VW Rigging Emission Tests

In Maryland, they don't smog check ANY diesel vehicles.

What people are really going to get pissed off about, is when the car goes to the VW dealer for a repair, and they 'fix' this problem.

I know if I had one of these V-dubs, I sure as 'ell wouldn't ever take it to the dealer.

How about a DIY fix? Since urea treatment (urine + water) for the exhaust system is a cure, just get "pissed off" into the tailpipe! What could possibly go wrong? (wait for the exhaust system to cool off first!)

I don't think failing the smog test after the software is patched is a problem. The software can meet the emissions OK when on test, it recognises it's on test and operates the kit accordingly. The point is, when not on test it disables that part of the software. Maybe that gives better economy at the cost of higher emissions, but I read somewhere emission control needs injection of urea, and the container needs regular top-ups, which isn't popular with drivers.

how about the NOX up to 40 times greater than required by law?

Okay how about all the running conditions and times where it's not at 40 x?

BTW 40X is only 4 grams per horsepower hour which is a pretty small amount when you factor in that a typical engine is putting out 600+ grams of CO2 per HP hour and one liter of gasoline produces ~2355 grams of CO2.

What about it? I'm not with you. I understand the standard can be met when the software is switched on. I haven't heard of 40x, I've heard of 9x in Europe. If you're saying the law should be enforced, I quite agree.

Haha that's one way to meet compliance....

"The vehicles all contain a device programmed to detect when they are undergoing official emissions testing, the EPA said, adding that the cars only turn on full emissions control systems during that testing. The controls are turned off during normal driving situations, the EPA said."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/ct-epa-vw-clean-air-standards-20150918-story.html

..." the EPA said diesel-powered VW cars used a "defeat device," a kind of "a sophisticated software algorithm [that] detects when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and turns full emissions controls on only during the test. The effectiveness of these vehicles' pollution emissions control devices is greatly reduced during all normal driving situations.""

ouch!...

..."allowing the German automaker to sell half a million cars that produce nitrogen oxide, which creates smog, at up to 40 times the legal limit."

...that sounds like a lot...

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/epa-accuses-volkswagen-cheating-emissions-testing-482000-cars/

German greeny meany....

http://www.woodalert.com/news/particulate-pollution-german-coal-and-wood-heating-are-also-responsible-125

I have been wondering what US automakers were doing wrong/differently, that makes the competition's mileage figures so much higher.

As Paul Harvey would say: "And now we know - the rest of the story".

I think this is going to be more about performance than mileage,,,.but I suspect as the emissions go down so does the performance, but the mileage probably goes up....

If performance goes down it is likely that the efficiency of the system goes down, too.

Replace the catalytic converter on your car with a straight pipe and you will get better mileage and performance, but worse emissions.

I don't know but in my experience if you want to reduce emissions you can lean out the carb....this reduces performance, and I would say it increases efficiency and improves mileage...generally speaking the more fuel you use the more power you get, but your mileage goes down.....So I would say that better mpg = better efficiency...

I think it is more complex than that. There are optimal mixtures of fuel, air, pressure, temperature, etc., that factor into mpg.

Also, the more restrictive you make the exhaust (as a general rule) the more performance loss you get.

I doubt that its as simple as mpg = 1/emissions.

No carbs on a diesel.

Unfortunately it goes down not up and its fairly easy to see with most any older engine that has a mechanical carburetor and adjustable main jets.

Stoichiometric A/F ratio may give the cleanest burn but it is not the A/F ratio that converts the most fuel energy into mechanical energy nor is the most friendly to the engine either.

Air fuel ratio effects.

Running a slightly rich A/F ratio in the 12.5 - 13:1 Vs the 14 -15:1 creates more power while using less air to do the same mechanical work which when factored out to real life driving conditions you are not driving at full throttle but only driving at what ever throttle level is sufficient to keep the vehicle at speed so if you can make the same mechanical power at a substantially reduced air usage you are also using far less fuel as well.

Say your engine puts out 100 HP but needs 100 CFM with a 15:1 A/F ratio but only needs 70 CFM to produce the same 100 HP at a 13:1 A/F ratio.

Which one is actually using more fuel to make the 100 HP of mechanical power that you need?

100/15 = 6.667 units of fuel used to make 100 HP.

70/13 = 5.38 units of fuel used to make 100 HP.

BTW if you also factor in true emissions byproducts being made at part throttle normal driving the 15:1 A/F ratio is producing far more CO2 than the 13:1 A/F ratio but in both cases the NOx and other by products are very close to the same meaning that at under normal driving conditions your emissions compliant engine is actually worse or the environment and your pocket than the noncompliant one.

