Scirocco Central

I have a 2 litre petrol 200PS Scirocco (CAW engine code, which is EURO-5 compliant I believe). I've had it from new. It’s completely standard and only done 22000 miles.

Had a service and MoT today at the main dealers and initially it failed the emissions test "Exhaust emissions Lambda reading after 2nd fast idle outside specified limits (7.3.D.3)". They gave it a run and tried again and it just scraped through. I don't have the emissions printout at the moment so I don't know the Lambda value (the values from the 3 previous MoTs were 1.011 (2012), 1.003 (2013) and then 1.006 (2014) – I notice that these were from a different MoT station to today’s). The emissions light has never come on and a scan brings up no faults and it drives the same as it always has.

I'm wondering if the fact that it’s done only 1700 miles in the last year and the fuel (Tesco’s Momentum) in the tank is about 4 months old could affect the emissions or if the readings are wrong somehow. I’m not sure where to go from here – if there’s a problem then I’d like to resolve it now rather than wait for the light to come on or for it to fail next year.

Any thought/ideas gratefully accepted.

I know that fuel can deteriorate over time, but would be surprised to the extent that it could affect the emissions test.

Mine is also very low mileage (approx 3,500 miles every year) but have not had that issue. Does your car mainly do very short journeys with very low revs etc?

Could be worth giving the car a decent run and perhaps putting a few revs through it, to 'clear things out'. May also be worth varying the fuel a bit or put smaller amounts of fuel in the tank so it does not 'age' as much.

I must admit, I always fill right up as there always seem to be queues at the pumps, I can go almost 2 months between fill ups but we do have 2 cars.

Cheers for that Skippy, I'm thinking the same as you; give it a few decent runs and see if that helps. Life's too short to queue for fuel though!

It's not just doing really short journeys (typically around 30 miles) but maybe a good long run to get the cat hot for a while will help.

I've agreed with the dealer that once I've done this they will do another emissions check and see if it's improved.

I also thought about cleaning the cat with something like this http://www.cataclean.com/emissions-crus ... -original/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Has anybody any experience of this stuff?