Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2016 09:24:49 -0800
Reply-To: Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Friday: VW shops and the VW diesel problem
In-Reply-To: <CAFnDXk2YmgQdQFJOjL8Oi8qW1BGy2ubyAYK3B3oGTp+6+4jX-w@mail.gmail.com>
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I've heard the same thing, VW needs to get these vehicles off the road to comply with the settlement.
The best way to clean up the smog producing NOx from diesels is with the urea injection system developed by Mercedes that turns NOx into nitrogen and oxygen. Then they are wonderful, but the system is both costly and a maintenance issue no one wanted to deal with, and VW didn't want to license the technology anyway. The urea solution you need to add ever few thousand miles isn't cheap either, but it really should be.
VW cheated with software so they could sell cheaper, high performance diesels in the US. Europe didn't adopt strict pollution standards like the US did and encouraged dirty diesel engines to reduce carbon emissions with their better gas mileage. Failure to address the much worse NOx pollutants has led to severe air pollution, a poor trade off. From the Washington Post this week: http://wpo.st/3bIO2
Now it's all about self-driving electric cars. At least that's where the R&D money is going.
Stuart
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Jim Felder
Sent: Friday, December 23, 2016 8:35 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Friday: VW shops and the VW diesel problem
I went by my local VW shop to pick up a thing or two yesterday and I asked
the owner how was business. He said that the VW diesel scandal has hurt
them a lot--25 to 30 percent of their former business being the care and
maintenance of scandal-era TDI stuff.
He said he had a customer with a car in the shop until a few days ago. The
high-pressure fuel pump blew up, which ruins the entire pump with
fragments. After the $$$ item was replaced the car only ran on two
cylinders--a known problem with these engines since the diesel shops cannot
seem to reliably clean out the micro-filter screens in them. Injectors
being $650 a pop, the owner decided to call the VW dealer and see what
could skate by in the buy-back program.
"We'll take it" she said, "and you'll get the full payment if the car will
run on its own for 30 seconds, even on one cylinder." She went on to
explain that they had bought back cars with no doors and no interior.
Don't know if all this is accurate or not, but it suggests that there soon
won't be any of the scandal-era diesels around, and with VW getting out of
the diesel business altogether as was announced last week, the diesel-cide
will probably go back many years further that.
Jim
