Scrappage Is Good For the Environment

[oldford]

I found this quote in one of the motor trade magazines, made by the sales director of a large Yorkshire based dealer group:'It's sad to see some of these cars heading for the crusher, but it's a positive move for the environment. The CO2 emissions from a new car are likely to be around 17% less than those from a 10 year old banger'What a load of bollocks.

[Guest]

Sadly swallowed by people who should know better :roll:I hope they bought Toyota's if they fell for it

[Timewaster]

And the CO2 emissions from the car factories are all over Korea, so thats ok too

[Milford Cubicle]

They didn't think of all the co2 emissions from the fuming classic/old car fans.

[Skizzer]

Utter bollocks for all the reasons above. 17% sounds like a completely made up number anyway. Hope he goes bust when the scheme stops.Plus my Scirocco hasn't emitted a single gramme of CO2 for years. In fact parts of it are photosynthesising

[wuvvum]

My current daily, the Colt, is firmly in "old banger" territory. Because it is a 1992 car, it doesn't have a catalytic converter, so although it is chucking out vastly more CO and hydrocarbons than a new Colt would, I'm willing to bet its CO2 emissions are lower. I've had this argument several times over the last few years with people whose opinions are lifted ready-formed from whichever newspaper they happen to read - the kind of people who call CO2 "carbon" and genuinely don't know the difference. It's a wonder to me that, with the current focus on carbon dioxide as the latest "big nasty", some newspaper columnist with a limited grasp of the facts has not yet suggested deleting catalytic converters from new cars for the sake of "the environment" - which would be a huge irony given that that is the exact reason they were made compulsory in the first place.

[oldford]

I don't think that it has sunk in that there are essentially 3 chemical reactions that occur in a catalytic convertor, and all of them produce CO2 as a product, which is the same CO2 that's getting taxed.Lean burn would have been the way to go, but time constraints dictated that there wasn't the technology available to emit less by burning less, we'll stick with the existing technology and just clean it up a little post combustion.

[55bloke]

Am I right in thinking that catalytic convertors actually only remove lead from exhaust fumes? Weren't they supposed to get rid of the risk of lead poisoning in children from breathing in exhaust fumes? So, do they actually make any difference to CO2 emissions?

[Milford Cubicle]

I thought co2 emissions was directly linked with fuel consumption - a catalytic converter makes bugger all difference.

[wuvvum]

Am I right in thinking that catalytic convertors actually only remove lead from exhaust fumes? Weren't they supposed to get rid of the risk of lead poisoning in children from breathing in exhaust fumes? So, do they actually make any difference to CO2 emissions?

No, cats weren't introduced to take out lead - in fact if you run leaded petrol through a cat it will bugger it up in short order. By the time cats were made compulsory in Europe unleaded petrol was in pretty widespread use. I think the chief benefit of cats was to cut carbon monoxide emissions by converting it into carbon dioxide - carbon monoxide is poisonous, but that extra atom of oxygen renders it completely harmless (or so it was thought at the time).

[Whoop Whoop Pull Up]

I've always found it amazing that the USA made catalytic converters compulsory from 1975 - it took us until 1992 to do the same.

[fiatdaft]

exhibit c : many return visits to the dealer cause it will now not run right.

[mattblack]

And of course the metals used to make 'cats' are all mined by butterflies powered by fairy dust....

[fiatdaft]

aye,how you gonna do that then?

[fiatdaft]

would still be at the dealers.

[fiatdaft]

you seem to be a fountain of motoring knowledge ,surprised you don't know.

[Pete-M]

If Range-Rovers still need testbook then this would be a very interesting exercise.. ball-aches to interrogate, never mind to chip!

[oldford]

Catalytic convertors aren't compulsory, if the car can comply with the emission limits without one, it'll pass. But as the design of the management system is based on cleaning up after combustion, rather than creating lower emissions by putting less fuel in at the start, it'll be unlikely to pass without a catalytic convertor.I had my carburrettored CVH Sierra in for MOT last week, the carbon monoxide was 0.274% and the hydrocarbons were 230 parts per million. Considering that the limits on the first generation of catalytic convertor equipped cars is 0.3% CO and 200ppm HC, it seems alot of complexity, cost and extra pollution from mining and processing the precious metals used, for not alot of extra benefit.

[Milford Cubicle]

Some older diesels have a fake catalytic converter which doesn't seem to do anything apart from constrain the exhaust. Maybe they're for particulates.

[M'coli]

The other gasses that cats deal with are the oxides of nitrogen. Lean burn engines help to create more of them, which is another reason why lean burn and cats don't mix too well, the cat would have to work much harder at converting them back into nitrogen if there wasn't a bit of CO and some unburnt HCs to react with the oxygen in them.

[Pillock]

I had a decatted car ('91 Polo - came with a cat, cat went in the bin) pass an emissions test based on catalysed figures. It only just passed, and took a few goes, but it worked.The tester was gutted when I told him he'd spent ages redoing the test when he could just have put it through as a '90 model sans cat :)The point being, there is no legal requirement to have a catalytic converter on your car, BUT there is a legal requirement for it to pass the appropriate emissions tests.

[fiatdaft]

and most if not all moderns will not run right without a cat.

[Station]

What's the name of the director and the car dealership?

The CO2 emissions from a new car are likely to be around 17% less than those from a 10 year old banger

The words 'likely' and 'around', may as well be translated into 'not'. My MGF has 'new' CO2 emissions (same as a 1.8 16v modern engine), and from my Whizzkid's MOT, it has LESS CO2 emissions than my MGF.He should just write:

We get more money if you buy one of our cars, so just give in to your greed and then spend thousands paying for repairs when it falls out of warranty

Because

Old cars are likely to be 50% more reliable than those of a 0 year old car

[FredTransit]

I bet the pratt managed to overlook the fact that up to 80% of the pollution a car creates is due to it's manufacture, and it take the environment 20 years to get over it.

[Milford Cubicle]

Salesman in lying to sell new cars shocker.

[fiatdaft]

ahem,sales director you mean.

[Mr Lobster]

Why would anybody be surprised that the Sales Director would say that though? Its his job to promote new cars and to sell them, he's going to use whatever green half truths he can if it helps shift stuff.

[CIH]

I don't think CATs have anything to do with lead. One of their primary jobs is to convert carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, and a few other odds and sods. Any car can be made to run CATless but presumably it invloves ECU remapping and twiddiling with the pre and post CAT(s) sensor(s).IIRC it's been mandatory for competition cars to run CATs for the past couple of years too.

[fiatdaft]

^there lies the problem.a remap only changes map only changes characteristics within the set parameters,the ecu needs the pre and post cat sensors to work .yes you could go aftermarket,but that would be a world of pain if it involved anything remotely modern.rolling roads have found that modern engines loose power without a cat, small gains are found using a sports cat.

[Guest]

If anyone is sitting here thinking that catalytic converters are a wonderful and lovely idea, wait until you need to pay for a new one.