seal and that is why you are smelling it in the car.
A good garage should be able to read the pressure readings prior and post dpf, allowing them to ascertain if it is blocked or not.
If you plan to keep the van, don’t contemplate cheap dpf filters….theyre crap.
Your original can be cleaned, so perhaps as the garage to go down this route or diagnosis and repair?