Gerrard passed his MOT this week, even with no advisories... but the examiner did remark that the exhaust was full of soot (it needed a bit of an Italian tune-up to encourage some of the rubbish out, before it could be emissions tested).

No doubt this accumulation of soot is a result of too many constant-speed miles on the motorway, driving it like an old fella.. and also using the cheapest diesel fuel available since I'm a tightwad, even if it's from Sainsbury's.... although in my defence, my old mum saves up the Reward Card points I get and usually buys the Christmas turkey with it each year..

Anyway... I was pleased but a bit disappointed, since I usually bung a special cocktail of 200ml kerosene and 50ml of 2-EHN into each tank, theoretically to keep the fuel system clean and the mixture burning nicely... but why so much soot (apart from "see the above")?

Do I also need a more radical treatment, such as that Arachnid 6400, once in a while? I get the impression these diesel cleaner/additives won't do anything much to reduce the soot, if the kerosene/2-EHN mixture isn't doing it? Are there any better / one-off treatments to reduce soot?

Since it's been revved a bit.. it's smoking a bit less.. but I know it'll come back... it was the same last year too... so I'm after a chemical (additive?) rather than a mechanical solution.

Ralf S.

https://www.dieselnet.com/tech/dpf_fbc.php

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._diesel_particulate_formation_and_composition

looking at fuel borne catalyst
have you dpf on car or not?
read here some suggestions for brands part numbers in there
http://www.alfaowner.com/Forum/tuning-andamp-upgrades/918530-jtdm-ways-to-increase-egt.html

The 4x4 owners use a new exhaust system just to pass the MOT testing. Cheapest one that could be purchased, and even the biggest coal burners pass easy. I normally get a bottle of cataclean and this help massively .

Believe it or not giving them a good italian tune up is good for them. Getting the car good and hot will burn off a lot of carbon and help the reaction process for cats / DPFs (not that you'll have a DPF).

When I bought my wife's car, 206cc 1.6HDi, it was owned by a little old lady who only used it for running back and forth to her part time job at Asda in town and the poor thing suffered no end for constant short journeys and never getting truly warm or hot. When we get it the thing kept chucking DPF blockage warnings as a result.

The wife was horrified by the colour of crap coming out the back of it on the way home as I thrashed it in 3rd and 4th for a good hour down the motorway to get it home. Warning light never came back though.

So best thing to do for a diesel is give it a proper good run periodically. Any car will always go better after a good run :-D

If your car smokes particularly badly there can be a couple of things to look for, typically the fuel mixture is rich. Some dirty remaps that just crank up the fuel pressure also make you roll coal because it poors too much fuel in too.

Keep an eye out for tiny boost leaks, like not sealing round the hose joints and check for codes that suggest lambda sensor performance is poor and consider whether MAF meter may have seen better days. You'll not get a code to tell you MAF is dead though, so you have to fly by seat of your pants and gut instinct for that one. Of course you dont wanna have to replace MAF unless you're sure as you have to use genuine BOSCH and you're looking at 80/90 quid!

Use premium fuel (f.i. BP Ultimate), and do a long run with somewhat higher revs than usual, and see if it makes any differences.

Peter Pick-Up said:

Use premium fuel (f.i. BP Ultimate), and do a long run with somewhat higher revs than usual, and see if it makes any differences.

Click to expand...

I ran some premium Esso a few weeks ago, just to see if a premium diesel made any difference.. and to be honest, I think it was only marginal. On the other hand, the Esso station was just there when I happened to need a fill up. Their premium diesel might be not one of the best ones.

I'll seek out a BP garage, since it'll be worth running a tankful now and then. If it's less smoky by nature then it might also have a bit of cleaning effect generally.


Ralf S.

Artermis said:

If your car smokes particularly badly there can be a couple of things to look for, typically the fuel mixture is rich. Some dirty remaps that just crank up the fuel pressure also make you roll coal because it poors too much fuel in too.

Keep an eye out for tiny boost leaks, like not sealing round the hose joints and check for codes that suggest lambda sensor performance is poor and consider whether MAF meter may have seen better days. You'll not get a code to tell you MAF is dead though, so you have to fly by seat of your pants and gut instinct for that one. Of course you dont wanna have to replace MAF unless you're sure as you have to use genuine BOSCH and you're looking at 80/90 quid!

