2009 Diesel C3 Picasso - Anti pollution fault & smoke

[Pouchey2]

Good day everyone,

I'm writing this from the side of the road as a time waster whilst I wait for Green Flag to turn up.

We were test driving a 2009 C3 Picasso owned by my wife's grandparents as they're giving up driving after a stroke and it may be a good little stop gap car for us and they'd effectively give it to us. It's the exclusive spec as well so pretty well kitted out.

It's been sat stationary for some time and only did 40 miles last year. Before that I don't think it's been driven in the way a diesel should. They've owned it for around 8 years. I don't know how long the current fuel has been sitting in there either.

It handled the first set of slip roads fine, high revs etc etc. It then came to overtaking a lorry where I dropped a gear to induce some revs to give it a bit of a clean out (but nothing excessive), where the car blew out smoke (I wasn't really paying attention to the colour) from the back and the anti pollution warning came on and cut the engine out.

I'm just looking for any potential ideas of if it's worth getting it looked at and fixed. Have I just dumped 8 years of 8 years of diesel crud through the DPF and made it unhappy?

I know the anti pollution warning is more of a general fault so still could be anything.

It drives otherwise fine and is in decent knickers. Starts first time etc.

Thanks in advance.

[RichardW]

Hmm, perhaps exercising it has broken the cambelt....

[shtu]

It's been sat stationary for some time and only did 40 miles last year. Before that I don't think it's been driven in the way a diesel should.

Have I just dumped 8 years of 8 years of diesel crud through the DPF and made it unhappy?

It would be worth a look, I'd be tempted to agree with blocked DPF. Should be fairly easy to diagnose that.

If you're handy with the spanners it's not a terribly difficult thing to remove and clean, have a look at some of my older posts and you'll find some info.

[PaulC5]

Did Green Flag do a diagnostic check and if so what fault codes did they find since these should give clues as to the cause of the anti pollution message ?

If you suspect bad diesel look at the fuel filter first once you have checked if the timing belt has broken. I suspect a blocked dpf would put it in limp mode and not stop the engine.