I'd love to know how this story ends and if you've had any further issues. I'm having exactly the same problem and it's ongoing despite lots of mechanics looking at the van and taking my money. Mine is a 5 year old t6 (t28 highline 102) with only 20,000 on the clock. The engine warning light came on during a trip to Scotland, coincidentally. Adblue had previously been topped up and showed 3500 miles remaining. About 50 miles further down the motorway, suddenly an alert flashed up saying adblue low, engine wouldn't start in 500 miles. I drove another 100 miles at 70mph and suddenly it jumped back up to 3000 miles and the engine warning light went out. I took it in for a service and was told it was to do with emissions and that the engine was getting clogged up because I didn't drive it at 65 mph for 15 mins at a time, the time needed for these engines to heat enough to start burning off the crap in the engine. (This was not true either because the van gets loads of long distance motorway time). Anyway, as part of the service, they put an additive into the engine which was supposed to help clear the pipes. It didn't work so I took it back in again. They then changed the EGR valve which cost me £350. The mechanic told me that, in doing so, they would have dislodged a lot of gunk so I shouldn’t be surprised if the light came on again as soon as I started driving, but it didn’t. A week later, which including some decent motorway driving, it came back on again. A friend came out and plugged it in to read the diagnostics and said it was the same problem. He said you need to drive these vans at 65 mph for a minimum of 45 minutes to heat the engine up sufficiently. So I set off on a 2000 mile road trip with loads of lengthy motorway drives. The light tended to came on when I was pottering around towns at low speed and went off again after a long motorway drive, so this all seemed to make sense. Then, it came on and stayed on. 150 miles along the motorway again one day and the Adblue alert came on again just as before, dropping down to 500 miles left, then jumping up again to 3000 around 100 miles later. So, clearly, changing the EPG valve did absolutely nothing at all (but cost me £350).
The van also has a tendency to cut out altogether about once an hour when I’m driving around town at around 20mph. A mate said it was going into limp mode, but I think it’s more than this. It’s as if I have stalled it altogether (I lose the electrics, steering etc). Sometimes it restarts itself, other times I have to do it manual using the keys.
Not sure if this is relevant, but the previous owner did a “Pendle engine remap to 170hp”. Not really sure what that means apart from giving the engine more welly, but just wondered if it might have affected the ability of the van to manage its emissions.
I have spoken to various people about this. Some say it’s a common fault with newer vans these days and they just get the emissions light deactivated altogether. I’m not planning on doing this but would the van be able to pass its MOT if you did this? Others have said it needs a software upgrade. Some have said that perhaps the new EPG valve is sticky or faulty. Others just say I need to drive it for longer on the motorway, which I don’t really buy because I do that a lot anyway. I may well invest in a Carista adaptor so that I can at least see what the code is when the light appears rather than having to rush it into a garage each time.
Any suggestions from you experts would be much appreciated. I want to get this fixed but I don’t want to keep throwing money at the problem before somebody can actually diagnose what the issue is.
