Head over heart - sister's Forrester

[Urban forrester]

I need advice from those who know more about these cars than I do as I have to decide whether or not to take my late sister's 2015 XC 2.0D auto. She really loved her car, drove 70K miles up and down motorways and rural Scottish roads for 3 years. It hasn't moved for nearly a year now and a decision has to be made about it.

I last drove it for her and it was a joy, she would have loved the idea that it went to me as would her family but......

I don't live in rural Scotland, I live on the SW edge of London. I don't thunder up and down motorways much anymore, I don't go off road, it doesn't cack up with snow here, I really don't need an automatic 4 wheel drive car (I'm more of a 2 door German coupe person) but the Suburu is a mighty beast and more practical than my current car especially as I get older.

My head says that this is a sentimental and silly idea, my heart rather likes the idea.

Help

[ROSSCOSM]

I know this is easy for me to say as I'm not involved emotionally but If it was me going by your description of your car needs I would sell it on. 

[Jay762]

Hi - Modern diesels are not good for short urban journeys so given your situation and requirements I think, unfortunately, you would be better selling it as to keep it and not use as designed you could end up incurring more cost to fix blocked DPF's etc which would take the shine off the sentiment very quickly

[Judd]

Sadly i too agree.

If this was a petrol powered model then i'd say yes make the greatest use of it, but unless you travel for an hour or so on open roads regularly, giving it a fair chance to regen, then you will probably have DPF issues....if your normal motoring means you get a decent run fairly regularly then by all means give it a shot, if it causes issues then you can get the garage to force a regen then either modify your usage or sell the car on, at the very least you will have discovered if such a vehicle type is for you.

This is where lorries are so much better, on some you can see the condition of the DPF via the dash menu (precentage of ash reading), and on some manually trigger a regen when suitable, all will warn you when a regen has started giving you the choice to carry on (i've driven an extra 5 miles once to allow a normal vehicle triggered regen to complete), and almost all of them have a full forced regen facility where you can park somewhere quiet where the much increased heat from the exhaust won't be a problem then press a switch, the engine will go to fast idle and 30 mins later the vehicle has self cleaned the DPF...in practice after some 400,000 kms with 2 different make DPF equipped lorries i have not yet needed to trigger a forced regen and only had to cancel a normal vehicle triggered regen once due to just arriving at a customer where i would be blowing product into an explosive atmosphere right beside the vehicle, not a place for excess exhaust heat.

Now why couldn't car makers have made this type of operation or even the state-of-play info available on cars, OK some people wouldn't have a clue but we're not all as stupid as car makers seem to think (one size fits all again), on most  cars you don't even get a dash light to warn a regen is in process so it's too easy to stop regens mid cycle after a shortish run, this could happen repeatedly...after all the driver knows if they are about to embark on a suitable joureny, the computer in reply doesn't know you are only driving 4 miles to the supermarket.

I have one other thought for you Urban Forester, it might be possible to get the software (don't ask me where or what i'm not a techie sort) so you can link to the diagnostics port and see for yourself the state of play of DPF, might even be possible to trigger your own static regen if you get any trouble...Toyota owners have access cheaply to a system called Techstream, i have it myself for my Toyota 4x4 use it mainly for checking injector values etc,  there's probably something similar where Subaru owners can get into their vehicle's diagnostics without spending a small fortune...hopefully someone on this forum could advise if such a system exists.