HDi 90 performance and "Good Mechanical Husbandry (TM)"

[DiscoPol]

im feeling left out.

[steve_earwig]

YOu wanna got yourself one of them 406s mate

[highlander]

It's not that I'm looking for a "boy-racer - petrol head go-cart" from this car - but the current behaviour isn't as I'd expect.

Basically, you've got a big heavy car, and a 90 HP engine pulling it along.

My old saloon was a 1.8 petrol - 110 HP, and similar weight - it was really poor at overtaking on single-carriageway roads. No grunt at all.

You should in theory have a pokier machine than that because turbodiesels have more torque than naturally-aspirated petrol engines - but still, the car is a heavy lump.

Give it a good service, some proper TLC. Then if it's not much better, take it to a company like Superchips and get them to remap it for you. It's not a cheap service, but it will give your car some more poke.

[Doggy]

Has anyone tried the K&N Panel filter? I wonder whether there's any "mileage" in the K&N over the regular disposable filters?

Don't. (unless you want to slow it down by drawing in warmer, less dense air from under the bonnet).

If the standard setup can handle the air demand of a v6 at 6000 rpm+ or a remapped 2.2 HDi at 5000 rpm / 2.3 Bar boost, it'll be OK with a HDi 90.

[highlander]

K&N panel filters don't draw warmer air in from the engine bay - they sit in the OEM airbox and draw air in from the normal air feed, the same way disposable air filters do.

Induction kits, however, with those cone filters, do draw the warm engine bay air in. Which is why - if you are going down that route - you should use fully-enclosed induction kits with cold-air feeds pulling air in from outwith the engine bay - unfortunately these are more expensive.

Nothing wrong with performance panel filters - except that you probably won't notice a huge amount of difference, to be honest. I didn't.

[steve_earwig]

If it's a K&N panel filter that sits in place of the original then it'll draw air from under the wheel arch as always. A cone filter will suck hot air from under the bonnet as Highlander says.

I have a K&N on my bike and have never had any problems with it but lots of people distrust them because apparently they don't filter so finely.

[lozz]

thems cone filters make a car Sound like a Blocked hoova,


Been there and binned the thing absoloute Garbage,
the standard Filters are best left on imho,

[bytecode]

im feeling left out.

Awww! There - there; no need to feel left out - your avatar was the absolute centre of attention in the office yesterday - it has such a soothing quality!
Sorry - I got a little "post-blind" so many helpful responses that I simply couldn't keep track whilst trying to fit responding in during lunch breaks or at random moments between tasks! I did have your points in mind whilst posting some of my replies...

But! Let's do you some justice :-)

a damn good service and blocking off the EGR would be my next step but remember it is a 90 so no intercooler i think you might just be expecting a little too much from the thing if you want something quicker flog it and buy something else.

I think that you've probably gathered that I'm not expecting "sports car" performance - that's what the MGF is for (once I've replaced the engine - I blew a conn rod through the block back in January - Why? Low/No Oil - Whoops - talk about poor mechanical husbandry that time!)

I happen to have an intercooler laying around that I've been "eye-ing up" - I haven't taken a close enough look to see whether there's any possibility of installing it yet.

I'll search for some EGR blanking threads to find out more about the pros/cons.

is it your first hdi diesel? if so maybe just a bit more practice driving it might bring out a few more horses for the overtake, in my old 90 you had to learn to play with the power band and after 3200rpm it was all out of puff, its not a typical turbo diesel its a HDI

Yeah - first HDI - I'm currently playing the "maximise the remaining miles before fill up" game. I've put 120miles on since filling up on Thursday night and managed to get the MFD to *still* say 714Miles before the next fill up once I got home.

Although it did drop to 590Miles at one point when I was climbing out of a particularly DEEP DARK valley in 2nd.. Ok, I suppose I was climbing UP a particularly long & steep hill rather than out of a deep dark valley - it was day time... - but still, you get the picture.
(I just had a thought - I can show you thanks to Google power - this was just ONE of the hills that I was climbing yesterday..
http://tinyurl.com/3t7msbo
Looking at it in "terrain" mode http://tinyurl.com/3arblaa you can see the contour lines - from 20m to 100m+
It starts as a 1st gear climb and then you can get into 2nd - but it's too narrow/twisty to safely go any faster to permit a higher gear in case something is coming towards you from around the next bend) http://tinyurl.com/4y6mydd but it was a pretty spot at least!

