A couple of months ago I bought some Peak Blue DEF at Walmart and filled my 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee up from 1/4 to 1/2 full. Last week I purchased two more containers and filled up to 100% full. A couple of days later the check engine light came on. My local dealership checked the vehicle with their OBD scanner and said it was either a clogged injector, clogged line or wrong DEF and the DEF would need to be flushed out of the tank. Said to bring it back Monday and they would have to keep it several days to figure out the problem.
Well in the mean time I bought a ELM 327 OBD scanner - http://www.amazon.com/ERUSUN-Wirele...&qid=1401576281&sr=8-12&keywords=ELM 327 wifi
and hooked my iPad up to an recorded all the information. Seems to be only one instance in time that caused the check engine light light to come on - P2BA9 NOx Exceedence - Insufficient Reagent Quality. I checked the wiring to the injectors and they seemed tight.
This seems to be a permanent flag and will not clear automatically and must be cleared via a OBD II scanner. Having cleared the code the check engine light went off. Test drove 70 miles and today it has been about 100 miles with no further issues.
The DEF I bought was ISO 22241 standard.
FYI: I already have the latest 1801814b PCM software installed since my oil depletion rate was high.
So ... I am not sure what is going on. How sensitive are these sensors to the DEF being not correct?
Q. How can I determine date of manufacture for my DEF? A. DEF packaging shall have a date code on the product. The date code will give you the date it was manufactured. The first digit of the date code represents the batch number and the next 6 digits reflect the date that the batch was made and filled.
Q. What impact will exposure to high temperatures for an extended period of time have on DEF? A. While DEF exposure to constant, high storage temperature may have some impact on shelf life, this should not be a concern. Testing in hot climates has been conducted and has returned results concluding that DEF stored at a constant temperature of 86 deg F has a shelf life of 6 months.
Q. What is the shelf life of DEF?
A. The shelf life of DEF is a function of ambient storage temperature. DEF will degrade over time depending on temperature and exposure to sun light. Expectations for shelf life as defined by ISO Spec 22241-3 are the minimum expectations for shelf life when stored at constant temperatures. If stored between 10 and 90 deg F, shelf life will easily be one year. If the maximum temperature does not exceed approximately 75 deg F for an extended period of time, the shelf life will be two years.
This is also something I was thinking about a couple of weeks ago. During my first year of ownership, I'll probably won't be putting 10K (or more) miles on the diesel - so the question is: Do I actually want a full DEF-tank at delivery? The DEF might get too old before I would use the entire tank - so it might be safer to refill only small amounts like the 2.5 gal. Walmart is selling - and only put it in when the DEF-tank is getting almost empty. That would assure a fresher DEF at all times.
Yes - that does sound logical. My original thinking prior to my problem was to fill the tank up to 100% and then not have to worry about it for a period of time... that may have been a mistake since I live in Texas. I believe in the future I will keep at most a 1/2 tank in order to retain the good quality DEF in the tank.
We just did an almost 4k road trip in April, our next is a 550 mile road trip in June, then a 2500 mile road trip in July and a 4200 mile road trip in September. After that, our next long trip will be a 4k miler but not until April/May of 2015.
So, on the way back from our 4k trip, I noticed the DEF tank showed less than 1/2 full, so I filled it up at a Pilot Truck stop.
My thinking was that after our 2014 trips, I would have the DEF tank down to about 1/3rd full by October of this year and would refill it just before our next long road trip in April/May of 2015.
A friend recommended that I fill up at busy truck stops with DEF, due to the high turnover:thumbsup:.
I plan on keeping the DEF tank between 1/4 and 1/2 full, except I'll probably fill it up when we're heading out for a long vacation road trip. The DEF brand they sell at NAPA has the manufacture date printed on the bottle so you don't have to decode any production codes.
Like others in a hot climate, I need to have a plan for DEF. It was 111 degrees F (44 C) at my house yesterday. It was 92 degrees in the garage. I keep a couple gallon jugs of DEF in a refrigerator. I plan on adding a little DEF before trips to keep it reasonably fresh. My vehicle's current DEF level is about 20% and I plan on keeping it low through the summer.
The same code has always been on the outside of the carton of all Peak BlueDEF I've bought - 4 jugs so far. It's just stamped on one of the sides over the printed material somewhere, have to look closely for it but it's there. So we can check manufacture date prior to purchase.
I just keep mine inside the AC'ed house in a dark cool area. I have no doubt that this will have a good service life. It really isn't much more than distilled water and small part of acetic acid.
I am not sure what causes the loss of acid strength guessing the heat kills potency...
DEF contains urea, very different from acetic acid which is vinegar.
Heat causes chemical breakdown of urea into ammonia. This is part of the process of how it works for selective catalyst reduction (SCR) in this system. The heat from the exhaust turns the urea into ammonia (thermal decomposition) which is the functional chemical in the reduction process. Heat in your garage or DEF tank if your GC is out in the heat for that matter does the same thing just at a much slower rate than when it's injected into the hot exhaust.
I saw the same label at a local Wal Mart. It's not the manufacturing date but an inventory control date. I bought a bottle that had a label on the outside of the box of June 25, 2014. I bought the box and cracked it open. The manufacturing code stamped on the bottle -- 15209 -- translates to June 5, 2014. So, the exterior label is close enough but not the exact manufacturing date.
I did see same label on one of the boxes, but now when I start looking at your picture it seems to me that this is Walmart store label. I did search around and found this info:
If we assume that "1" is missing between 6 and 4 in your first picture it looks loke you have fluid made in 2013 in 309th day of the year, or around end of October, or in November - according to the article in second link. I am not quite sure what "6" stands for in this code unless is a part of manufacturing facility code otherwise it does not make sense - year 2063=64-1.