Click to expand...

My MAF is reasonably new (Bosch which I picked up for £65-ish last year) and the beast gives me about 54mpg most of the time, so I think the intake side is working okay.

It's taken ages for me to find all the intake hoses/clips... but I've tightened them up and most of them stay tight now. I'll be changing the oil and filters soon (sump guard off) so I'll double check everything... but I think it'll be okay.

I'll also clean out the intake manifold again. It used to collect oil, when the oil level was on MAX... but only filling the oil level to 80% has more or less cured that.

I'll bung some Cataclean in the tank too.. I'm interested to see what it contains (kerosene and <something> probably) and if it makes any difference. My beast has no DPF and the EGR valve isn't bothered by exhaust gases these days... so it breathes okay.

I've taken to holding the beast at 3000-3500 rpm after I've accelerated away from the toll booths at the Severn crossing... since it's windy out there and there are no people around to gas to death. That used to create a cloud of smoke that was very visible in my mirrors but lately there's been a lot less recently, so it looks like the beast is decoking itself with a few revs every day.


Ralf S.

Did you close the EGR completely?
It can and will cause massive smoking during accelerating...!
And it will mess up the entire inlet system with carbon and gunk...

Yes... there's a blanking plate on each end of the EGR valve.

I wanted to put one down at the exhaust end, so the EGR pipework would be closed off from the exhaust gas .. but the bolts down there look quite corroded and I didn't want to risk snapping one.

The inlet side also needed to be closed, since the EGR valve had a lot of oil in it. The inlet manifold collects a pool of oil if the oil level is high.. and some was finding its way into the EGR.

I've not had any problems for getting on 40,000 miles now.


Ralf S.

I did the same with my 1,9JTD Alfa GT, but I also went to a good remapper, and had the EGR deleted from the ECU..

(Be carefull though, secret agents from Greenpeace around here...)

did you look through the links i posted on fbc's
can reduce soot by up to 40%
Experiments using ferrocene as a diesel fuel additive, with varying fuel Fe concentrations from 0 to 200 ppm, indicate ∼30–40% decreases in particle mass, total particle volume, and black carbon emissions, and increases (approaching a factor of 5) in particle number concentrations associated with 10–30 nm Fe particles liberated during soot oxidation. Fe concentrations in overall particle emissions increase from 0.1% to 7.5% as the Fe catalyst is increased from 0 to 200 ppm.

Environmental implications of iron fuel borne catalysts and their effects on... | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/public..._diesel_particulate_formation_and_composition [accessed Jan 08 2018].

Peter Pick-Up said:

I did the same with my 1,9JTD Alfa GT, but I also went to a good remapper, and had the EGR deleted from the ECU..

(Be carefull though, secret agents from Greenpeace around here...)

Click to expand...

Same here however it was done before i bought it.

Egr off in ecu and blanked at egr (both sides) swirl flaps also removed, holes plugged and off in ecu.

Just need to blank the manifold side now and make a new blanking plate for the inlet so i can remove all the pipe work and egr completley (none of its serving a purpose and they are quite heavy).

I also run vpower nitro diesel all the time and started using redex diesel cleaner and redex cetane booster every 3 or 4 months, double shots of both to a full tank... done it twice now since sept... seems to run cleaner for a couple of weeks until i refuel a few times... doesnt feel much different but definatly less smoke under hard acceleration... lots id kike to do but money and weather is permitting.

sussexa said:

did you look through the links i posted on fbc's
can reduce soot by up to 40%
Experiments using ferrocene as a diesel fuel additive, with varying fuel Fe concentrations from 0 to 200 ppm, indicate ∼30–40% decreases in particle mass, total particle volume, and black carbon emissions, and increases (approaching a factor of 5) in particle number concentrations associated with 10–30 nm Fe particles liberated during soot oxidation. Fe concentrations in overall particle emissions increase from 0.1% to 7.5% as the Fe catalyst is increased from 0 to 200 ppm.

Environmental implications of iron fuel borne catalysts and their effects on... | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/public..._diesel_particulate_formation_and_composition [accessed Jan 08 2018].

