Missed opportunity for Ford??

No. Oddly enough neither does the phaeton with the tuareg V10. Heavier cars!

...great example - road rally is just like real road driving conditions isn't it? :p

Engine noise was 1 example, and you're confusing the sound with noise

- nothing novaesque about a nice V6 or V5 warble.

So you're not disputing soot production? or lack of 'revvyness'? Both these eat into the fun factor if you ask me, and a 'sporty' (whatever that means) car is meant to be fun yes?

Vented discs wont reduce pad wear, you need proper brakes with sensible sized discs and calipers for the application. I'm sure the Pug 205 derv wasn't designed with blatting around a track in mind.

We agree on one thing, Golf MKIV suspension/chassis combo sucks :)

Anyway I digress, my original opinion stands - Sporty diesels, aren't. Don't recall every saying diesels couldn't match on power alone.

Nah, the best must be the 180bhp Turbo Petrol, surely.

And how many decent Diesel engines have you encountered ? As I said in my other post, the number of decent performance (ie, 200bhp+) Diesel engines can be counted on your fingers !

Unless your truck/car make loony power, I find it very hard to beleive you can keep up with the new BMW 330d !

What kind of ridiculous statement is that ?

You can have a 150bhp Golf, with either a Petrol or Diesel engine. The Diesel will match the performance, and be a HEAP more economical. You can have a 180bhp Audi A4, with either a Petrol or Diesel engine. The Diesel will match the performance, and be a HEAP more economical. You can soon have a 220bhp-ish 3-Series Beemer, with either a Petrol or Diesel engine. The Diesel will match the performance, and be a HEAP more economical.

For any given power figure, the Diesel WILL be more economical, and a nicer drive to boot. Performance will be almost identical to the equivalently powered Petrol car. The only flaw, is the higher purchase price of the Diesel in the first place.

Clearly that's because it has a 30bhp power defecit !!!!

The Audi A4 with the 180bhp diesel, will certainly be able to keep up with your Volvo.

That's cos he's faulty !

I'd love to own a Diesel - unfortunately, all the ones making decent power are still loony money :)

So ?

My current 200bhp 2.0 4-cyl 16v Turbo Petrol car doesn't make a nice V6 or V5 warble. I care about this much ||

Again, so what ?

That's a matter of opinion :) For me, the opposite is true. The more you have to rev the engine, the less fun it becomes - think VTec. A long hard drive becomes VERY tiresome after the novelty wears off.

What Sporty diesels are you thinking of ? Do you think the 150bhp Diesel Golf is less sporty than it's 150bhp Petrol counterpart ? Do you think the 180bhp Diesel A4 is less sporty than it's 180bhp Petrol counterpart ?

I'm talking about the engine, not the car. All the reviews I've read, of the

A diesel will be approximately 40% more economical than an equivalently powerful petrol car. However a diesel will outperform an equivalently powerful petrol car, and so the actual economy ratio is anything between

I don't know what your truck or your car are, but the vast majority of the cars on the road would be left for dead by a BMW 330d, and most by a golf TDI 130/150.

LOL- the pump to cam belt interval is now I think 80k on the TDDI and CI, but I have seen afew (admittedly plod) vehiles where failure has occured before this- one hadnt done 50k. Belt breakage still results in a snapped cam, cracked head, bent valves and or broken guides- so not good.

In the mk 2 new mondeo yes, both are CI's. The first incarnation was a DI though.

development.

No. However the new 1.4 and 1.6 CI's are entirely French in deisgn.

Yes.

Tim..

When they make a 4x4, WRC ready diesel, then we'll be in agreement :)

S'cos its french, right Tim ;) ?

I just remember breifly flicking through Autocar 0-100-0 trials a few days ago and thinking f*** me, thats quick for a BFO car like that. i was sure it was in the 6s region for the 0-60 time.

Well its about driving a car enthusiastically on roads, so yes its exactly like real road driving conditions actually.

So? When you talk about a sporty car i want something that is quick and nimble, dont give a shit what noise it makes. If i wanted something that made a nice noise i would buy an SD1 and remove the silencers. Makes a V5/6 sound like a diesel :p

Who cares. Unless you spend the whole time looking into your mirrors you wouldnt notice it. And they're not that bad anyway. Mine revs to 5k happily (and beyond) - i've had petrol cars that wouldnt reach that!

Well the suspension and drivetrain is based on that of a 205 GTi (significant changed of the other petrol models), so actually it is very well equipped as standard. My problem was that the pads (or maybe the fluid) over heated very very quickly, and now the friction material is shagged (not worn in terms of lack of pad material). Serves me right for getting cheap pads. A swap to vented discs (and M1144 pads and decent fluid) will be more than adequate as its what a similarly weighted GTi will have.

Indeed :)

On the basis of your arguement, virtually no car is sporty then. If you want noise and revs get a bike or a bike engined kit car. I'll continue using my 'non sporty' diesel for another year or so and will be quite happy!

You have to remember that Steve Firth has a magic truck that can stop in a few feet from any speed. All the other vehicles he sees are driven by fuckwits who shouldn't be on the road.

Once you exclude those, his truck is easily the fastest, because there isn't anything else on the roads he drives about on.

It's obvious to the rest of us that a diesel engine is inherently more efficient than a petrol one, but usually weighs more and has less power. Where the power to weight of the vehicle is higher, it will obviously be quicker, I can't see a problem with some diesels being faster than some petrol cars.

But I haven't seen many diesel motorbikes as yet.

Still haven't seen any, but sure, they would seem to exist :)

Yeah - mine was done at 40k and 80k at a Ford dealer by the previous owner (well, the Ford mechanics actually did the work), and I was going to get it done "any time now" at the time I sold it on. My point was that there's one less thing that could potentially cause the belt to break (i.e. water pump seizing).

Peter

I was going to say something along those lines.

Heh, I've got a v8 from out of an SD1. Have I mentioned it barks..? It makes a nice sound. Did I mention the noise it makes yet?

TBH, that's not to say there can't be a nice sounding diesel engine, but it's not going to growl and bark because you can't rev it up. Still, that's definitely posing rather than driving. :)

I was thinking vented would be only a partial solution. The problem is airflow, the designers (fairly sensibly) decided this wasn't important and went for a slippery coef of drag rather than ducting air to the brakes.

If you want to stop the brakes getting hot, you need more airflow to the discs, e.g. duct it round from big gaps in the front spoiler and onto the discs so the airflow when you are moving brings the heat down.

AFAIK the brakes are designed around an ABS pump so you can't really put competition fluid and pads in - so the heat is fundamentally your enemy there. Changing the components won't carry away more heat, changing the airflow will.