Morals or removing emissions control devices from modern diesels

Most of the diesels with black smoke are because they are choked up from the EGR.

My next investment is a Provent catch can for my car. Stop all that oil mist getting back into the inlet manifold. People have drained 500-700ml of oil over 10,000km from their catch can, rather than it get recirculated back into the engine, clog it up, run like crap and cause trouble down the line.

My work Mitsubishi Triton/L200 only has 77,500km on it and the amount of smoke it bellows between gears (auto box) is unreal. Pushing it uphill at motorway speeds there is a cloud of smoke behind it.

At the last service I brought this up and they cleaned out the inlet manifold with a cleaning spray. It was good for the first 5000km and been back to smokey every since.

Imagine all this crap going back into your engine.

Patww79 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

The smell of exhaust fumes is often very prevalant if crossing the road behind a diesel car or walking alongside heavy traffic, much moreso than I ever remember it being in the past.

You can get that sickly sweet smell from when it's mid regeneration, you can literally taste it on your tongue if you get a good mouthful. It's disgusting and that's only from the perspective of a pedestrian in any average town.

I could be wrong but I thought the problem was the invisible, super fine particles that are emitted after fumes have passed through the DPF that are the issue as they are small enough to be inhaled and passed directly into the bloodstream etc i think I read somewhere, whereas the solid black soot emissions you see from older diesels are still very bad for you, due to their size they don't stay suspended in the air for as long so actually pose less of a risk*.

*Not a doctor, mechanic, engineer or scientist, I think I read that somewhere online before?.

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

The smell of exhaust fumes is often very prevalant if crossing the road behind a diesel car or walking alongside heavy traffic, much moreso than I ever remember it being in the past.

Petrol cars used to stink as well, especially before catalytic convertors. I was driving behind an '88 Starlet recently and had to turn on the recirculation - it was worse than most modern diesels. They've just improved to a point where you'd barely notice them at all.

The other thing to hear in mind is that certain engines are designed to have a DPF from the outset, so having a removed filter from one of these isn’t the same thing as having an older engine that never had a filter.

tphase wrote: »

some research by EMPA (a Swiss federal research agency) found that modern petrols can be a lot worse for particulate emissions than a modern diesel fitted with a DPF

https://www.empa.ch/web/s604/soot-particles-from-gdi

It's worth quoting this picture... I have no idea what it shows, but long bar must mean bad things

Removing DPF is a total clown move. Not only is it obvious as hell but also it's the car emission equivalent of just f****n your household rubbish into the next ditch.

Its one of my pet hates tbh. If you do this you probably think you're smarter than everyone else but in reality you're just a bigger arsehole.

demanufactured wrote: »

There's a white 00 Passat going around Athlone with the whole lot removed.
Straight through pipe ,boo sounds and all.

The back of it is covered in black soot above the exhaust, so imagine what its spewing into the air.

00 would not have DPF... And you would not see removed EGR.

grogi wrote: »

00 would not have DPF... And you would not see removed EGR.

It still could be remapped or modified in some way to improve performance at the detriment of emissions. My 406 HDi of similar era (though a '00 Passat my not be common-rail?) would only ever emit a grey haze at worst, and that would be flooring it at >3k RPM.

Glad I got away from that muck anyway, and moved to an (indirect injection!) petrol PHEV (Prius :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:)

grogi wrote: »

It is actually pretty sad that all the latest progress in ICE efficiency - lean mixture powering Miller cycle - do produce much more pollutants than an old and tested indirect injection V6. I start to believe that a naturally aspirated V6 with cylinder deactivation and indirect injection would have been a much better option than downsizing the crap out of everything... And still be rather efficient...

Would be much nicer to drive, too - six cylinder petrol engines are just lovely.

Reading the above I can only really see one common thread through the whole thing.
There are too many petrol/diesel cars being used where electric only should be used.

Talking of banning diesels is madness and for those of us who really Need the economy of a diesel we would be punished for failed government policy.

What we need is a proper incentive for city and urban based folks to have ev over conventional motors. This lessens the intense burden on the environment from petrol & diesels while leaving them available for those of us who have no other option.

We’re a two car house and can’t do without diesel. Both cars do 30-35k kms a year and I tow a trailer regularly, this would be a common theme throughout rural Ireland, we don’t usually have the typical dpf/egr problems with longer trips things stay cleaner.
But punishing rural Ireland because people were incentivised to buy diesels when they shouldn’t have been is madness. We should be leading by incentivising the correct urban cars rather than punishing those rural folk with the correct cars for their needs.

I think interfering with the pollution control equipment on a car should be a criminal offence with appropriate repercussions.

Talk of banning diesel or lumping huge taxes on its use needs to be thought through. All transport is currently done through diesel. So you’d be looking at a huge hit on the cost of living, maybe 10% or more.
All the foods in the shops gets dearer, busses, trains, taxis all diesel and all impacted by this madness.
People really need to think about what they are wishing for and the implications.

mullingar wrote: »

I don't think posters here know exactly what a dpf and egr actually do.

Some clearly don't...

mullingar wrote: »

In a nutshell, it's a soot filter. It does not change the gas content of the exhaust.

Apart from the minor detail it reduces the amount of particulate matter by 99% or even more...

mullingar wrote: »

It will not make any difference in the current nct opacity tests.

Soot is black. Lack of soot is transparent... There is an obvious opacity difference...

mullingar wrote: »

An egr is an exhaust gas recirculation valve. It is a valve that ONLY opens when the engine is idling to divert a portion of the exhaust back into the air intake.

Incorrect. The exhaust gases are recirculated in majority of road conditions. It is only under full load that the EGR valve closes completely. When full power is not needed, too much oxygen fed by the intake will bring the burning temperature too high. EGR allows to keep it under control.

mullingar wrote: »

This brings the emissions down during idle, but then closes for when the go pedal is pressed and the engine gives its normal gas exhaust output. Egr delete or blanking just keeps the valve closed at all times and stops the engine from reburning exhaust fumes on idle.

There is nothing to reburn there. That's the whole point of recirculating the exhaust gases - to slow down the burning process and reduce its temperature, which reduced NOx content in exhaust gases.

It does nothing else when revved. The main benefit is a smoother idle at the cost of higher idle only emissions.

When the EGR valve is working, there is no benefit of blanking it. It is only when the valve gets blocked in open position, too much gases get recirculated - hence too little oxygen gets into the mixture. You also make it sound that the emissions are slightly bigger with EGR valve blanked. They are not - levels of NOx might be 50x higher without EGR than when it is working as desired.