Also the main contributor to cleaning up smog in the past was not from the addition of emissions systems as much as it was from the reformulation of our fuels.

The majority of the world already knows this and thus builds their vehicles to use less fuel to make less emissions which means that less fuel is bought to do the same work and thus our government gets less tax revenue from fuel sales and that's why they are not allowed in the US.

The oil companies themselves would rather sell you 4 gallons of gasoline to go 100 miles for $10 instead of 5 gallons to go the same distance being they would then be making more profit while having to produce less product. It's the government that does not like that concept because they lose 20% of their tax revenue from your 100 mile trip.

Well we may have gone off track a little here....keeping the A/F mixture at an ideal setting is the most efficient, IE: fuel injection...what I was talking about is acceleration performance, which is generally a rich mixture, whereas idle and cruising at a leaner mixture...It's a gimme that anything other than ideal A/F mixture(14.7 - 1) will reduce efficiency and mileage in the real world....so this begs the question, what were they doing with the software to reduce emissions?

"Experts in automotive technology said that disengaging the pollution controls on a diesel-fueled car can yield better performance, including increased torque and acceleration.

"When the pollution controls are functioning on these vehicles, there's a trade-off between performance and emissions," said Drew Kodjak, executive director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research group. "This is cutting corners.""

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/business/volkswagen-is-ordered-to-recall-nearly-500000-vehicles-over-emissions-software.html

Keeping the A/F ratio near stoichiometric makes for the most efficient burning of the fuel to turn its chemical energy into heat energy but it is not the most effective at transferring that fuel combustion energy into mechanical motion which is what internal combustion engines are supposed to do.

I was just working on a 5000 watt generator today that I replaced a 10 HP B&S vanguard engine with a Honda 9 HP engine and did a bit of experimenting with it relating to our subject at hand.

Initially with the original stock carburetor jetting setting it was maxed out powering a 4500 watt, three 1500 watt milkhouse heaters, resistive load. The governor was wide open and the engine was struggling pretty hard to maintain 225 volts at 56 HZ (~3995 watts calculated) and making a pretty noticeable bogging sound from the intake as well. Also when I shut the fuel off it would run for maybe 8 - 10 seconds on what fuel was in the carburetor bowl.

I pulled the jet and drilled it a few thousands larger and gave it a retest. Interesting results. Same load and this run it was just short of wide open throttle and putting out 231 volts at 58 Hz (~4169 watts calculated) plus when it shut the fuel off I got around 11 - 12 seconds of run time on what fuel was in the carburetor plus the intake bogging sound was not nearly as noticeable and the exhaust sound seemed less labored and harsh as well.

So given that at least on that experiment rejetting for a richer A/F ratio freed up some power while reducing fuel consumption at the same time. Unfortunately it probably would not pass its original emission compliance test but hey it made it pretty clear that in this case a richer A/F ratio definitely improved both power and efficiency.

Given that experiment I am now tempted to do a more indepth redo of the test with additional sensors on it to read the engine head and exhaust temps plus actual load amps, volts and watts in real time as well and maybe do a video recording of it for Youtube being I think this would be a worthy demonstration of the differences between engine emission compliance and noncompliance setups.

I think it confirmed what I have been saying for years about my reasonings and findings from disabling emissions components and retuning engines on my vehicles pretty well. Optimum fuel burn does not equate to optimum fuel energy conversion to mechanical energy transfer. A clean burning engine is not necessarily the most fuel efficient engine.

This reminds me of a trick we used to do on our bikes, replace the carb jets with a larger size and pull the baffles out for a little more power and a lot more noise...Haha I wouldn't say it improved mpg's though, probably the opposite....never really checked, that's when price was no concern, you could ride around all day on a pocket full of change....

I drilled out the jets on a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 390 V8 4 barrel Holly back in 1967 and it would fly! It got better mpg and had a top speed over 120 mph. But the tires shredded soon so I went back to original equipment jets for safety's sake. High performance is expensive!

How is this really different than Detroit's smog pump from the late 1960s?

They inject fresh air into the tail pipe (allegedly to improve composition in the tail pipe, but it also dilutes it, no?) for the first minute of operation, which, at the time, just coincided with the way that vehicles were tested by the government.

Anytime you set up requirements for testing, engineers will design to meet those requirements.

It's all in the way you word those requirements. Maybe the US government needs to hire some better system engineers to write their testing specs?

