This year I noticed my 2017 F450 (with 9800 miles) has been going through a regen every 150 miles. I only use this truck to haul my truck camper and it’s all highway miles.
I watch the filter go to 100% and it does it’s regen and drops to zero. Then in about 150 miles it does it again like clockwork.
I’ve never noticed this before but maybe I didn’t pay close enough attention to it. But 3 or 4 regens per tank seems excessive.
Is this normal operation?
I had the truck in for some recalls and I was concerned they flashed it. So I called them and they said nothing was done with the trucks computer.

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9800 miles isn't much for that truck. Does it set for long periods between trips? When you say 3-4 regens per tank are those long trips or short runs. If it's only getting short runs then yes, you will regen more frequently. You may need a good high speed 300-400 mile trip to really clean out the dpf.

 

Normal during the hotter months... Try ExxonMobil Diesel Effecient for a while and your regens will decrease.

 

All the truck is used for is long trips. And always loaded with the truck camper or a trailer.

 

Doesn't sound normal to me. I'd think you should be going through a lot of DEF, but your regens should not be that close together on the highway. Most of my towing has been in town and I'd say my regens were about every 225-250 miles.

I don't know that anything is catastrophically wrong, but every 150 doesn't seem right. What are you using for a monitor? I'm thinking I'd get into the weeds and look at all the sensors during regen and see how they look. Seems like something should stand out as being off.

 

regen every 150 miles while towing?

what oil grade are you using....10W30, 5W40, 15W40, etc

 

I have to comment here that 150 mile to 250 mile regens while towing seems way low on the mileage. Those DPFs have to be getting hot enough to be passively burning a decent amount of the soot down one would think.

 

what is your boost like and how is your mileage?

On my 08 6.4...a completely different motor, but first generation, my regens became close and I noticed more boost than it should be. Bad turbo.

 

Seems a little too frequent from what I experience with my ‘19. It’s not a daily driver either and does some shorter in town trips now and then. Majority of the miles are towing our 9k travel trailer. While towing I’ll see regens every 480-500 miles like clockwork. I’m pretty religious about watching my DPF screen on the instrument cluster and resetting my trip 2 when a regen begins. I don’t even see 150 mile regens with a lot of city driving unloaded.

 

It definitely not normal behavior, but I'm afraid Ford will say its fine, especially it it is not throwing a code. My 2016 regens around every 400 miles, sometimes less if I do a lot of city stop/go driving.

 

I'm at about 435 miles out since last regen. I had to take my mom to a doc's appt. The truck jumped pretty quick from 75% to 90% because of The low speed stop and go traffic that I usually don't see this much of. So I figure a regen by at least 450 miles which is normal. But usually gets out closer to and at 500 miles with the high speed expressway driving I do.

EDIT.

I'm 465 miles out and dash stayed at 90%. The iDash shot up to 130 ish percent but once back in the hills closer to home, EGT4 got up close to 600 degrees and she passively regened down to 122 before getting back up to 124. So I guess it'll be closer to 500 miles than I thought.

 

First thing I'd look at is the injector data with a scanner that had the ability. What happens is an injector with dump fuel ( that would be smoke on a non DPF engine) then the DPF collects it (so nobody thinks anything is wrong) the PCM tried to balance the idle by pulling fuel back and it's show that in the injector data. I've seen this happen on 6'4's, 6.7's, Duramax's and Cummins, anything with a DPF can do it.
It's not going to fix itself and if nothing is done the next step is the injector with dump so much fuel it'll hydraulic the piston and break it.

 

I believe We have the ability to see fuel trims in Forscan, something like milliliters per injection, or something along those lines. Obviously, the values for all 8 injectors aren't identical, they all trim up or down some to yield a smooth idle. but how much different would you say they should be before it indicates a possible injector issue?

 

This i would like to know. I've looked at injector values and cylinder balance tests and it seems impossible to find out what normal values should be. The injector ones do seem self explained as the values on mine were relatively the same and moved up and down with very sim values. The cylinder balance values though, some are positive and some are negative. I'm sure there is a reason but finding out if good or bad values is above my Google pay grade apparently. I haven't had much reply on my attempts at finding out.

 

My driving time has changed with working from home, so I don't recall the miles between regens prior to March of 2020, Before Covid, 50% of my 80 RT was at expressways speeds.

I took a 800 mile RT all at highways speeds and recorded the following:

Before my trip - 290 mile average between regens, 420 mins between regens
After my trip - 313 mile average between regens, 453 mins between regens