A subject I wanted to discuss for a while was why are some identical diesels more noisey at idle than others ?
My A4 TDI 130 performs well, gets a good deal of hard motorway work and returns good fuel consumption, but tends to be noisier at idle hot or cold than other 'same-engined' cars such as other A4's or Passats etc.
Why does the readership think this is ?
Are diesel cars driven very gently less noisy ?
I would have thought it would have been the other way round.
Views please.
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Are the shrouds over/under the engine missing? If you think the VAG engines are noisy, you should hear my neighbours Peugeot engined heaps (2) in the morning.
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At least Diesel engines sound purposeful when making a racket. Comforting almost! Petrol engines start off lovely and quietish and gradually gain more and more belt noises and unexpected knockings. Diesels just sound industrious from the word go!
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Whatever's happening in the world, it's the diesels getting us out of a crisis.
Maybe you use supermarket diesel, and they use a premium one?
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I do like the sound of a good diesel, like the VAG 1.9 which I ran for many miles: its the percussion section of some of the older engines that are painful.
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I too quite like the noise mine makes but seeing as we've had diesels as long as I can remember and I've grown up with them it's not really suprising.
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My Renault diesel is too quiet. I often have the window open so I can hear that purposeful rattle.
As the miles increase, it seem to get better and better being really smooth and responsive.
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Xileno - your next car needs to be a diesel Mercedes B-class. Or a London taxi - it''s exactly the same noise, and I'm stuck with it for another year until there's no longer negative equity in the PCP contract.
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Er, no thanks. Much as I like my diesel, I'm going back to petrol next time. I only do 9K a year. I might get one of the New 2007 Lagunas, the three door model with a nice V6...
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Diesels just sound industrious from the word go!
Didn't you mean industrial?
Kevin...
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Are the shrouds over/under the engine missing?
Everything under the bonnet is practically as new, I have taken the plastc shroud off and all the rubber bushes are there and all ok.
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VAG 4-cylinder diesels aren't the quietest (though better than Mercedes) but it's curious that you find other examples of the same engine quieter. The point about supermarket diesel is a possibility perhaps?
Maybe a good independent VW / Audi dealer would be a good place to ask - i.e. the sort of place where someone knowledgeable actually comes out to the car with you and listens.
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A relative of mine as just bought a B180 CDI. It makes a truely horrible noise at idle and it's not great on the move either. I would have expected a prestige brand to be much better. I'm not sure if its just the B or a general trait of the brand.
I run a Mondeo ST 2.2 TDCi - an engine which is not particularly well regarded in terms of refinement, and the Merc makes an awful racket by comparison. The Ford TDCi's are quite variable in terms of noise - my current one is one of quieter ones I've been in.
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Quinny - part of the trouble is that Mercedes haven't seen fit to provide soundproofing on the underside of the bonnet lid: I'm sue this causes the noise to reverberate within the engine compartment. Quite ridiculous in a car costing over £20,000: I wouldn't have had one but for the good finance deal offered at the time.
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Roly - If your PD diesel has been "VAG serviced", check that they haven't broken/thrown away the front belly pan (plastic shield) under the sump. These things are often damaged on removal or become damaged as some of the fixing "screws" are lost by the lads that do the oil changes on these vehicles.
In Germany, the oil is always sucked out of the sump via the dipstick tube by the dealers, but inexplicably, for third world servicing markets such as the UK, VAG didn't put a flap in the belly pan to access the sump plug. Nearly every 5 (or more) year old B5 I've looked at has had damage or missing fixings in this area. As with the identification of the PD engine and its need for special oil, VAG never seem to learn how cars are treated by dealers outside their country of origin.
659.
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The noise my 126,000 mile Mondeo TD makes on a cold start is enough to make me wince. Quietens down considerably after a mile or two though. Sounds like a petrol engine with no oil in it ;-)
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Some diesels advance the injection timing to assist cold start ;this causes an increase in diesel rattle.
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Some diesels advance the injection timing to assist cold start ;this causes an increase in diesel rattle.
>>
Good point, maybe this is it now the colder weather has arrived.
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Roly - If your PD diesel has been "VAG serviced", check that they haven't broken/thrown away the front belly pan (plastic shield) under the sump.
Do you mean the whole plastic cover under the bottom of the engine ?
My car is a B6.
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Yes, it's the front half of the plastic cover under the bottom of the engine - it's quite big.
659.
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have just had a ten mile drive in a friend's diesel senic. compared to our 1.9 pd bora the renault is unrefined and gutless although the renault has supposedly more h.p. , pity vag are stopping
the pd engines( i haven't driven a non pd vw). son who works in vw dealer workshop says pd
power is better than common rail. bora is 100hp. apologies for hi-jacking thread. jag.
