If it occurs to people that it may not be legal to drive petrol cars at some point in future there may be a lot who think 'now or never' and buy a thirsty V8 lol.

I've been looking at old cars on Ebay recently, stuff like mk2 Granada's and Cortinas I ran in my youth. I'm not about to buy one because they sell for big money now, most buyers would probably buy as an investment so only use it on Sunday and for shows where-as I'd use it as a daily, I wouldn't have time to pamper one and keep it rust free so any 'investment' would probably go the wrong way for me. The prices of classic cars are interesting though, everyone knows that a BMW 7 series is a much better car than a Granada but prices don't necessarily reflect that.. much of the market seems to be about people having cash today that they didn't have when they were younger so now they can afford to buy the car they always wanted even at the appreciated prices... Old Escorts once worth a couple of weeks wages now fetch crazy money now. We've become used to chip in key type immobilisers in more modern cars, any car could be vandalised parked up somewhere but one with chip'n'key is unlikely to get nicked as a thief isn't going to be able to start the engine... But older cars like the mk2 Granada are easily nicked, can be driven away by breaking the steering lock and hotwiring, and they are sought after as banger racing cars. Not so bad back in the day when most cars didn't have chip'n'key so your car was no more nickable than others parked beside it, the car might only have been worth £1k and didn't stand out from the crowd, but would think twice about driving the same car today worth £10k to the coast and going for a walk with the car parked in some backstreet carpark.

South African imports seem to be big on the classic car scene, can find a relatively rust free example of a lot of cars we ran in the UK in South Africa and sometimes better spec'd such as 3L engine'd Cortina's or more likely to have aircon. I might be interested in importing something like a mk2 Granada from South Africa myself if it would mean could get one relatively cheaply, haven't looked into it yet, anyone got any tips on how best to go about it?

If you P38 experts can't tell the difference between a real Vogue etc and a normal P38, why would anyone pay so much more for a real one? Why wouldn't a buyer rather save maybe 50%(?) on the buy price and stick a Vogue badge on the back? Even if they buy a real one, if they come to sell it other buyers might think it a potential fake?

I nearly suggested a 16mm or 5/8th plug socket because they're deep and readily available, but I didn't think one would handle that much torque.

I didn't know there was a difference between normal diesel and red diesel besides obviously dye being in red. Seen loads of engines run on red and not noticed more smoke compared to normal diesel.

At one time if you got done for using red diesel you got a fine and the vehicle confiscated. So if you ran an old low value diesel car and could prove you hadn't done much mileage, or if you changed old cars regularly (so could say you hadn't owned it long enough to have used much fuel), you could be better off running on red even if you had to pay a fine and got a car confiscated every few years.

23 Years ago I bought a cheap none-turbo diesel Astra from a mate for my commute as a 'put me on', my mate reckoned it would easily do 60mpg. Then he said you might as well take my spare fuel for it and put 3 x 20 litre cooking oil vats filled with some sort of fuel in the boot. I ended up doing a 1000 mile round trip in that car, took the 3 tubs with me, didn't have to buy any fuel during the entire trip. He paid 16p a litre for that stuff - which did seem to look a bit red lol. Arrived home with quarter of a tank of fuel left in the car and nearly a full tub in the boot. 1000 Miles for less than £15. I then bought a much larger diesel car.

BrianH wrote:

It was raised as a query for the CAZ checker - which currently covers Bath and Birmingham, I believe Bristol and Leeds will be added as their schemes get to the point where the required standards are clear. As far as I knew, Leeds wasn't yet active? (your closer to the place than me, so maybe you know better on this point?) Bristol still seems to be deciding which scheme they are going to use.

Good point on range about removing the petrol tank, but it still leaves you stuck if you turn up at a filling station with little left in the tank and find its out of order. Round here the closest station to me doesn't have another one working within 15 miles. And its not like you could turn up with a jerry can if its on gas only!

Cheers 😁

Since we're on an electric vehicle related thread - Probably still a better situation than running out of electric charge with an EV, could use a Calor bottle as a Jerry can (would help to put plumbing in place as a pre-emptive measure to be ready for this situation). With an extra tank of gas range is likely to be far better than an EV, when you do find gas can refill/recharge quicker. The 'extra tank' won't weigh a ton or cost £50k to buy and fit.

