White acrid exhaust smoke. Please help.

[jannie]

Can someone give me some advice please. I removed the DPF innards about a month ago (don't ask why - I live in South Africa). Now I get A LOT of acrid white smoke a few minutes after starting the car. If I switch of and on again, the smoke stops and re-starts again after a few minutes.

A DPF regen has just started (flashing coil on instrument panel) and that makes no difference to the timing of the white smoke.

Any ideas??

[northpole]

hello, Go and introduce yourself in the appropriate section and put up a picture of your car...
but to answer your question afaik it needs to be mapped out, preferably before you empty it or put a replacement pipe on... it'll still pass the 4 gas test by the way but you need to have it mapped out otherwise it'll try to run a regeneration (injecting extra fuel to start the burning clean process of the DPF) this is what that extra stinky white smoke is.

[jannie]

Thanks for the reply northpole.

I cannot understand why the regen light only came on weeks after the DPF removal. Also, why does the smoke stop for a few minutes after the car re-starts?
What is the 4 gas test? (BTW, we have no MOT here.) I will try to find someone who can look at ECU re-mapping...

Finally, where do I introduce myself and add a photo? I have been a member of vectra-c.com since 2017, and my car is fully described under my profile.

[northpole]

click this link for the <a href="https://www.vectra-c.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?3-Introduce-yourself" target="_blank">introduction section</a>... The ECU does a parameter check first before it notices the saturation of the DPF filter is to high so it'll trigger the regeneration process... granted it does need some specific parameters for it to start the regen and they must be all ok for the ecu to start that process.<br><br>PS the for gAs test is what they do to check if the engine is within the set limits for the environment they do here when they do the yearly MOT test, so unlike South africa every car on the road here actually has a decent to good running engine otherwise they won't pass the test.&nbsp;&nbsp;

[Dog_Book]

I’d be looking in the troubleshooting section, I bet someone has had similar before in all the years these have been around.

[jannie]

Thanks for the suggestion. I searched for white, smoke, exhaust, etc. There were indeed quite a few comments, but very few connected to a possible DPF issue, mainly because no-one in Europe would remove it like I have!

[jannie]

click this link for the <a href="https://www.vectra-c.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?3-Introduce-yourself" target="_blank">introduction section</a>... The ECU does a parameter check first before it notices the saturation of the DPF filter is to high so it'll trigger the regeneration process... granted it does need some specific parameters for it to start the regen and they must be all ok for the ecu to start that process.<br><br>PS the for gAs test is what they do to check if the engine is within the set limits for the environment they do here when they do the yearly MOT test, so unlike South africa every car on the road here actually has a decent to good running engine otherwise they won't pass the test.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Introduction done!

Yes, I suppose the light coming on just indicates that the regen process has now started, not necessarily working at that exact time. What is confusing is that I had the smoke a few weeks before the light came on!

[northpole]

Do you have a decent OBD2 scanner something like tech2 or the other (sl)op-com? it should log a DTC.. and afaik when a regen doesn't go properly the ECU will keep trying it until the process actually has reached a certain set minimum saturation level... so if you have access to that start looking at the DTC's (errors) or if you know someone who's got access to it ask them to do a scan of the car... from the fault codes found it is easier to diagnose.

[jannie]

Do you have a decent OBD2 scanner something like tech2 or the other (sl)op-com? it should log a DTC.. and afaik when a regen doesn't go properly the ECU will keep trying it until the process actually has reached a certain set minimum saturation level... so if you have access to that start looking at the DTC's (errors) or if you know someone who's got access to it ask them to do a scan of the car... from the fault codes found it is easier to diagnose.

I have OP-COM. The only errors are:

P1112-62	not present	Swirl Flap Stuck Open (Bank 2)
P1901-12	not present	Particulate filter pressure sensor: Hose line malfunction
B3901-00	not present	Wrong environment Identifier Received

You are making me think I need to investigate P1901-12. Perhaps it is due to no DPF contents??

I am living with P1112-62 as it goes away after the first re-start for the rest of the day.

[northpole]

Well no not really it just means that we were both thinking about the right reason why the car is having the white smoke... get it mapped out and the problem will be gone.