DRIVE TO CLEAN EXHAUST SYSTEM
 

Anyone know exactly what triggers the DRIVE TO CLEAN EXHAUST SYSTEM message? Last Friday I had a normal regen start less than a mile from home, so it didn't really even get started when I pulled into the driveway and shutdown. The next time I drove the truck on sunday I drove around for about 40 minutes, and the DRIVE TO CLEAN EXHAUST SYSTEM message came up, again when I was about 4 miles from home. I don't understand why the DRIVE to clean triggered when I only missed completing one regen attempt - the last one about 300 miles before was completed. Also, why did it start well after the truck was up to temperature? Final thing, I kept driving and DRIVE TO CLEAN turned into CLEANING EXHAUST FILTER on the message center after about 15 minutes. It never finished cleaning, after 40 minutes driving at 45 to 75 mph. I finally gave up and went home, and when I put the truck in park in my driveway it briefly gave a DRIVE TO CLEAN COMPLETE or something like that, but immediately went back tonthe DRIVE TO CLEAN message. I have a 2010 6.4.

If you're stuck in drive to clean even after a freeway run, a sensor might be out of whack. Check in with the dealer...

Don't know what kind of driving you do but if it's in town trips I would say that with 300 miles since completed regen you may have missed a couple attempts. It's easy to do with the very brief message we get now. But, even if you missed some, what you did should have cleared it so something seems wrong.

Truck has been running normally the last 3 days. No more DRIVE TO CLEAN message. It just seems strange that it triggered after a single incomplete regen. Normally I do go 250 to 300 miles between regens. My driving is mostly commuting about 20 miles to and from work, which is about all highway unless I need groceries. A couple of things that may have triggered the DRIVE TO CLEAN message: filling up with lower grade fuel than I normally use (40 instead of 45 cetane) and running out of Diesel Kleen, and I had just accelerated hard up a pretty steep hill, which probably caused a high back pressure reading on the DPF. The truck seems to be running rougher than normal on this fuel, and I'm down about 1 MPG from normal.

A couple of months ago wife and I are in truck heading to breakfast; truck goes into regen "Cleaning exhaust" message. We are about to exit for where restaurant is. I say, I want it to finish before stopping so lets go to another place on the other side of town. Have to slow down to 50 mph to take exit and entrance to other highway; it suddenly displays "Drive to Clean" and after a couple of miles goes back to "Cleaning exhaust"

The day before the truck was running for about 4 hours straight, mostly interstate driving; so not like it was getting short changed on an opportunity to regen.

My regens occur up to 500 miles apart; probably that 'normal' black exhaust pipe:-huh which looked like new for the first 18,000 miles.......

Bob

That rings true for me. The only time ive ever had a drive to clean was after pulling the 5er up that long steep drive west bound up to Cheyenne Wy. Pulled off the interstate and into Rv park and got an instant drive to clean. Unhooked and took a drive back down the interstate a ways and it finished cleaning. Back to normal and never happened again. Poltergist, I guess.

Every once in a great while I have had the message. I think mine was worse than usually fuel quality myself.

So the drive to clean message doesnt come up every time the dpf goes into regen? What triggers it then?

I'm no expert but from what I can read it seems that when the DPF reaches a point where it NEEDS to be cleaned you get that message. Some say it will result from a couple of aborted cleaning attempts, or possibly from some crappy fuel. Of course if it is acting up I would suspect one of the sensors.

Gotcha. Thanks for the info

Why is the message so brief now? I took the truck into the dealer last year for an "upgrade" to the computer system. The previous upgrade had the "Cleaning Exhaust System" message lit up for the duration of the cleaning. Now it only comes on for about 3 seconds and then disappears. I complained to the dealer that I never know when the thing in going through a cleaning and he just shrugged. It seems that Ford has taken a step backward with this programming upgrade.

Or a step forward actually. Before I was constantly watching the message to wait for it to be done, trying to stay above 30 mph, etc.. Now I just go about my business and let it do it's thing, whether it finishes or not. Now when I get the Drive to clean message I will go out and drive it until its clean.

Here is my revised report. I have encountered 3 "Drive to clean" messages. The third was a couple days ago. Here is what all three had in common. Each message came up when the truck was just ready to begin a regen and I stopped. When I restarted, the message changed to "Cleaning exhaust filter" That message stayed on through out the cleaning. When I pushed the reset button to remove the message it would return after a few minutes, just like it did before the 2009 flash. And at the end of the cleaning cycle it flashed the "exhaust cleaning complete" or whatever that final message is. Also, just like the truck did before the 2009 flash. I still have no idea what triggers the "drive to clean" message but I suspect it is to tell us exactly what it says: it's ready to clean and if we want to clean it we should drive. I'm also thinking that when they did the 2009 rewrite of the code and changed the "Cleaning exhaust" message they just forgot to change the one that is generated following the "Drive" message. But, that is just a guess.

That's what I do but I also let my truck sit for a few minutes when I park before actually turning it off. This gives it plenty of time to get down to normal temperatures and burn off any extra fuel injected into the system while in regen mode.

Mine did this for the first time the other day. About 5 mins after I got in that morning after sitting all night, the "Drive to clean exhaust system" message came on for about 10-15 mins. So I followed the command and drove it. After that the message swtiched to "Cleaning exhaust system" and it was on for about 10-15 mins......so I drove it around untill that finally went off.