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Pity the poor motor manufacturers reading this thread... some people want their diesel quiet, others don't....
What are they to make of the motoring public??
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The condition of the oil could be one factor.
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I had an Audi A4 110 TDI: the engine was powerful and economical but very unrefined at low speeds: rough and gruff.
By contrast SWMBO's 106 diesel is clattery when cold but when warm is quite quiet and is very smooth.
The Yaris diesel we have is less clattery when cold and when warm is barely recognisable at idel as a diesle fom inside the car. Above 20mph it is as smooth and as quiet as a petrol car.
Reular oil chnages do make a difference. And a diesel injector treatment evry 30k miles makes them smoother imo.
I find Fiat diesels in the smaller Puntos/Pandas very noisy and clattery from outside and inside.. vrey offputting.
Most Citroen/Peugeot diesels are very refined: quiet and smooth. GM diesels? Bags of bones imo..
rattles and noise at tickover in the cabin are totally unacceptable once I was above 50 years old!:-)
madf
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If at all possible go for a 6-cylinder diesel. Much more refined, and the quality of the noise is more pleasant.
Mind you, the most unforgettable diesel noise of all was the 1950s Commer lorry. Best described as being like a giant motorbike. Maybe someone can tell us how many cylinders it had - surely more than two.
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Commer T3?
Quotes from an earlier thread
"The Commer had a glorious sound, in an era when car exhausts were beginning to be strangled, from the Rootes 3 cylinder opposed piston 2-stroke diesel; the latter was necessarily blown to effect scavenging, and oil from the blower was said to account for exhaust sparks under heavy load."
"I remember those - 3 double-ended cylinders, 6 pistons and a complicated rocker mechanism to connect them to a single crankshaft -".
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=i&t=42...4
(near end of a long thread)
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Phil
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The London Brick Co. in Bedfordshire had some;they could be heard for miles.And in Germany about the same time KHD made a supercharged V6 two-stroke;our firm had one in the UK-for evaluation and the police asked us to move the exhaust pipes.Two large bore pipes came out just in front of the (to us) near side rear wheels-blew people off the pavement.
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Foden did a glorious-sounding (if you didn't live beside the road) two-stroke diesel as well. Little firm in my village had one in a coach chassis and the body had a fish-tail at the back - you don't see that sort of thing any more...
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>>I find Fiat diesels in the smaller Puntos/Pandas very noisy and clattery from outside and inside.. vrey offputting.
I have a Fiat Marea Weekend with a 2.4 litre 5 cylinder turbo diesel (not common rail). The engine always sounds agricultural, more so when cold, but it is a very smooth powerful engine. Inside the cabin you can hardly hear it as the sound proofing is very good, and there is no turbo whine either.
Although my engine is only rated at 125HP, the common rail was 130HP. The same block is now used by Alfa as a petrol engine and this has been uprated to 200HP, not bad for 8-10 years extra development. I would love that extra power boost.
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Roger
I read frequently, but only post when I have something useful to say.
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My Dad has a 52-plate A4 Tdi 130. He has done about 75k miles in it, and for a while I've been thinking it now sounds louder/ gruffer than when it was new. Whether his plastic shrouds are still intact I don't know but I would assume them to be. It still goes well though...
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My 1994 306TD with the old 1.9 XUD engine on 143,000 miles sounds like a Massey Ferguson when first started from cold after standing overnight, especially when the weather is really cold. After 10-15 seconds it settles down and when up to normal operating temperature, it could easily be mistaken for a petrol or a modern CR diesel as you can hardly hear it at idle. A little noisy at high motorway speeds though and when accelerating heavily.
My mate's 1998 Passat 110TDi on 120k isn't that much quieter by comparison, especially at idle and low speeds.
Martin
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Listen to the diesel engined Jag XJ
I sat in and reved one at the Canary Warf Motor Show when they first came out - amazing!
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I find the Perkin Prima a very distinctive engine. Amazing economy from such a (relatively) simple design. You can hear a Maestro van from streets away.
Steve.
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Xantia HDi.
Buy a Citroen and get to know the local GSF staff better...
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"The diesel engine is so unclattery that I had to get out to check the badge"
what Jeremy Klaxon said about the 300C CRD (before mauling just about everything else on it)
MTC
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"The diesel engine is so unclattery that I had to get out to check the badge"
That's because the 300CRD is about 5 metres from engine to front seat..:-)
madf
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