Cylinder Blocked

To quote Autoguide, "2018 Toyota Camry Recalled for Unusual Engine Issue."

It doesn't affect us here in the UK, The Camry has gone the same way as the Honda Accord.

The story is here.

Apparently, there are some engines out there, where the (quoting Autoguide again) "engines could have pistons larger in diameter than the original specification."

In other words, they are too fat.

How could an engine even work if the pistons are too fat?

And how could that even happen?

Here's the picture they use from the production line:

No clues there then.

Infernal Combustion Engine

The new Honda Civic looks pretty spectacular:

That is going by Editor-in-Chief of Top Gear Mag, Charlie Turner's, comment that "...our cover story, where the battle for the hot-hatch heartland continues with the arrival of the fifth-generation Civic Type-R"

 

Ah, of course - it's the Type-R - that explains the spoiler.

 

Or maybe, while us subscribers to this fine magazine get our own covers, maybe we should also get our own welcome message from Mr.Turner.

 

In case you're wondering, that's an Aston-Martin Valkyrie not a Honda Civic.

 

Meanwhile, on Page 20 of the mag, we learn that Volvo's high-performance division, Polestar, will now be exclusively building electric cars.  Which is a shame.  But it also fits in with the big Volvo news from last week - Carmaker Volvo has said all new models will have an electric motor from 2019.

 

They were actually quite clever with their wording there.

 

My own car for example has several electric motors - at least one in each door.

 

They got the headlines though.  It plans to launch five fully electric models between 2019 and 2021 and a range of hybrid models.  But it will still be manufacturing earlier models that have only combustion engines.  And those hybrids will still have some carbon being ignited - so it is nothing more than an indication of the direction that the car industry is moving in.

 

Further illustrated by the story a day later that France is set to ban the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040.  No indication of what happens to internally combustion engined cars bought in France in December 2039 though - or those bought over the national borders that may get driven in to France.

 

I suppose they still have 22 and a half years to fine-tune the rules...

 

...and to come to some sort of agreement in Paris.  Probably not involving this foolish fossil...

who may well be personally adding to the world's fossil fuel stocks by then.

Everything's Getting Smaller

We used to buy our Coca-Cola in 2 litre bottles.

Then suddenly, last year, they became 1.75 litre bottles.

For the same price.

Were they hoping we wouldn't notice?

Apparently not.  And we're supposed to be happy about it too.

That's still three-quarters of litre more than some Mondeo drivers will be getting though.

This car review from The Telegraph caught my eye this week.  It's of the Ford Mondeo 1.0 EcoBoost.

Don't know why they used this picture though - that's a Ford Mondeo Titanium Tdci.

The review is by Andrew English who is described as "Motoring Correpondent, Telegraph Cars" - I wonder what other sorts of correspondent Telegraph Cars have.  He gives it three out of five stars.  Andrew English also provided the review for Auto Express and gave it 3 out of 5 stars there too.

He says that the engine looks small in the engine bay - I would have liked to see a photo, the nearest I could find anywhere was this Ford diagram:

He also quotes Ulrich Koesters, Ford’s vehicle line director for larger cars, who says: “most customers do not trust that such a small displacement engine has enough torque to pull a large car like the Mondeo.”  I can well believe that - it would be a concern of mine - even though it is turbo-charged.

I am guessing that this car is being aimed at the fleet market where engine size and economy play their part with tax incentives.  I have visited a few Ford dealerships over the past year or two and you never see a Mondeo on the lot.  I guess Focuses and Fiestas have gotten bigger so these have taken over the family car market along with the SUVs, people carriers and German upmarket marques.  So when I say "Everything's Getting Smaller" that doesn't include Focuses or Fiestas (or Corsas or Golfs or just about any other car too)

Can't see the average sales rep being happy driving one of these although it does have a claimed top speed of 124mph - but it might struggle if you put some passengers in it.  Probably won't be a big hit with the Caravan Club either.

Unless...

Diesel Do Nicely

No dey won't.

(Works best in a Scouse accent)

I don't often do serious articles.  One of my earliest was my second ever post in November 2009 in which I sort of looked at how lean-burn engines were a better, cleaner bet than catalytic converters.

Also around that time, the Government was trying to encourage people to buy diesel cars since better fuel economy meant less Carbon Monoxide & Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.

