Be Excellent To Each Other

MrsA has never sat in it. She hates it. I will add her on to insurance, though, next year.

You can do it now, no? You can change premiums when you like.

Oh, yes! Good point. Thank you.

Full replacement exhaust bought at the weekend (cat, centre pipe, back box and fittings for £217 pretty good value, was expecting the Cat to be more eye watering, but now thinking I could have bought half a Rover). getting fitted on Weds evening by a mechanic recommended to me by my brother in law.

Operation 'Get the horses back in the engine' has begun!

Throw the cat away, obv.

If they're cheap, stick a map sensor on it before any re mapping, half the time they're out of whack. And a nice air filter in the box.

If you don't cycle to work on your cycle to work bike I think it's technically tax fraud.

I use it regularly for part of the journey

You step over it on the way to the car?

My understanding is that the cycle to work bike needs to be used primarily for cycling to work. So it's fine to use it say once a year for 1 hour, as long as you only use it for 59 minutes of other things.

I could be wrong there, but that was my understanding

How on earth would they check? It sounds like a term/condition just put in to justify it being a work bike.

Considered it but then it's the MOT faff/fail.



Taking it back to ADS Preston (who flagged up the issues) They won't map unless it's right, which is reassuring. Got a Green Cotton filter in already.

I expect a few employers take it seriously and will ask you about it. Most don't.

They pretty much just shrugged their shoulders when I took the Puma in.

They did, howver, insist that it had at least one silencer in it.

"I shouldn't be able to look up the exhaust and see the engine."

Ah, Eid supercar high jinx starting early with a soft top lambo wheel spinning up the road.

Well, I've bought it now. I suppose down the line I could always swap it out myself. It's going to the garage this time though as I'm sure it's all the original gubbins that will be a right PITA to remove.

I don't reckon it makes that much difference, good systems come with sport cats which don't really offer much resistance.

High-flow cat is what I'll get when I get an exhaust built, I keep this lump.

A colleague got me to take him out in it last week, because he's interested in upsizing from a 116i into an estate with an automatic, and he wanted to see what the ride is like in a sofa.

Instead he put a deposit down on an M140i auto at the weekend ("I feel like I need to have this in my life" is what he said while I had my foot to the floor).

Had a letter from Skoda last night re my wife's car, they were offering to do the emissions fix.

The letter said that independent testing had shown there would be no issues on performance and went on to offer me 3 places close by our house (one of which I use for servicing) to do the fix.

Not sure if I should go ahead really, expecting the same letter from my Skoda at some point as well

Under no circumstances get it done. There are no benefits to you and a substantial chance of worse mpg and poor running.

What was the 'fix' in the end? Did they just gimp something via software or actually make any physical changes to the car?

Software only for the 1.2 and 2.0. A silly mesh filter on the 1.6 as well.
It shoves a lot more exhaust gas back into the inlet so you are running on used air rather than fresh.

The car went in for service 3 weeks ago and they were trying to push me to have it done then, so doesn't look very organised.

Nearly all diesels do this - the thing that controls it is called an EGR valve (exhaust gas recirculation), and it's one of the things engine mapping changes.

Land Rover ones (and perhaps all makes of them) have a habit of gumming up and sticking open, hence I know about them

Yeah, I might possibly have a gummy exit pipe too.

Could you have a look at it?

Brilliant!

I'll get my tools.

Yes, replacing more oxygen with carbon in the combustion process will definitely not affect performance. Science!

Well, if everything is in good working order then it won't. There is a fair bit of oxygen in exhaust gases, and the car knows how much it needs from the exhaust and how much it needs from "fresh" air compared to the amount of fuel it's putting into the engine.

It will if the goal is to reduce emissions.

Sure the exhaust has oxygen in it, but less than fresh air because of all the carbon (and nitrogen).
Some of that oxygen is probably CO, CO2 and NOx as well. Putting more of it in the intake reduces the oxygen taken in for a given boost pressure. That means less fuel and less energetic combustion.

To maintain performance you have to increase boost to get the oxygen (and fuelling) back, and you're back where you started, with extra back and forth for all those impurities interfering with combusion but maybe reducing exhaust temp but maybe being hotter so increasing temp.

I don't get how they reduce emissions without harming performance, except by maybe destroying engines/vastly increasing maintenance.

Bit like how no-one got how they reduced emissions without a DPF (urea? Jesus I don't even remember now this has dragged on so long) I guess.

Oh, it absolutely is. But that's all taken into account - as long as everything is working right, there will be enough oxygen in the firing chamber to burn off all the fuel at the same rate as if you were just using air from outside the car. Computers and shit add that up.

What I don't understand is how removing the oxygen from your exhaust fumes helps anyone.

Replacement car delivered.

That's what I mean though - put additonal non-oxygen (or oxygen bound more strongly to other stuff) into the cylinder, the ecu reduces (or maybe increases?) fuelling, means less energy into the piston.

Fewer bad stuff out but less skids, not fewer bad stuff with the same skids.

Unless they're just fuelling up to break the bonds, which means reduced economy and more heat. And the extra gunk means things gunking up faster.

Is that a Polo? It looks too small to be a Golf.

No It is a Golf GT.

Why is it not tumeric yellow?

I can't order a new one yet. This is a replacement, till i can.

Swept back fuel cap!

It better be Tumeric Yellow

not 100% sure...

Re the emissions thing I recall when the story first broke there were interviews with a few engineers who were saying that what VW were claiming for their engines was clearly impossible, in that you couldn't increase power, with improved efficiency, and lower emissions all at the same time - so there had to be some sort of shenanigans going on.

They also said that there was a culture at VW of the managers being engineer types, so their claims that they didn't know what was going on were 'geschwätz'.

Christ, look at the fuel tank in a Porsche 997:

Bet that started out as a lump of expanding foam. Or they've just turned the car upside down and poured fibre glass into it.

Suppose it gave the body designers something to do.

Yep, EGRs are a normal well established bit of engine technology, albeit one that tuners like to block off and map out of use.

Unfortunately using this far more heavily than it was originally designed for is definitely causing engines to run badly and is killing EGRs in quick succession.

I don't like diesels I think they're shit, there's a ridiculous amount of faffy technology that has to go into them to make them socially acceptable, which is understandable really since they run on what seems to be a substance that's quite similar to tar, and it must be quite a challenge to have them not kill everyone in a five mile radius with noxious exhaust fumes.

Petrol is the gentleman's choice of fuel.

Yes. Much better for the environment having a car that burns a litre of oil every 1,500 miles.

Also: Faffy technology!