[T3] battery woes...

[Jim Adney]

On 27 Jul 2017 at 9:24, J L Stamey wrote:

> Jim, It's a thick pad, reminds me of a dish scrubbing pad, you know the
> green ones, about 4"x5" but has a shiny bottom.
> 
> This is what it's supposed to do:
> 
>    - Traps and Neutralizes Battery Acid on contact to protect automobiles,
>    boats, RVs, and high performance vehicles. - Made from a proprietary
>    woven felt and saturated with a nano-neutralizing agent. - Recyclable
>    and environmentally friendly. - Protects battery from harmful road
>    vibration. - Easy to use; takes minutes to install. Can be cut and
>    trimmed to fit your battery tray.
>       - The mat installs with the shiny side down.
>    - Completely Safe to Handle Before & During Installation.
>    - Protects against corrosion and rust formation on surfaces.

Okay, sounds like they expect it to absorb, neutralize, and finally have a 
barrier (the shiny side) to keep acid from soaking thru.

> On a side note Jim... what are you doing with your TDI JSW? You sell it
> back or waiting for the "fix" plus generous compensation? Both the wife
> and I are waiting on the fix. Neither of your TDI's have a fix available
> yet. VWOA has 'til 6/18 to get EPA/CARB approval on all GEN1 and Manual
> GEN2 (the last 2 "dirty" GEN TDI's with no fix as of yet), but I'm sure
> that'll be extended, maybe.

I'm planning to wait as long as I can to sell it back to VW, but if they can 
come up with a reasonable fix, I'll seriously consider it. I love the car; it's 
been great except for this flaw. While it's clear that what VW did was illegal 
and they should not have done it, the end result is a car that emits more than 
the legal limit of NOx (but probably not as much more, overall, as the news 
stories state) but a lot less of other pollutants, like CO2 and particulates.

Personally, I think the EPA made a mistake in 2009 when they declared that 
all cars (diesel and gas) should meet the same fixed limits. This is a problem 
because each design has its own strengths and weaknesses, but the current 
limits don't allow diesels to take advantage of their strengths. The result of 
this change in 2009 is that 2008 diesel cars are allowed to emit 92x as much 
NOx as 2009 diesel cars. That was a 98.9% reduction on top of what was 
already a low limit compared to diesel cars made a decade or so earlier.

My suggestion would be that there should be (higher) hard limits on each 
pollutant, including CO2, which is not considered now, along with a formula 
that sums up each pollutant, with weighting factors for each, and a total limit 
for that sum. Something like this:

L = a(CO2) + b(NOx) + c(part) + d(CO) + e(HC) + ...?

Where L is the overall limit and the figures in ( ) are the avg PPM/mile of 
each pollutant over a test course. L would be low enough that you could not 
emit the hard limit of each pollutant. The a b c coefficients are weighting 
constants, different for each pollutant and subject to tweaking by the EPA 
over the years, as experience accumulates.

That would allow different engine designers and different manufacturers to 
explore different clean engine approaches, encouraging research into 
different clean engine designs. Experience with different approaches might 
lead to options that could be combined for even lower emissions in the 
decades ahead.

As experience accumulated over the years, the adjusting factors, a b c, 
could be tweaked and the total sum limit, L, could be slowly brought down. 
That would help us find a path to better future solutions.

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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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