1.9TDI FR 150 Emissions Test MoT Fail Advice

[iammooks]

My 1.9TDI FR 150 failed its MoT today.

Looking at the paperwork, it was a fail on 'Plated Value', coming in at 0.84m-1 with a max permitted of 0.70m-1.

I've got the car booked in to be looked at on Wednesday, but in the meantime I've had a few different bits of advice - from having the engine carbon cleaned, to replacing the fuel filter, to buying a bottle of Redex and running that.

Obviously the costs range from around £130 for the carbon clean to a tenner for the Redex, and I'd like to make sure that I don't get bent over and well, you know...

With a 14 year old car, I know there are a lot of things it could be, but if anyone has had this kind of thing happen to them, it'd be great to hear from you and what ended up working. I'm a bit short of cash at the moment, so don't want to spend a fortune, but at the same time, I don't want to buy a bottle of Wynns, then a fuel filter, then shell out for the carbon clean if it's just better to do the carbon clean straight off.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Compo1]

Carbon clean, oil change and filter, fuel filter and air filter in that order.

Friendly with a garage local to me i drink with the owner and he does carbon cleaning his biggest customers are taxi drivers failing on emmisons. 98% pass after a carbon clean according to him.

 

[bruceR]

As far as I am led to believe, our diesels if this age only need to pass a soot test. I always blast it in 3rd prior to MOT and always pass (touch wood)


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[iammooks]

Carbon clean, oil change and filter, fuel filter and air filter in that order.

Friendly with a garage local to me i drink with the owner and he does carbon cleaning his biggest customers are taxi drivers failing on emmisons. 98% pass after a carbon clean according to him.

Thanks for this - a lot of what I know about engine cleaning comes from the snake oil stories that used to go around years ago - from what I've seen, lots has changed since then.

I checked my fuel filter after my first post and it looks pretty tired, so I'm going to change that as well, just to do what I can to make it pass. That and the fact the carbon cleaning place seems eager to change it themselves, and it looks like that's adding a bit of a chunk of cash on top of the clean.

With any luck, it should help wth performance as well as helping pass the MoT, so that can't be a bad thing!

 

[iammooks]

As far as I am led to believe, our diesels if this age only need to pass a soot test. I always blast it in 3rd prior to MOT and always pass (touch wood)


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Pretty much every other year, I've taken the car up the dual carriageway before taking it to the test centre, and it's passed all the emissions tests without any trouble. I ended up having to deal with the centre rear seatbelt jamming this time round, so I had to skip it this year and the engine was more or less cold when it got there. While I know they've introduced new emissions regulations since I had my last MoT, it does seem odd that this time round, that's what it fails on...

 

[iammooks]

Managed to duck out between the rain showers today to put the new fuel filter in. MoT or not, it needed a change. I'm not sure what colour to call it...

I drove out to Euro Car Parts this morning to pick it up and was keeping a close eye on the rear, and even under hard acceleration from cold, there was no visible smoke or soot.

I've seen a few sites suggest that the carbon clean will improve performance as well, so we'll wait and see - it'd be a nice bonus.

 

[Compo1]

Managed to duck out between the rain showers today to put the new fuel filter in. MoT or not, it needed a change. I'm not sure what colour to call it...

I drove out to Euro Car Parts this morning to pick it up and was keeping a close eye on the rear, and even under hard acceleration from cold, there was no visible smoke or soot.

I've seen a few sites suggest that the carbon clean will improve performance as well, so we'll wait and see - it'd be a nice bonus.

Let us know how you get on mate.

 

[iammooks]

Retest was today and it passed no trouble.

When it failed, the emissions were 0.84m-1. After a new fuel filter, some fuel system cleaning and a trip up the A23/M23 and back, it posted a 0.43m-1 - which is the lowest it's been in years.

I was nervous it was going to be right on the limit or something, but that's nearly half what it was before.

Worth saying that I didn't get the carbon clean done in the end, and ended up getting the garage to put a fuel system cleaner in instead, but it does seem to have worked and ended up costing less. It would be nice to know what made the biggest difference though - the filter or the cleaner.

Now to change the cambelt...

Thanks for all the help - this time last week I was thinking it was going to be the end for me and diesels, but at least I've got an extra year out of it now...

 

[Zardoz]

Do you know what cleaner the garage used? Noticed the MOT place I take mine had loads of Wynns on the shelf last time I was there.

 

[Sharpy]

Itd be interesting to also know if running premium diesel will help with emissions, since starting to only use VPower diesel ive noticed much less black smoke out of the back of mine.

 

[iammooks]

Do you know what cleaner the garage used? Noticed the MOT place I take mine had loads of Wynns on the shelf last time I was there.

I'm guessing it was something like Wynns. I did ask, but they were really vague about it. I think that's because they charged me £20-odd for something I could probably have bought for a tenner, and they wanted it to sound like some miracle system cleaner I could only get through them. In the end I wasn't going to complain - with all the stress of the MoT fail I just wanted to get it through.

