VW touran anygood

TiTheRev

mikey72 wrote: »

To be fair, most of the press say the Skoda is a great car as it is produced by by the Czech factories, and far better than any of the VW's produced in Germany.

The Octavia is rated well above the A3 and the Golf it shares it's platform with.

So not so much a cheap VW, but a superior product with expensive poorer copies.

The last JD reports show Skoda as #3 and VW as #8 for reputation/build etc, but don't you think that this is based purely on an owners 'expectation' of what the brand would be?! A VW owner buys the car expecting it to be solid/reliable/quality, but the average Skoda driver will still be tainted by the 'previous' reputation of the Skoda brand and as such be more than pleased that you can buy an Audi/VW/Seat quality car for a Skoda price?

FYI, Skodas are made in the Czech republic, but so are VW's. Models with the same platform are made in the same factories, no matter which brand. VW's are made in Russia/America/Brazil/South Africa too!

To suggest a Skoda is a superior product with expensive copies, is a bit like suggesting Matsui are a quality TV manufacturer, but Samsung (who make the screens for most TV's) are an expensive copy! There are other refinements that make up the difference in the package.

johnnyroper

TiTheRev wrote: »

By definition then, in some cases it makes fuel consumption go up too

A DPF does not suffocate the engine, but help clear the soot that would naturally be there anyway. As Bigjl suggests, it is not ideal for those who are only doing Urban mileage (to the shops and back every few days), but for a cabbie who would hope to be doing a 10+ mile trip every day and keeping the engine warm with constant use, it would be fine? Overall the pro's outway the con's IMO.

DPF's are a crap idea unless the car is a reps motorway mile muncher it does nothing more than keep the fools in Brussels happy.

On the average taxi it would be no good as taxi's generally potter around towns/cities and spend long periods idling.Obviously they get the airport runs but in reality these are not often enough to keep the DPF free flowing and as such clog with soot and require regenerating.In some cases they get so far gone they need renewing or removing and jet washing to clear.

harveybobbles

TiTheRev wrote: »

FYI, VW now do a repair kit for the ABS unit, which is £128 + vat and even that can be covered by an extended warranty claim (up to 5year old cars) due to the issues they've had, as long as you've been a VW customer with your services etc.

Before you slate someone/something, i'd take some time to check your facts 1st

There's nothing wrong with DPF's as long as they are recycled at the required intervals. They reduce emmisions and make the engine more efficient, so would be good for a cabbie?

We've been repairing the usints from day one, if you look back to some of my older posts from 2 years ago!

I was talking to a cabbie once and they wasnt allowed any VW 2.0TDi product due to them having the DPF as they spend 90% of their time/journeys plodding around town. They are all told to buy the 1.9's. Which is why I said what I did. Duh...

TiTheRev

harveybobbles wrote: »

We've been repairing the usints from day one, if you look back to some of my older posts from 2 years ago!

It's probably you that's caused all the issues with the 'fixed' ones then

harveybobbles wrote:

I was talking to a cabbie once and they wasnt allowed any VW 2.0TDi product due to them having the DPF as they spend 90% of their time/journeys plodding around town. They are all told to buy the 1.9's. Which is why I said what I did. Duh...

I was talking to a cabbie once too. We have supplied two entire fleets of local cab firms with Passats that do have DPF's and none of them have any problems with it. We are near Heathrow/Gatwick, so they do get a few good runs every week, but that was my point in the original post.

bigjl

If you are talking to drivers around Gatwick and Heathrow then you are more than likely talking to drivers that only do airport stuff, one in and one out all day.

A DPF equipped car would be perfect for this kind of driver, however these drivers are a very small minority in the minicab trade, especially if we focus on a large city, such as London.

The Zafiras I was talking about are used by the London Ambulance Service, they are the most unreliable vehicles we have ever used, and the problems all relate to the same thing, incomplete regen cycles and the fact that they are never given long journeys down the motorway in top gear, exacerbated by ours being auto, apparently the DPF will only regen about a certain nuber of revs in 6 the gear, this is specific to the manual so the auto may be different.

We were advised by Vauxhall to not buy DPF equipped vehicles due to the mainly Urban use, however the same DPF problems also affected Yorkshire Ambulance Service and they have manuals and a much higher % of rural use.

Anything with a DPF is a bad idea, until the tech gets perfected, I would think that VAG would be the first, perhaps alngside Merc to get these things right, until then I would avoid and DPF equipped vehicle for minicab or taxi use, as when the only DPF equipped vehicle was pretty much the 2.2 HDi in the C5 (though operhaps in other vehilces by the PSA group) then it was consodered risky to buy the 2.2 HDi for town or taxi useage. Though the system in the C5 would probably be better as it had an additive which means it would clean itself as it went along, rather than have regen cycles every few thousand miles such as in most other DPF equipped cars.

I would strongly suggest using a hybrid like the Prius if it is big enough, and I don't care about the long term CO2 caused by construction of the car, but they are doing huge reliable miles around London, all the big Private Hire companies have large fleets of them, if it is big enough and you run about town they are a good car to consider, especially when you can have them converted to LPG aswell. Or you could convert the 1.5 not sure about the more recent 1.8.

Better still, as siggested stick to the older 1.9 TDi, that is a good lump, capable of huge miles, and use as a minicab aswell.

goldspanners

TiTheRev wrote: »

By definition then, in some cases it makes fuel consumption go up too

A DPF does not suffocate the engine, but help clear the soot that would naturally be there anyway. As Bigjl suggests, it is not ideal for those who are only doing Urban mileage (to the shops and back every few days), but for a cabbie who would hope to be doing a 10+ mile trip every day and keeping the engine warm with constant use, it would be fine? Overall the pro's outway the con's IMO.

so when mpg goes down then fuel consumption goes up.i don't know why you felt the need to define that? obvious enough surely?

Diesel Particulate Filter. its filtering out soot from the exhaust,the soot sits inside the filter and egr valve blocking up the exit for emmissions. if it all came out when it goes through its regen cycle then nobody would suffer from blocked egr valves or dpf's.

how do you explain people buying newer models of thier current car (without dpf) and noticing reduced mpg in thier new car (with dpf). same engine just fitted with one of these dpf's?