Hi All,

First of all thank you for your replies they have been very helpful. I now have the car fixed and boy it is a beast in comparison to limp mode! Here's how I did it...

As suggested I bought an obd scanner from eBay for £17 and returned the old one (cheap standard one from euro car parts not a full elm327) which cost me the same but didn't work at all! The new one took a few days to arrive but it was the modded one with the Ms/hs can switch. Here's the link to the one I purchased....

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Forscan-ELM327-WIFI-Wireless-Scanner-OBD2-OBDII-Diagnostic-Tool-With-Switch/222982171730?pageci=66e2c0a4-edee-4607-b534-fefd69b4992f

It is the WiFi one.

I plugged in and after a bit of messing about with the switch and WiFi connection settings it popped up asking me if my car was left or right hand drive. Success as this means it's working and you can access the ecu. Let it do its thing and then read the dtc codes and sure enough it had the same codes as the rubbish scanner did. Followed these you tube instructions to reset the codes and oil change, calibration and dpf reset etc as it had a brand new dpf so no need to force regenerate and around 10 minutes later walla no more eml light and dpf light permanently off! Took her for a spin and wow it is like night and day. Pulls like she should and mpg are steadily increasing now I'm driving a bit more conservative after a few days. Also I must have driven around 600 miles if not more without the recurrence of the dpf or eml light! So all in all I have saved over £2500 in repairs with mazda by getting a dpf for £300 and a proper obd for £17! Here are the links to a few very helpful YouTube videos I watched to reset the above...

https://youtu.be/t0dKE_--DEo

https://youtu.be/z8Mj-l2x8Ac

https://youtu.be/gYyUO2LVpKU

https://youtu.be/xCBvNTrU4rU

Also when I refitted my cleaned egr valve and hose back my car was making a whirring sound on acceleration only so I went back and tightened all the nuts and bolts to make sure it wasn't a vacuum leak or bad gasket and sure enough I hadn't torqued one of the nuts down enough so as soon as I had tightened it took it for a spin and no more whirring sounds. Runs like she's new!

Thanks and I hope this helps you Guy's too!

 

Hi Groves
Just to be sure, I assume you remove the wire after you turn the ignition off and before turning the engine back on? Did I understand that right?

 

Quick update: I have now driven a further 2500 miles and all is well except for a brief occurrence of the dpf and EML light coming on. For some reason I was in the way home and been in long motorway drive to and from home. The dpf light came on solid and so I put my foot down but then a few minutes later the light flashing and EML came on, so limped home and thought to myself here we go again. When I parked up I got the laptop out and forscan and it showed dpf was around 12g/l approx. This was the highest I had seen it as it is only usually 4 g/l or lower as I had been checking every few days. So I performed a manual forced regen which took an hour and once done all was back to normal. Cleared codes and reset etc and since then the problem hasn't reoccurred and I have completed a few more thousand miles! What I did though was to get an older phone and paid for forscan lite so I could monitor the levels etc whilst driving. What I have found is that regen occurs between 80-120 miles from last regen and this is subject to how you drive and how quick the filter gets to around the 4 g/l mark usually a bit over. What happens is the regen says off until it starts regenerating and then says on and you can see the g/left counter going down towards zero! Great stuff as I can now know exactly when I am in regen and can drive accordingly to make sure the process is completed. If for example a regen occurs in a town then I can drive in slightly higher rev but as long as it's around the 1700-2500 rpm then regeneration is successful! Also if you stop or slow down too much regeneration will say off and as soon as you start driving passed the 2000 rpm mark regeneration will start again until complete. So if any one is having problems like this then get an old phone and hook it up to the obd and you can at least keep an eye on this issue. I have now completed 36 regenerations since I reset the counter back when I changed the dpf filter! As to what caused the dpf flashing and EML I do not know but at least I can now monitor it and make sure regeneration is completing successfully! Oh and I have saved more money again by not needing to go to he dealership!

 

If only Mazda had put a button on the dash that lit up and said "hit me now and drive until the light goes out". That's the proper way to do a regeneration. The Mazda 6 was a great car let down heavily by its dpf regeneration system or should I say failure of its regeneration system. Any car that has a rising oil level, i.e dilute oil with diesel is a bad idea. The car injects diesel on the exhaust cycle to raise the temperature to burn the soot and not all of that diesel gets burnt. It ends up in the sump. Don't check that X mark on the dipstick often enough and the engine will eat it's own oil which if you dont' realise it's doing it, will be total engine failure. Renault had the same system on their Laguna and some other manufacturers did too. I did an oil change on mine when it hit the X mark and took nearly 7 litres of "oil" out of it. That's nearly 3 litres of diesel mixed with 4.2 litres of oil. I had lots of trouble with mine before finally sorting it once and for all. The problem with the Mazda is if it fails the regeneration it does what yours did with the new dpf and then its a trip to the garage. There are a few parameters that a Mazda needs before it can do a regeneration but the one thing the clever ECU never knows is where you are, where you are going and when you are going to stop. 4 times on mine I had the dpf light come on flashing AFTER doing a long journey. One of these journeys was on the way back from Scotland and bear in mind when the engine is hot it shouldn't be creating hardly any soot so shouldn't need regeneration. Bad timing I guess but driving 650 miles to Austria with a flashing eml light, being overtaken by Renualt Twingos uphill is no fun. And the fault, it had failed it's last regeneration said the German mechanic. So if something fails then try again, I was on a motorway FFS. I think I am better placed when a regeneration should occur and not the car. The car just needs to tell me but this version of the Mazda engine put a lot of people off Mazda including dealers. I got my car for a song because I wasn't aware of the issues. It's a real shame because the 6 was one of the best cars I have ever owned and just got rid last week after 7 years. The best of those years though was after having the dpf deleted knowing it was never going to let me down again and something I should have done in year one of owning the car but didn't because I know it's there for a good reason. In this case at the expense of the user. It got to a point where my wife was reluctant to go anywhere far in the car in case it let us down. Least with all the running about in limp mode it prolonged the life of the turbo lol.

What you have rigged up on yours is amazing. After my Austria trip with car repaired over there my car performed very well but felt the car was regenerating too much. I found again pulling out of a service station in Holland the light came on and its hard to keep you foot down when it's busy traffic. 3,000 rpm in 3rd for 10 minutes sorted it and it was ok for a while when I got back to the UK. Trip to Centre Parks saw light come on on the A1, doing approx 70mph in 5th gear. Dropped it to 4th, floored it and then light starts flashing and then limped the last 10 miles. This time though I had Forscan, with modded EML and laptop with Delphi150. This time the car was not going to beat me but it did and 4 days later limped all the way home. A garage I knew was testing some new diagnostic software and used my car as a guinea pig. No fix = no charge. He couldn't fix it and thought enough is enough and had the bloody thing deleted for good but that was after buying a proper ford / mazda VCM and using Mazda IDS software. It was a waste of money as Forscan is all you need. It was the oxygen or CO2 sensor which the dpf delete guy found. The one that's bolted to the bulkhead. If you have issues with yours try that first along with the main wiring in the fusebox. The reason mine had failed regeneration when going to Austria could have been down to some of the terminals getting corroded. It's the main wiring to the bottom left in the fuse box under the bonnet. Check it before it lets you down.

Good luck with your Mazda and as for me I now have a Ford Kuga. Oh damn it's a diesel lol. DPF not being deleted on this car and if I clog it up I will have it either washed out or replaced as they are quite cheap as are the Oxygen sensor.