The other day when I was converting the Volvo the tank I ordered for it hadn't arrived by the time I'd completed the engine conversion, so I just put this on-site refillable forklift tank in the boot and connected it up to the gas feed running to the engine bay so I could calibrate the system before the tank I'd ordered arrived. Easy enough to pick this full tank up and put it in the boot on my own and the tank holds about 60 litres of gas. Proper refillable 4 hole job with built in 80% fill limiter etc, with the acme to bayonet adapter directly attached it fills quite a bit quicker than filling a petrol tank. I could easily add facility to (say) my own car to be able to just put this tank in the boot whenever I want for the extra capacity and range.

Great work and looking down the Youtube comments someone else did the same engine swap earlier.

Couldn't help noticing the wire touching the exhaust at 3:28 though lol.

It's probably the first time I've heard of the Toyota problem so I don't know the conditions Toyota owners have had ruined engines under, I don't have enough info to draw comparisons etc.

Can say that with the Elgrands all owners seem to only use the recommended fully synthetic oil, Nissan did a 'fuelling' recall on them during which they checked condition of catalytic convertors (Nissan are aware cats fail and when cats fail it can bugger the engine but they blamed it on over-fuelling), it doesn't seem to make a difference if the engine was a clean runner right up to the point of failing or burned a bit of oil for years before failing.

I can see what differences the fuelling recall made to fuelling when I'm calibrating LPG systems (can compare pinj between those that have had the recall done and those that haven't), they did lean off the top end a bit and prevent a very lean mixture still being injected on over-run in the recall but the recall seems to have done nothing to prevent failures. For running on LPG it doesn't really matter if the recall has been done or not, mixture on LPG can be the same, just a matter of setting multiplier at the high load end correctly and filtering short pulses on over-run.

I'm not saying oil starvation hasn't wrecked a few engines but nobody has yet suffered the same type of engine failure when cats have been removed.

Bri, just to clarify, which city(s) reckon they will or may allow monofuel LPG vehicles to avoid emissions zone charges?

On range, there are not a lot of vehicles on which removal of the petrol tank would make space for much extra LPG capacity but there are some..

Morat wrote:

I'm suddenly motivated to get the Austin 7 on an exhaust tester before puttering round London :)

Hehe I'd have a Mk1 Granada or maybe an early Rover SDI.

Wonder if some of these £90k restored Classics will be bought by people who don't want an electric or small vehicle but want to avoid ULEZ charges...

Gilbertd wrote:

Not sure what car it is that Simon is talking about but I suspect Japanese and someone has come up with the same implausible theory that affects early versions of the Toyota 1ZZ-FE engine fitted in the MR2 Roadster. The theory is that the cat innards start to break up and somehow make their way back into the engine so wear the bores.

Talking about the Elgrands.

I didn't think it very plausible myself at first either but now I know for fact that it does happen and have suffered it myself.

I reckon the way dust from blocked exhaust makes it's way back into the engine (where it acts as a grinding paste) is due to the excess backpressure and the exhaust valve remaining open past TDC on the exhaust stroke into the beginning of the intake stroke, at which point the inlet valve will have already opened a bit dumping some of the cylinder pressure* into the intake plenum... Now there's a situation where the exhaust is under far more pressure than the cylinder and the exhaust valve is open.

*At this point in the cycle the cylinder would usually be at low pressure, the exhaust valve has been open during the entire upstroke of the piston, pressure should be low enough for intake charge to start flowing in through the intake valve as soon as it opens. Except now because of the blockage the exhaust itself is still under pressure, the cylinder cannot be below exhaust pressure so cylinder pressure is at high exhaust pressure, so when the inlet valve does open cylinder pressure flows the wrong way into the intake... which lowers the cylinder pressure, which (since both valves are open) allows exhaust to flow at least into the cylinder and some will even flow into the intake plenum.

Like Bri says, the above effect will be worse on a 2 cylinder bank engine than on a 1 cylinder bank engine... the 1 bank engine might not run with a really severe exhaust blockage but the 2 bank will because one bank's exhaust isn't blocked. And some of that exhaust that's being dumped back into the plenum will be a high dose of EGR for the other cylinder bank on a 2 bank engine but not a high enough dose to vastly limit that bank's power. Or put another way - on a single cylinder bank engine it isn't only the exhaust restriction that lowers power output but also any backpressure can see the intake getting a lot of EGR further reducing it's power, but on a 2 bank engine the EGR couldn't lessen the amount of fresh air getting to the bank without the exhaust restriction by much more than maybe 50%.

I would be interested to learn about any cities that will allow privately owned LPG monofuel vehicles to be exempt from emissions zone charges...
But does 'meet the minimum emission standards' (and Bri's next line quote 'Euro status') mean only certain vehicles could take advantage?