Click to expand...

Yes, I had a look.

The threads and the products suggested seemed to focus mostly on DPFs and helping the car re-generate it at a lower temperature (requiring less diesel to be used to heat it, less soot out the back) ... but my old beast doesn't have a DPF as standard, so I'm not sure. Is there a particular product that I can investigate?


Ralf S.

dtimmins1985 said:

I also run vpower nitro diesel all the time and started using redex diesel cleaner and redex cetane booster every 3 or 4 months, double shots of both to a full tank... done it twice now since sept... seems to run cleaner for a couple of weeks until i refuel a few times... doesnt feel much different but definatly less smoke under hard acceleration... lots id kike to do but money and weather is permitting.

Click to expand...

That's pretty much what mine gets, apart from the vpower nitro.

Diesel cleaner is mostly kerosene so I brew my own.. although I don't have toluene or acetone lying around, so I can't get the exact formulation. Still, it's 90% of it..

My beast gets 50ml of 2-Ethyl Hexyl Nitrate per tank:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272091331195

This works out at 32p per tankful, so it's not too shocking. Occasionally I've double-dosed it but I can't say this improves things exponentially. 50-75ml seems to be optimal.

Meanwhile just hanging on to the revs for a few seconds at the same place every day looks like that's helping.

Next job will be to dismantle the inlet manifold and clean that out. A service and air filter change coming up in the next couple of weeks won't hurt either..

Ralf S.

Ralf S. said:

That's pretty much what mine gets, apart from the vpower nitro.

Diesel cleaner is mostly kerosene so I brew my own.. although I don't have toluene or acetone lying around, so I can't get the exact formulation. Still, it's 90% of it..

My beast gets 50ml of 2-Ethyl Hexyl Nitrate per tank:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272091331195

This works out at 32p per tankful, so it's not too shocking. Occasionally I've double-dosed it but I can't say this improves things exponentially. 50-75ml seems to be optimal.

Meanwhile just hanging on to the revs for a few seconds at the same place every day looks like that's helping.

Next job will be to dismantle the inlet manifold and clean that out. A service and air filter change coming up in the next couple of weeks won't hurt either..

Ralf S.

Click to expand...

Never used own brew's after my dads shogun shot its pump seals (well, the bio fuel caused it)... but never the less, not sure if it would damaged the seals in the HP pump.

Im guessing that your air filter is in the same location as mine (under the battery tray and ecu etc) - pain in the arse of a job, might be best to take the wheel arch liner out.

Latest update:

When I give the beast a large amount of throttle and hang on to the revs past 3000rpm for a while, I don't see a great cloud of smoke behind me any more... in fact, hardly any smoke at all. It looks like a few more revs now and again, and a chemical clean out (below) have helped.

When I serviced it this weekend, I checked all the hoses and clips around the turbo and inlet. Apart from one which was stripped... and only "quite" tight, it all seemed okay down there.

Since the tank was only 1/3 full, on the fuel gauge, I stuck a bottle of Cataclean in the tank and ran it like that for a couple of days until empty. Apart from it smells quite groovy, it's supposed to help with soot and deposits. It's a bit dear but I'd say that's helped greatly with the smoke. The car also feels a bit more lively.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cataclean...686541&hash=item33cf6696e1:g:lcsAAOSw6ShZPU4h


Otherwise I took the opportunity to re-attach the airbox and the little dibber-dobber box underneath, since the airbox had escaped from the locating lug and was rattling around a bit. It's a fair bit quieter now.

The only boring bits are that there's a dribble of coolant coming from *somewhere* - I suspect the water pump since that was replaced last year and the garage managed to nick the o-ring when fitting it, so I had to re-do it myself, to fit a new gasket.

I suspect I didn't use enough goo on the bolt that tightens into the water channel or something... (even worse if it's coming undone.. ) Still, the dribble is minor at the moment, and it's cold and wet out there, so it'll have to hang on..

And the near-side outer CV joint is more knacked than I thought. I already bought a new spider to fit on the inside.. but if the outer one has had enough as well it may be easier (i.e. cost the same) to fit a whole new drive-shaft. It's not done toooooo badly, at 156,000 miles.


Ralf S.