Yes - diesel.

Things have changed a bit since then.

People are suddenly more interested in NOx (Nitrogen Monoxide & Nitrogen Dioxide) - these are dangerous gases now linked to respiratory illnesses, stroke and even diabetes.  Scary.

Last night, Channel 4's documentary strand, Dispatches, reported on the situation - fronted by their reporter, Morland Sanders:

Here's a link to the official blurb.

Basically, lots of people were convinced to buy diesel cars on the grounds of fuel efficiency and ecological advantage and they are now being told that it was a bad move and NOx levels are a serious problem, especially in certain urban areas such as East London.

A few people don't come out of this very well at all.  This is Mike Hawes, boss of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders who didn't think that it was cheating for manufacturers to tape up shutlines of their cars when performing official fuel-efficiency tests.

Then there's this guy - Barry Gardiner MP.  I was going to use the first picture, then I spotted the second, then the third - choose which one you like the most:

He is Shadow Minister for The Environment and he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Trade & Industry when the then-Labour Government decided to encourage diesel take-up.  He admits, "Hands up, can I say there’s absolutely no question that the decision we took was the wrong decision" - but he says that with a big grin on his face and then adds in lots of what he believes to be mitigating factors.

If I thought he was genuinely sorry, I've had accepted that.

He went on to try and make it more party-political with his statement, "Certainly the impact of that decision has been a massive problem for public health in this country. The real tragedy is after we set up the committee on the medical effects of air pollution and it reported back in 2010 we’ve had five years that this government has done nothing about it."

The Tories response is just as bad, “We’ve acted on the Committee’s findings through providing effective health advice to the public. Air quality has improved significantly in recent decades and we are investing heavily"

Recent decades!?  so they are trying to take credit for what happened before they were in power?

And what health advice are they talking about?  I've not noticed any and I'm a member of the public.

I did feel a bit educated by the programme last night though when they did an experiment on NOx exposure to a pedestrian, a cyclist, a bus passenger and a motorist.

You would expect the cyclist to inhale the most, followed by the walker then the bus passenger and finally the motorist cocooned in his car.

It was actually the reverse that was true.  Must remember to put by heating system onto re-circ.

No mention was made of this man:

 

 Rudolf Diesel.

Now to lighten the mood, here is an American cop joining in with Taylor Swift:

Mrs. Thatch Wasn't a Complete Nutter After All!

As anyone who knows me will testify, I believe Mrs.T to be the Devil Incarnate - guilty of many varied crimes against humanity. The most serious being leading us into a War that could have been prevented by letting the Argies know we were actually intereseted in the Falklands after all. This was at a time in 1982 when her economic policies were not working and her Government was actually quite unpopular so she needed something to distract the general public and make everyone feel good about her. Yes, I know Tony Blair also led us into a pointless and unnecessary war - I haven't a clue why, but he did it with the knowledge that it may well make him very unpopular - and it did!

On a more motoringy front, Mrs.T was pivotal in the demise of British Leyland deciding to sell it off at a bargain price to her chum Roland Smith, or, more precisely, BAe, the Company he led. There were certain "protections" and "guarantees" in place such as BAe had to be committed to BL for at least five years and, sure enough, as soon as five years had passed, BAe disposed of it to BMW for a very nice profit thank you very much. BMW were not geared up to deal with a then mass-market car manufacturer and subsequently had to dispose of it themselves and the rest is history.

All of this made me very worried by Saint Jeremy Clarkson's column in the latest issue of Top Gear Magazine. I'll not reproduce what he wrote because it's not my place and I'd probably get sued by someone anyway but the gist of what interested me is that Mrs.T was a seemingly lone voice at the start of her tenure in speaking up for lean-burn engines rather than catalytic converters as a way of cleaning up exhaust gases. This would have dramatically reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emitted but nobody apart from Chemistry Grad Mrs.T was too worried about CO2 then. I must admit that I do remember Ford and a few other companies dropped/postponed development of lean-burn around that time because World Governments were not interested.

I have an awful lot of time for Jeremy's views, despite him being further to the right than Tory Central, he does put over his views in an intelligent and amusing way so if he's right on this one, and I've no reason to doubt it, then Mrs.T did actually speak some sense once and nobody was prepared to listen.

Maybe because she came over as a complete nutter.