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8 Posts
I had a rude awakening today, and I wonder what others make of this. We've had a GC Overland with diesel for a few months, with 2500 miles on it. This weekend I got warning messages that I needed an oil change, which made no sense, since all the information said that an oil change is called for every 10000 miles, at which time the Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) would also have to be replaced (at high cost, but we judged that would be okay if it's needed only every 10000 miles). Then I got an ominous message that stayed on the screen at all time saying "Exhaust Filter Near Full, Safely Drive at Highway Speeds to Remedy".
At the dealer a very knowledgeable certified technician explained to me that the problem is that we had been making lots of short trips in town, idling at red lights, with the result that the oil viscosity was now out of spec and that the particulate exhaust filter was nearly full and needed an hour of 75 mph driving to get the temperature high enough to burn off the accumulated particulates. No person and no manual had ever ever mentioned that there is a big problem associated with city driving. Normally we would be doing some highway driving regularly, but in recent weeks we've been very busy at home on a major computer project.
This has made us seriously reconsider our purchase, as we thought we were buying a vehicle that was multipurpose, and we wouldn't need to own two vehicles. We feel like we were misled. Moreover, we've not been given any real guidance as to how much highway driving we have to do to maintain the car in good shape. In fact, though the technician told us that we need to drive at 75 mph for an hour, on the way home the message changed to something like "Now regenerating..." and after 15 minutes of 45 mph driving the message changed to "Regeneration completed."
We had to have an oil change (no charge because we had bought the oil change package with the car) but I had to pay $80 for topping up the DEF. We're not happy campers.
Bruce
At the dealer a very knowledgeable certified technician explained to me that the problem is that we had been making lots of short trips in town, idling at red lights, with the result that the oil viscosity was now out of spec and that the particulate exhaust filter was nearly full and needed an hour of 75 mph driving to get the temperature high enough to burn off the accumulated particulates. No person and no manual had ever ever mentioned that there is a big problem associated with city driving. Normally we would be doing some highway driving regularly, but in recent weeks we've been very busy at home on a major computer project.
This has made us seriously reconsider our purchase, as we thought we were buying a vehicle that was multipurpose, and we wouldn't need to own two vehicles. We feel like we were misled. Moreover, we've not been given any real guidance as to how much highway driving we have to do to maintain the car in good shape. In fact, though the technician told us that we need to drive at 75 mph for an hour, on the way home the message changed to something like "Now regenerating..." and after 15 minutes of 45 mph driving the message changed to "Regeneration completed."
We had to have an oil change (no charge because we had bought the oil change package with the car) but I had to pay $80 for topping up the DEF. We're not happy campers.
Bruce