And when all is said and done, anytime I have been near the tail pipe of an idling TDI or driving behind a TDI, I can hardly smell any of the nastiness most often associated with diesels. Properly maintained, they run pretty darn clean.

Riding behind many diesel pickups will make my eyes water and lungs gag from the fumes. Never mind the guys who like to 'hop up' their diesels so they pour out more black smoke than a steam train when they stomp it.

Is VW really the villain here?

(In the interest of full disclosure, I have a Jetta but it's a petrol 2.SLO and I also have an RV with a 2013 Cummins ISB 6.7L diesel which uses DEF.)

Those are the vehicle that literally give me an asthma attack. Nothing else will do that like turbo diesels can.

I had one guy that I passed just so I wasn't behind him, but he decided that he would demonstrate his superior intellect by pulling up beside me as I was turning right and putting the pedal to the metal as his tailpipe passed my open window.

I should have gotten his plate number, but you couldn't see it in the cloud.

I had a 2003 Ford Excursion 7.3L diesel that would "coal" the bumper tailgaters when floored, but the newer VW's have no diesel noise, smoke or smell. Since CO (carbon monoxide) and nitrous gasses have little or no odor, you can't be sure the emissions are cleaner. Our Winnebago Cummins turbodiesel has DEF treatment and has no apparent odor or smoke emissions. Our VW Touareg V6 TDI uses DEF fluid which adds $15-25 to every oil change interval (10K miles). I would prefer the infamous Jetta TDI program to get the added mpg and performance, but it does very well at 28-30 mpg and all the torque the tires can handle. My fear is lowered resale values since all VW diesels will be suspect and the $60-75 annual emissions inspection fees the states may require of all VW diesels now. Who really "won" WW2??

You're actually expecting anyone here to take you seriously?

You're effing kidding yourself!

It's like they say in waste water treatment. The "solution" to pollution is "dilution".

The EPA tried that here in CO and the Animas River turned orange for a week. It had been diluted and sent out of the mines for 20 years and went unnoticed even though lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals were collecting in the sediments. Out of sight, out of mind. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

nothing like a company fulled with crooks to sell you a DEAL

nothing like a company fulled with crooks to sell you a DEAL Did you mean to say "fueled" with crooks?

Farfergpolutin

"Most people are mostly good most of the time." Unless you count WW1 & WW2 for the VW population segment.

L.A., Central Valley have worst air quality, American Lung ...

2006↓

Today.↑

LA is still the most polluted city in the country.

"I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public," Martin Winterkorn said in a statement published by the carmaker on Sunday. "Volkswagen has ordered an external investigation of this matter."
http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKCN0RK0IK20150920

Well I hope they don't start looking at natures NOx emissions one lightning strike alone makes more NOx than the VW diesel would driving ~10,000 miles in its worst NOX producing conditions.

According to a new paper by Ott and Pickering in the Journal of Geophysical Research, each flash of lightning on average in the several mid-latitude and subtropical thunderstorms studied turned 7 kilograms (15.4 pounds) of nitrogen into chemically reactive NOx. "In other words, you could drive a new car across the United States more than 50 times and still produce less than half as much NOx as an average lightning flash," Ott estimated.

From Lightning NOx production.

Not if it was a VW diesel.

Yea at its worst 40X estimated level, wide open full throttle, it would only drive across the continent 1.25 times.

Well if they were driving across the continent it probably wouldn't be a problem....anyway in a port city like Los Angeles some of the pollution is port related...

http://wildmath.org/tag/pollution/

To me, one of the outstanding features of this story has been the naivety of the original testers. The problem with putting a modern vehicle on a dynamometer is that when the front wheels rotate and the back wheels stand still the ABS system treats this as a skid and shuts everything down. Hence it became permissible to set up a specific engine control system for testing purposes when it would have been more appropriate to install rear wheel rollers driven from the front wheel rollers. I suppose the car control system could also take note of the lack of steering input and secretly switch to non-polluting mode, but there is nothing to stop the testers driving off the dynamometer at irregular intervals. Indeed, I see no reason why the pollution-measuring instrumentation should not be mounted on a cradle on a fifth wheel, to be towed round a proper testing track.

Or put it in the boot (trunk) or back seat. I believe that's what the whistleblowers did.

Just do a sniff/whiff test at 55 mph along the road.

As expected, VW was only the tip of the Iceberg, I wonder how the US government will react to this news:-

emissions-software-scandal-threatens-fiat-chrysler

Of course, it should be at least equal to the way the VW scandal was handled, executives placed in jail, etc etc etc!

What do you all say?