2021 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport Pricing and Specs

This type of problem can have any number of causes. The best option is to have the car scanned electronically to see what fault codes have been logged by the on-board computer.

You could be looking at a fuel issue, something purely mechanical (like the idle-speed set too low) a blocked air-filter, a computer issue or any number of sensors that are not playing ball. But until you interpret the fault codes, you’ll be flying blind and potentially replacing things that aren’t the cause of the stalling problem.

I’d certainly be taking the vehicle back to the workshop that serviced it and pointing out that the problem only occurred after they'd 'fixed' it.

By and large, a car should perform the same day in, day out without any huge (or even noticeable) changes in its performance. So I’d say, yes, something is wrong with your car. As for the cause, well, it could be anything from poor fuel to a faulty battery to a park-brake that is sticking on. It’s impossible to diagnose problems like this one remotely, so have it checked out at a workshop. Continuing to drive it with a fault is asking for more damage to be done.

This is a really common concern, Raj, especially among people like you who are considering their first diesel-powered vehicle. Modern diesels are very efficient and powerful (compared with old-school diesel engines) but those benefits come with some compromises including higher maintenance costs and potential glitches such as the DPF problems you’ve noted.

DPF problems are usually the result of the filter becoming clogged with the soot from the diesel’s exhaust. There’s not much you can do about a diesel engine producing soot (apart from making sure it’s tuned properly to minimise the soot) so the filter is designed to regenerate when it starts to get full. That process requires heat and that’s where the problems start. A vehicle that is only driven around the suburbs often won’t create enough heat in the exhaust system to allow this regeneration to take place. At that point, the filter becomes clogged and requires either manually cleaning or, in some cases, replacing. Neither is a cheap process.

So, what you need to do is to take the vehicle for a drive at highway speeds to allow things to get hot enough for DPF regeneration to take place. This drive needs to be at least about 20 minutes and it needs to happen at least once a month. So the answer to your question is not really how many kilometres you need to drive, but what sort of kilometres. Even if your four-times-a-week trip to work is, indeed, 50km, if it’s all done in stop-start, low-speed traffic, then it won’t be enough.

The bottom line is that a turbo-diesel isn’t really the right vehicle for a lot of urban-based people. The catch there, is that a lot of vehicles that were once available with a choice of petrol or diesel power are now diesel-only propositions. That includes the Pajero Sport, of course.