I do know that some cities (e.g. Leeds) allow LPG converted taxis to pay only the same as EV's to work in the emissions zone. It would be great if they extended this to private vehicles.

Around 18 months ago I was asked to tender to convert a fleet of 30 taxi's for use in Leeds, I quoted a lowish price per vehicle of just under £1k. The contract went to a firm in the NorthWest who charge £650 per taxi. Recently a delivery driver realised I converted vehicles to LPG, told me his mate 'is in charge of taxis' and asked if he could pass my contact details on to his mate.. Of course I said yes.. the 'in charge of taxis' bloke phoned me, he too would only pay up to around £700 to convert a taxi. At that kind of rate to convert a taxi other firms are welcome to the contracts, I'll continue converting other vehicles and will get some work in repairs when these taxis go wrong.

I can see why people would save money fitting a stainless system over a more expensive OEM exhaust, in this case they're saving money.

Remember Janspeed from my boy racer days, didn't know they were still going!

Obviously if you're paying for OEM cats it'll be expensive.

Is there no in-between - A mild steel system that lasts nearly as long as OEM but cheaper than stainless? The last exhaust I bought was for a Grand Voyager, cost me £90. Went for that instead of a stainless system that would have cost many times more.

It occurred to me to bring this subject up here because I'm on another forum where the subject vehicle has a problem with failing front cats (they have 4 cats in total) causing blockages that then see cat material enter the engine wrecking it. Someone bought an expensive stainless system complete with aftermarket front cats but the engine has recently started using loads of oil and the most likely reason for that is failed front cats (which in this case would be the expensive aftermarket stainless cats). My advice would have been keep the original exhaust but decore the front cats.... It would be ironic if the owner spent over the odds for aftermarket front cats and full stainless system to prevent problems if the expensive mods caused the same problems as the original exhaust system can cause while if they'd simply kept the existing exhaust but had cats cut out they wouldn't have had any problems.

Seen on a few forums people seem to prize stainless exhausts, but why?
Back in the 70's a mild steel exhaust might only have lasted a few years so a stainless system though more expensive could work out cheaper than changing a mild steel system a few times during the life of the vehicle. These days exhausts last a lot longer but people seem willing to fit a stainless system even on an old car, the exhaust will then outlive the car but a mild steel system fitted on an old car might also outlive the car and even if the mild steel system needed replacing once again it still might work out cheaper than the stainless system. Stainless systems look nice and shiny but you can't see the system when it's under the car and you don't worry about the look of other bits you can't see under the car...

davew wrote:

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the (currently) £12.50/day 24/7 ULEZ Charge is being extended in October too of course:
https://lruc.content.tfl.gov.uk/simple-map-of-ulez-expansion-area.pdf

That's an increase to about 10 times the area...

I wonder if some of the cleaner busses have had LPG / CNG supplementation fitted, could help clean up emissions further even on the newer diesels.

£150k for a restored 1976 Classic on the same link... I wonder how much it cost to buy the car unrestored and restore it, how much time the restoration took, if there are plenty buyers for that kind of thing?

It would be a bit big brother-ish to flatly ban advertising of the most polluting cars, it isn't as though the average 16 year old will think a new SUV would make them look cool, rush out and buy one. I might understand forcing manufacturers to list emissions data on ads but don't they do that already?

hugh wrote:

A similar thing happened to me last week, poor tickover and a struggling throttle response and variations between normal and abysmal
Tested the battery voltage with the engine running - oh oh this doesn't look good.
Gave the alternator a whack with my trusty hammer -and she's been OK ever since.
As a precaution I've ordered up a spare alternator from a good P38 breaker on eBay and will get new brushes + voltage regulator (if available) to overhaul the existing

I've told the story about when I had to drive back to Yorkshire from mid Scotland using a generator to power vehicle electrics due to a failed alternator on a bank hol weekend a few years ago (different model vehicle but same problem) lol.. At first that alternator started working again if given a whack but the period of working between whacks became shorter and shorter until it wouldn't work even straight after a whack. When home I fixed the alternator myself the next day for pennies, just fitted new brushes but not available in Scotland on a bank hol weekend.

Gilbertd wrote:

Simon, if you look at his sig, it's a '99 fitted with a Prins system. Hence my mention of the emulator unit.

Sorry, yes I missed that.

Agreed the Prins injector emulator unit is likely causing the running on petrol problem.

Also the Prins system won't be wired to the OBD port.