V Double trouble

[Bagwan]

What do you guys think about this VW thing going on , with them designing the computer to go into different settings when emissions tested ?

The main reason seems to simply be that the cost of getting the same emissions standard full time would make the cars too expensive .

I think this is about to become a waaaaaaaaay bigger story .


I don't think VW are going to want to go down alone .
And , by that I mean that the others do pretty similar things , I'll bet .


A friend of mine gave me an old Toyota last year , and it needed a catalytic converter .
It was a "California emissions" standard car , and so , I ordered the nasty expensive one , with the extra pipe that feeds into the back end of it .
It would have just been a bigger bill at a garage , but , as I was doing the mechanic work , I was in on the fact that the extra pipe was to be connected directly to the breather box , just before the carb .

So , "California emissions" , on that car , a 1984 Toy Corolla , meant that fresh air was piped into the exhaust system to drop the ppm counts in the exhaust , by design .


It all seems to be about what you can get away with .

And , these are crimes against our planet , essentially .

[odykas]

So , "California emissions" , on that car , a 1984 Toy Corolla , meant that fresh air was piped into the exhaust system to drop the ppm counts in the exhaust , by design .

I guess that Toyota solution was visible to the people who certified the car back in 1984.
On the other hand VW cars were using software to rig emissions tests so they clearly cheated.

[odykas]

[Bagwan]

I guess that Toyota solution was visible to the people who certified the car back in 1984.
On the other hand VW cars were using software to rig emissions tests so they clearly cheated.

Well , neither car met the standards on the road , but , at least the VW was capable of actually meeting the standard in testing mode .
The test for the Toy car back in the day may have been a lot simpler , too , but I don't see it as any less conniving to add fresh air to the dirty mix to clean it up .

[Gregor-y]

Was the clean air pipe before or after the actual catalytic converter components? If it mixed with the exhaust before entering the cat it may help lengthen its life by reducing the concentration of pollutants in the air passing through, or something.

[Rudy Tamasz]

Yep, let us bend over backwards to comply with ever tighter environmental standards, and then applaud India, China etc. for their economic growth, and their increasingly wealthy middle classes, which keep buying millions of new cars.

[Bagwan]

Was the clean air pipe before or after the actual catalytic converter components? If it mixed with the exhaust before entering the cat it may help lengthen its life by reducing the concentration of pollutants in the air passing through, or something.

It entered the converter in the body , but just before the outlet .
It was only really obvious if you were to trace where the pipe came from .
Had it been past the air filter , it might have been an attempt to re-burn exhaust gasses , but no , it was a grab of the clean air coming in the front grill , just before the filter , in a zero pressure environment .
That air was fed straight into the exhaust stream at the back of the converter .

[Storm]

Yep, let us bend over backwards to comply with ever tighter environmental standards, and then applaud India, China etc. for their economic growth, and their increasingly wealthy middle classes, which keep buying millions of new cars.

which is essentially what the "rich and developed" nations (mainly US) has been doing forever and only recently woke up to the fact that their mighty v8s might not be the best thing for the planet.

ps: incidentally most of the cars on the Indian market are 1 or 1.2L 3/4 cyl cars.

[Rollo]

Californian pollution standards are strange - really strange.

I won't go into the ins and outs of it but in California, tail pipe emissions are mostly concerned about visible particulates whilst EURO V and VI standards are mostly concerned with NOx, CO, Hydrocarbons and until EURO V Europe wasn't even concerned at all with particulates.
Car companies which already build cars to comply with EURO VI, then have to comply with California which is like made weird bonkers land.

Mostly you design a car for best practice but VW decided that it was cheaper to simply subvert the regs in much the same way as say, Toyota did by bypassing the restrictor plates on the turbos on their WRC Celica all those years ago.

This is hardly new. Subaru sold its Brumby ute in the US with dinky little rearward facing seats in the tray so that it was a "passenger vehicle" and currently Ford has a plant that removes seats and windows from their Transit van and then ships them back across the Atlantic to be fitted to more Transit vans, so that it's a "passenger vehicle" in the US.

The fact that VW did something to avoid regs is hardly surprising. They'll probably cop a small fine and continue as normal.

[Brown, Jon Brow]

I wonder if more manufacturers will be found guilty of pulling similar tricks, because it is not just VAG diesels that have been claiming to be cleaner, and it's not just VAG cars that motorists struggle to reach the claimed economy figures in real world driving.

The 'diesel miracle' of low emissions, high economy and high performance has been reported as more and more of a fallacy in the last few years. I read a few months back that the 'Low Emissions Zone' in London was set to be extended from HGVs to all diesel vehicles in a few years time.

Does anyone have a clue from which year cars will be recalled from? I have a 2010 Mk6 Golf Tdi and my dad has a 2012 Audi A5 2.0 diesel.

I believe that so far the US recall has only been for 2.0 TDI cars