My faithful 96 MB passed the MOT with flying colours again last week, thank goodness, and it should do the tlc it gets.;)
I happen to have the exhaust emission test results in front of me.
As its entirely possible that i will have to compulsorily scrap this car at some point in the future should we get more empty eggheads in charge, with or without £2K to help boost some foreign manufacturers coffers.
I wonder how my gas guzzling cars emissions compare to a new equivalent petrol engined car, i'll give the results of mine, hopefully the more knowledgeable will be able to say just how bad my car is in comparison to new and whether it should be scrapped, or are we being fed hogwash by the green brigade in the govt.
Its 3.2litre, straight 6 cyl 24V and its done 75K by the way.
Fast idle test.
CO Max limit 0.200 Actual Value 0.052 pass.
Lamda. Min limit 0.970 Max limit 1.030 Actual value 1.002 pass.
Natural idle test.
CO Max limit 0.300 Actual value 0.018 Pass.
Thoughts please.
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CO emissions of that magnitude are of little consequence.
However, WRT the "Green brigade" I suspect they would blanch at the CO2 emissions.
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"As its entirely possible that i will have to compulsorily scrap this car at some point in the future"
Frankly, I thing compulsory scrapping won't happen - imagine the politics of it - Mrs Miggins in her Fiesta that goes to the Co-Op, Church and bridge evenings being told that because it's not Euro V compliant she has to buy a new car, despite the fact that the old one has only done 15k in twenty years.
Scrap incentives, perhaps, but no compulsion, I'm sure of it.
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My Volvo posted similar piffling figures in the recent emissions test, and had me thinking much the same thing.
I agree with oldnotbold - it would be political suicide to force this onto people. I suspect it will be done via much more underhand means, via a tightening of the MOT test for example, or punitive levels of RFL.
The Japanese government has the infamous Shaken, which ramps up the real world cost of a pass as a car ages, and renders most 10 year old cars completely uneconomical to get certified. This is why there are so many Japanese grey imports on the roads. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see similar thinking creep in to the MOT.
Whatever they do, it won't be glaringly obvious, and will be done in stages in my opinion.
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MPG figures on new cars are calculated from the CO2 emissions - so I wonder if there's a standard way of doing the reverse?
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MPG figures on new cars are calculated from the CO2 emissions
Are they really? I thought they were done on a "rolling road" or similar. Am I naive, or right?
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GB, your car is fitted with a catalytic converter which reduces the CO content of the exhaust (ironically by converting it into CO2). A low value basically just proves that the catalytic converter is working ok.
The lambda value is the air/ fuel ratio, which I think should be 1 ideally.
AFAIK in the UK the Hydrocarbon (HC) level is also measured for the MOT which indicates the amount of unburnt fuel being chucked out of the exhaust. This is probably a better indication of the overall condition of the engine than the CO or lambda values.
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The MoT emissions test is done on an engine that's doing very little work - it doesn't give a CO2 figure of x gm/km
The important bit is probably - 75K miles in 13 years. So the car's not produced much pollution over its current lifetime. Hopefully it will give at least another 13 years / 75k miles service.
SWMBO's Clio 1.2 doesn't register on the CO / CO2 levels (they are shown as 0.00%)
and it's HC level is just 12 ppm - but it is only 4 years old with about 26K miles.
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In the very late eighties, early nineties, we were told that the lambda probe and exhaust catalyst meant that cars only gave off water vapour and CO2. One would have been forgiven for thinking that would be the end of the emissions repression. It is now worse than ever. It is a con, a sham and a swizz and only exists for 'social' reasons, not environmental reasons.
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>>water vapour and CO2
Ah yes, CO2. "The harmless stuff they put in fizzy drinks" was how it was described in more than one article I read.
Like nuclear power providing electricity "too cheap to meter". A lie to gain mainstream support for something that isn't as good as it looks.
I remember an article in What Car magazine back in the very early 90's, which provided figures to suggest that a catalytic converter equipped Sierra (dates it, doesn't it?) emitted 25% more greenhouse gases than a non catalyst equipped equivalent. This was of course before the greenhouse effect became daily headline news, but was clearly in scientific consciousness.
The catalytic converter itself carries a fuel economy (and therefore CO2) penalty of about 10-15% based on the difference in figures recorded between cat and non-cat versions of identical cars prior to the compulsory fitment in 1992.