Up until now, the only advisories and fails I've had have been on things I can either change myself, or have some understanding of, but when you've got an emissions fail, it's not like you can do one thing and then test it, unless you've got a friend in a garage...

 

[iammooks]

Itd be interesting to also know if running premium diesel will help with emissions, since starting to only use VPower diesel ive noticed much less black smoke out of the back of mine.

It's hard to say - I've read that if you run a tank through every 1000 miles, the extra detergents premium is supposed to include will clean the engine. At the same time though, you can replace your fuel, oil and air filters for less than £30 and do an oil change for around the same amount, so who knows? I doubt it'll hurt though, so I'll probably stick a tank of premium in every December and see what difference it makes.

The biggest issue for me was probably the miles I do - I did 2,000 miles last year and that's probably not doing the engine much.

 

[iammooks]

Failed on emissions again today. Average value was 0.74, so just over, but what worried me was that on some tests it was 0.56 (pass) and on others it was as high as 1.38. Is that any cause for concern or fairly standard for it to be up and down like that? At least it seems to be steadily working its way down...

Peak 1: 1.38
Peak 2: 0.63
Peak 3: 1.26
Peak 4: 0.57
Peak 5: 1.09
Peak 6: 0.56

I've got some Millers Diesel Power EcoMax in there at the moment, and did two A-Road blasts in it before the test, but other than just ragging the crap out of it over the weekend, Is there anything else I could be doing?

I changed the oil and filter in July, the air filter in the past six months and the fuel filter in January of last year.

 

[Nam-uk]

I use this https://shop.dieselrhino.co.uk/ use to use millers, car not used alot theses days but when i do i try not todo short journeys, thing is every time i use this the car smokes less but it hardly smokes which is not bad for a pd150, changed fuel filter on 49k (2011) and recent changed it as i had a spare (64k) as like a nob i put bloody unleaded in, cars fine though lol grrr i tell ya rhino come in handy for that issue as it lubricates also it last ages per bottle.
since 2011 ive been using edge 5-30 and now titanium also genuine oil or bosch oil filters, did engine flush when i first bought it and not done it since, only reason is the seat history i was getting mixed what oil used, also had a terraclean around 5 years ago, never had a smoke test fail.

 

[AndrewJB]

I've put a few bottles of Wynn's in mine, MOT due at end of Feb, I know mine is smoking (whitey/blue haze) as its showing a missfire on cylinder 4 and also injector 4 is reading high, hoping the connection on injector just needs cleaning up or will throw a new injector in.

 

[iammooks]

I'm going to clean the EGR and the intake manifold tomorrow with Mr Muscle and hope that has an effect. To my knowledge it's not been cleaned in fifteen years and at the very least, it can't hurt.

I'll look into a Terraclean or similar once I've got the MoT out of the way - I know I can get the emissions as low as 0.4, and I like the idea of trying to get it as low as I can, so I'll probably start paying more attention to working on the engine itself next year.


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[bruceR]

I'm going to clean the EGR and the intake manifold tomorrow with Mr Muscle and hope that has an effect. To my knowledge it's not been cleaned in fifteen years and at the very least, it can't hurt.

I'll look into a Terraclean or similar once I've got the MoT out of the way - I know I can get the emissions as low as 0.4, and I like the idea of trying to get it as low as I can, so I'll probably start paying more attention to working on the engine itself next year.


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I wouldn’t poke about in the intake manifold unless you intend taking it off. Just remove the EGR and give it a good clean out (use brake fluid, scraper, screwdriver, toothbrush).
If you dislodge anything into intake manifold then it’ll go straight into your engine.


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[iammooks]

I wouldn’t poke about in the intake manifold unless you intend taking it off. Just remove the EGR and give it a good clean out (use brake fluid, scraper, screwdriver, toothbrush).
If you dislodge anything into intake manifold then it’ll go straight into your engine.

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For sure - I'll be super careful if I end up doing that.

What I'll probably do is take off the throttle body and have a look in the manifold to see just how bad things are, and will make a decision then.

Seeing @Andrewwright 's manifold here has given me more sleepless nights than I can count.

 

[Andrewwright]

For sure - I'll be super careful if I end up doing that.

What I'll probably do is take off the throttle body and have a look in the manifold to see just how bad things are, and will make a decision then.

Seeing @Andrewwright 's manifold here has given me more sleepless nights than I can count.

Still a bit more inside but looking ok so far. Spent about 30 mins on it total so far. Degreaser is by far the best stuff to use.

Correct about the intake and crap going in but mine had a build up on cylinder 3 so heads probably coming off to . Wouldn't have seen the build up if I hadn't took it off.

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[akchappers]

I’d personally rag the crap out of it . Third or fourth uphill always seems to work . Make sure it’s red hot when it goes in for mot too