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The truth about diesel engine reliability (& how Wheels Magazine blew it) | Auto Expert John Cadogan
Emissions scandal. The motoring world is rocked as Wheels Magazine attempts diesel takedown and vents excess bullshit on unsuspecting readers.
This report is my honest personal opinion.
In the June issue, pages 26-33, Wheels lifts the lid on what it claims is:
“Australia’s own Dieselgate”.
Dieselgate of course was a high-level Volkswagen Group criminal conspiracy that disgracefully, and in a carefully considered way, prioritised profit over human health worldwide, and backfired gloriously, over a couple of years, to the tune of $26 billion dollars, and counting.
This Wheels story hypes up alleged poor reliability of diesel engines.
These are the highlights.
“Out of the warranty period, owners are on their own.”
I hate to break it to the paper dinosaurs in MC Hasbeenville – but consumer law hasn’t operated that way since January the 1st, 2011.
The law currently includes legislated Consumer Guarantees. One of those is ‘acceptable quality’. And part of that is ‘reasonable durability’.
In practice, this means goods and services (including your fine automobile) must meet the durability expectations of a reasonable person – after taking into account the nature of the goods.
This guarantee specifically may not be abrogated by the warranty
“…exhaust gases are ventilated via the oil soaked crankcase, then back through the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) valve, where they return to the intake. Positive crankcase ventilation, they call it.”
OMFG – where do I start? Perhaps the obvious: Crankcases are supposed to be oil soaked. If ever they are not, it’s 53 hours into the translunar injection on April 13, 1970, all over again.
So there’s that.
Secondly, last time had a bad acid flashback to the tools, crankcase ventilation and EGR were totally different, completely separate systems.
EGR is a completely different system designed to operate at moderate outputs, as a hedge against oxides of nitrogen. It reduces the oxygen density of the exhaust.
That’s important because because diesels run lean – so otherwise the exhaust would be full of oxygen. And aspects of the catalytic converter would not function properly.
“The EGR technology is up for debate” – Andrew Leimroth, Berrima Diesel, quoted in the report
In my view that’s a load of indefensible bullshit. I guess you can debate anything if you want to, but without facts it’s just ontologically irrelevant noise. That would be like debating gravity.
“Diesel particle filters are designed to burn off harmful nitrogen oxides and other tiny particle emissions at blast furnace temperatures.”
Really? Wheels should have thought harder about that, I think. Because if a DPF were truly as hot as a blast furnace, it would melt itself. DPFs are encased in a steel box. Blast furnaces are specifically designed to melt iron and steel.
Now, this business about (quote) “burn off harmful nitrogen oxides”. Sorry to say, but this is a load of shit too.
‘Burning’ is the absolute opposite of what happens to oxides of nitrogen. Perhaps we could call this process ‘unburning’ for journalists to understand, but in fact it already has a name: ‘reduction’.
Just to be crystal on this: you can’t burn NOx away. (It’s already burnt.)
“…nitric oxide (NO), which reacts with oxygen to form the fine particulate matter that diesel engines produce.”
[SIGHS] Nitric oxide is nitrogen that has already burned in oxygen. It didn’t really want to the first time, and it’s certainly not gagging to go again, with even more oxygen.
The problematic particles are mainly made of carbon. There’s no carbon in nitric oxide or oxygen. (D’oh!) Therefore, no matter how creatively you combine them, you’ll never get particles if you start with start with a big bucket of nitric oxide and oxygen.
“These micron-fine particles of carbon soot are so small they can lodge in the lungs and are known carcinogens.”
Actually, the carbon is relatively benign. But it is problematically sticky – and the stuff that sticks onto it is very bad indeed.
Just to dumb this right down so even a Wheels journalist might get it: The carbon is OK. What’s sticking to it is not – and that needs to be burned off in the DPF.
Stuff like polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Organics from the lubricating oil and the fuel. Plus some ash and sulphuric acid on the side.
They could easily have run this dog’s breakfast of a report past any engineer in any car company, but instead they just went with their gut – seemingly – and consequentially demeaned the reputation of their brand in front of anyone who paid attention and is quasi-technical.
There’s a lot of potential advertisers on that list. If I were the product manager at a carmaker selling a line of well-sorted diesel SUVs, I would be monumentally pissed off.
And the naked fearmongering. Please:
“…buying [a diesel] is like starting the clock on a financial time bomb.”
Bullshit tabloid excellence right there. Well done.