Cheers
DP
Edited by DP on 25/03/2009 at 10:03
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Back in the 80/90's,lean-burn technology(18.0-20.0/1 A/F) could have given us good economy with reasonable emissions but the GREEN lobbies wanted catalysts.Many EU countries offered the same cars with/without catalysts-both met the legal requirements but people were insisting on catalysts even tho' the cars were more expensive-there were even kits marketed for after-sale fitment of catalysts and EGR valves.
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The fuel penalty on the W124 MB 300E of the late 1980s and early 1990s ranges from 2% to 4% between non-cat and cat versions, the higher figures relating to automatics.
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MPG figures on new cars are calculated from the CO2 emissions - I wonder if there's a standard way of doing the reverse?
It can't be difficult. If a measured quantity of fuel is burnt in a measured distance (given an adequate supply of oxygen) it will become a predictable quantity of water and CO2, especially if the cat is working properly. Back-of-envelope calculation - must do it one day. The only 'variable' may be converting volume to mass, as petrol is slightly less dense than diesel.
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Thanks for the thoughts peeps.
I too feel there will be some gradual stiffening of test procedures to make keeping an old car increasingly expensive and difficult, they'll have to be careful to make the cut off date correct as some of their wealthy backers may just have a few classic cars lurking about, wouldn't want to bite the hand etc.
Maybe they'll ban older cars from cities first, that suits me, can't stand heavily populated places.
I still wouldn't trust them not to have compulsory scrapping at some point, i take the point about political suicide, but among the main 3 you'd struggle to find a difference in most policies, and if it happens it will be in the first year of a new term, people have remarkably short memories.
Now i've crossed off the CTS, and others i toyed with i feel even more determined to make the old girl last another 15 years, assuming i do..;)
Mind you i had a look round a facelift 57 plate CTS yesterday, quite taken with that....
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It was reckoned in the late 1990s that over 4 million of the 26 million cars on the road were untaxed and therefore probably had no MOT; no doubt the picture is similar today. These are likely to be the most neglected population of cars in terms of maintenance. That's the group that needs to be targeted first: no VED and no excuse, then they get scrapped immediately, and I'd do that to unlicensed newer cars too.
In a sensible world, that would leave the other "old bangers" alone, because they would have to get through the MOT to obtain the VED. They are of trivial environmental consequence, given their small and diminishing numbers, and also because they tend to be used less than newer cars. So, "old bangers" they ain't, but cherished cars they may well be.
I'm hardly impartial: my oldest car is 1984 and my youngest 1996. They are all in fine fettle, scoring well under the emissions-test ceilings. Tighten up the emissions requirements if you wish: I have plenty of headroom. If compulsory scrappage raises its head, I shall explode.
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Back-of-envelope calculation - must do it one day ...
I got out my envelope today, with the following result, in round figures:
Assume petrol car doing 50 mpg, which = 5.6 l/100km, or 56ml/km
Density of petrol (say) 0.7 , maybe a bit less (diesel more like 0.75) so 39gm/km.
Assume petrol is octane C8H18 (MW 114.2) burnt to 8 x CO2 (MW 44) = 352
So CO2 produced is 39 x 352 / 114.2 = 120 g/km
Right on target for the lowest tax band !
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Density of petrol is more like 0.75,diesel closer to 0.85.
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Density of petrol is more like 0.75,diesel closer to 0.85.
Has the density of octane risen a lot in the last 40 years? My reference book says Gasoline 0.68, Kerosene 0.81. Or do those sneaky refiners put really heavy additives in?
Anyway it's only a round-number calculation.
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Density of petrol is more like 0.75 diesel closer to 0.85.
Those figures are specific gravity figures, i.e. the density in relation to that of pure water at a base-line temperature of usually 4°C, but sometimes 60°F. The density of petrol at 60°F is 737 kg/cu.m, and the density of diesel at 15°C is 820-950 kg/cu.m
www.simetric.co.uk/si_liquids.htm
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The density of petrol is 0.737 ...
Thanks Snail. Redoing my calcs, then
Density of petrol 0.737 .... so 41.2 gm/km.
CO2 produced is 41.2 x 352 / 114.2 = 127 gm/km
You'll need to do about 53 mpg to get into the lowest tax-band.
Edited by Andrew-T on 27/03/2009 at 16:00
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