Hi, After 10 years my X-reg felly's diesel front exhaust pipe has started blowing, its the one with a catalyst attached from new. I've been looking around for a replacement and have found adverts for downpipes with and without the catalyst, also some info saying that the catalyst although fitted wasn't a legal requirement at the time. However the new MOT regs that came in this year state that cars must be equipped as standard or fail. I discussed it with a friend and we're not sure which way to go, it was standard but not a legal requirement.

So my first question is do I need to fit an exhaust with a catalyst or not?

and second if I don't do I need to make any mods to fit an non-catalyst downpipe? ie sensors needing removing etc

Tim

Suggest have a word with MOT tester first, get his views of requirement.

Its not a catalyst per se, it's a particle filter, diesel cars aren't emissions tested in the same way as a petrol car, they only test the smoke density in parts per million on a diesel. It should pass fine withou the dpf fitted.

not needed on a car that old mate, we usually just reweld them when the origional welds rust thru, see if you can find a friendly back street garage and ask them to weld it for some beer money

Thanks for the responses guys, that's good news concerning the particulates filter; I'll be ordering a filter free pipe from flea-bay.

To be honest the car may be giving me 'fix this soon' sounds now, but the exhaust had small holes back at its MOT (Oct) and the friendly MOT tester gave me one of those 'fix this soon and it'll pass now' looks. Hints taken.

I also changed my glow plugs on Saturday, what a ball-ache of a job that is, it's as if it was designed to put as much pipework in the most awkward positions possible. I had to remove the injector pipes to get any chance of accessing them, (and they weren't easy themselves) and even then I could only turn 1/2 a flat at a time. I'd gone round to a friend's house as he has quite a bit of experience with VW 1.9 diesels, but even he was stumped by the tight confines. Eventually after 3 1/2 hours of a cold mornings work, a fortuitously bent spanner, many scraped and blooded knuckles and enough swearing to fill a profanasaurus we got them swapped. Three were dead and the forth was not happy, but after 100k miles I don't blame it.

Starting the car this morning was a delight, instant, just as it has been until these last few weeks, also the drive in was great (exhaust boom excluded). The engine felt great all the way in, I thought glow plugs only operated at start up and then turned off or am I experiencing a post mechanical success story feel good placebo effect?