http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34298259

A more detailed story identified this as a software design issue - the car's software is able to detect when its going through emissions testing and switch all controls into full compliance mode for the duration of the test.  After that it reverts to smog and particulate emitting mode as its normal operating setting.

I own a Vw "clean diesel" TDI  and i must say the nose test tells me that it burns clean. I did have a problem with the egr valve clogging up the intake manifold. They haven't perfected egr valves on diesels yet. It filled up the 3" intake with black soot completely.I deleted it with a "race pipe" from ebay.

It's probably the egr that vw was shutting down illegally in the software. I can certainly see why they did it.

There has always been a hack where you could shut off the egr valve in the ecm using a laptop and a vagcom cable.

Love the ALH tdi motor. The germans know how to build a good diesel engine. The rest of the car is crap however.

 

vw's "clean diesels" are  a big improvement over the old mechanical injection diesels. My old SD22 nissan smoked like a chimney.

 

 

I wish they would sell the bluemotion diesels in the usa. These things get 72 mpg. They're a 3 cylinder diesel and whenever you use

the brakes it recharges the car battery to reduce the load of the alternator on the engine. aka regenerative braking.

I own a Vw "clean diesel" TDI  and i must say the nose test tells me that it burns clean.

 

vw's "clean diesels" are  a big improvement over the old mechanical injection diesels. My old SD22 nissan smoked like a chimney.

 

 

I wish they would sell the bluemotion diesels in the usa. These things get 72 mpg. They're a 3 cylinder diesel and whenever you use

the brakes it recharges the car battery to reduce the load of the alternator on the engine. aka regenerative braking.

 

I disagree, the old mechanical injector diesels run much longer.  My dad has a van from 2000 and still runs strong, uses no oil, . It's slow, but it does 900 km on a full tank, while my 2007 TDI ( work van ) does 600 to 650 km on a full tank with modern computer controlled injection.

 

An besides we use an old 80's VW engine in our boat, and it still runs strong today and burns no oil. Those things run forever. The more simple they are, the better.

 

I'm a firm believer that the new engines are not better in terms of engine life and fuel consumption. The produce more power but at a cost..

I disagree, the old mechanical injector diesels run much longer.  My dad has a van from 2000 and still runs strong, uses no oil, . It's slow, but it does 900 km on a full tank, while my 2007 TDI ( work van ) does 600 to 650 km on a full tank with modern computer controlled injection.

 

An besides we use an old 80's VW engine in our boat, and it still runs strong today and burns no oil. Those things run forever. The more simple they are, the better.

 

I'm a firm believer that the new engines are not better in terms of engine life and fuel consumption. The produce more power but at a cost..

I was referring to burning cleaner not longevity.  You're lucky being in europe. California is much stricter than europe in terms of emissions. Back in the early 90's someone turned me in to the highway patrol using the 800 gross polluter number in california because they "thought" my nissan 720 sd22 smoked too much. That really pissed me off but thats how things are in calif.  Back in those days there was NO smog check for diesels.

 

 

My 15 year old tdi with 230,000 miles on it burns way way cleaner than that old mechanical injection sd22 even when it was new.

 

I was right about what vw cheated on. Oxides of nitrogen were way too high and the egr valve is responsible for reducing NOX. Sounds like they just shut it down so the engine wouldn't carbon up. 

 

 

According to the pbs article "The little engine that couldn't"

"Their approach was three-pronged: One, they closely monitored and adjusting combustion conditions, and two, they used a two-stage exhaust gas recirculation system. Both of these reduced initial emissions. Finally, they handled the remaining emissions using a lean NO_x trap."

 

 

 

 

 

I really hope they can solve the problem of carbon buildup. If they can't, they should pull diesels from the US market.  I would really be disappointed if vw just

turned egr funtion back on and let owners deal with the carbon problem after warranties expire.

 

Dieselgate has already cost them their CEO.  Perhaps he'll write a book in a few years detailing the decisions that led up to the this. I'de sure like to know

But we will probably never know.

Edited September 24, 20159 yr by hr369

Yeah California seems " really " strict on this subject..