3rd gear from 1800 rpm to 3200 rpm was cracking fun with the torque but again it takes a while to get used to this.

Yeah - 3rd is proving to be pretty useful - but I'm mostly using 3rd for getting into the right rev range for 4th with the turbo running - I'm still experimenting with the preferred change point / road speed for that.

Good luck with it, but first get that service done with some decent oil (10/40 semi synth) and have a play about with different gearings and soon enough you will have it drivable at least.

I'm off to buy the oil & filters later today - once I've had a decent breakfast and a few gallons of coffee....
(Incidentally, this post was a lot longer, until I realised that I was digressing from the point of the thread, so I'm drafting something for the "General Chat" area to put that "digression" into...)

[bytecode]

Has anyone tried the K&N Panel filter? I wonder whether there's any "mileage" in the K&N over the regular disposable filters?

Don't. (unless you want to slow it down by drawing in warmer, less dense air from under the bonnet).

If the standard setup can handle the air demand of a v6 at 6000 rpm+ or a remapped 2.2 HDi at 5000 rpm / 2.3 Bar boost, it'll be OK with a HDi 90.

Like highlander and steve_earwig have already mentioned - it's the "panel" filter that I'm looking at - which replaces the existing filter, in the box, with the cold air feed from the front/wing.

I'd never consider a cone filter (unless going for a sealed induction kit with cold air feed for my MGF).

[bytecode]

Been there and binned the thing

Do you mean that you had the Panel version or were you talking about the cone version?

[bytecode]

See what changing the air filter does, you might have a medium sized sheep stuck in it.

OMG steve - I don't know what to say..
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes!
I can't get over it - Look at what I found when I inspected the air filter:




This is clearly the problem with living in the country!

On a serious note, the existing air filter isn't the cleanest:

[steve_earwig]

Actually, that's not the dirtiest filter I've seen by a wide margin, I wouldn't have thought it would be that ba(aaaa)d unless someone's been blowing it out with a compressor instead of changing it...

[bytecode]

Actually, that's not the dirtiest filter I've seen by a wide margin, I wouldn't have thought it would be that ba(aaaa)d unless someone's been blowing it out with a compressor instead of changing it...

I should have taken a photograph of the rectangular pile of grit & dirt on the ground after I picked it up again.
I had to vacuum the bottom of the air-filter box too!

Despite my friend saying that he thought it fine running "sans-filter" in this country there's NO WAY I'd ever want to let any of that nasty, sandy gritty rubbish getting into my cylinders!

Anyhow - just did the oil, oil filter & air filter change; I did two lots of oil - I used some cheap semi-synth to "rinse out" the old stuff from the oil cooler etc. I'm glad I did too - the first lot came out black, and the second lot came out black and sludgy too!

I haven't done the oil filter yet - I couldn't figure out how to release the fuel filter cannister - it's the one WITHOUT the allen-key bolts in the top (apparently this indicates one fuel system or the other?)

I did note the most minor of coolant leaks from what I take to be the bleed screw/nipple on the thermostat, and it looks like there's a small oil leak from the sump, but that's all for another day....

[lozz]

Been there and binned the thing

Do you mean that you had the Panel version or were you talking about the cone version?

cone filter mate.

K&n pannel filters are the way to go if you want something that will last longer than standard filters,

ive got one on my list of things to buy but there not cheap,

http://www.stxstyling.co.uk/StxStyling/ ... Kits.1.htm
but ive heard you dont throw these away when they get dirty they can be cleaned so thats sorta making me want to buy one

[Gary406]

if you think your HDi 90 is slow. get behind the wheel of my XUD 90. there even worse.

dont expect any power from a HDi 90 . cos there slow just like my XUD 90.

if you want a powerfull car with sum grunt , buy a 170+ bhp diesel with 280 ft of torque. now they shift

my mate has a 2.0 TDi mark 5 golf with 170BHP and about 260 ft of torque. it pulls like no 2moro