And while some heavy truck service centers have been reported to have developed software bypasses, few of these illegal cures exist for passenger units. For FCA, VW, and Mercedes Benz (for example) these systems are only covered by the base warranty of three or four years (depending on vehicle manufacturer).Īs all DEF-reliant vehicles have control systems to shut the engine down (or prevent it from restarting) when major failures occur, ignoring warnings won’t lead to happy results. And then there’s the myriad number of sensors, relays, controls, lines, and such to consider. Some injectors can cost more than $1,000 just for the part, not to mention diagnosis and replacement costs. When heaters are placed in the area of a DEF storage tank, certain amounts of it can still freeze or thicken, leading to injection problems. DEF systems have built-in heaters to keep the fluid in liquid form because it can freeze, damaging DEP pumps and injectors, but Mother Nature has a way of beating the best laid plans of mice and diesel engineers. Poor designs, build quality, and temperamental weather also take their toll. (Read the fine print on your warranty documents and you’ll find these shops are justified in this practice.)īut it’s not only poor quality DEF that causes problems. Automakers expect these facilities to have chemical test strips on hand to determine the quality of DEF in their products. Dealership service departments routinely charge their clients for time spent on tracing a warning light down to contaminated DEF even when these vehicles are still within the time and distance limits of their warranty. We covered the risks of using poor quality DEF fluid in earlier columns and provided warnings to drivers regarding the costs of diagnosing check engine lights that are caused by this fluid when it contains anything more than trace amounts of hydrocarbons. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
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