Oh dear... You removed that wonderfully efficient standard cold air feed inlet and replaced it with a heatsoaked power
sapping cone filter.

That should open a can of worms...


On the plus side that 75mm joiner was a nice find.

 

Yep lol, that is actually hurting performance!

I have a K&N high flow direct replacement panel filter in the standard airbox in my V6, its debatable if there is even a minuscule gain but I know at least I'm not loosing any power.

Many fit those filters for the noise but my V6 already sounds fairly animal when you ring its neck all the way to 6,500rpm which I do regularly ha ha

 

I got a free K&N filter for my MK4.5 and I sold it on here because I was not going to waste my time on one of those.

What they don't tell you is that too much and too little oil hurts performance or the filter quality.
So it's too much / too little oil not most of it's life and then you get the issue of where does that oil end up?

Contaminated MAF or MAP sensors? Older car with restricted filters and no sensors to contaminate then they
probably worked but these days they can cause a lot of issues.

 

I got a free K&N filter for my MK4.5 and I sold it on here because I was not going to waste my time on one of those.

What they don't tell you is that too much and too little oil hurts performance or the filter quality.
So it's too much / too little oil not most of it's life and then you get the issue of where does that oil end up?

Contaminated MAF or MAP sensors? Older car with restricted filters and no sensors to contaminate then they
probably worked but these days they can cause a lot of issues.

Yeah, im aware of the oil contamination of the MAF sensor issue, my policy is to oil at the tops of the pleats and wait and add in very low amounts until it just manages to wick to the bottoms of the pleats, im sure there are some who are running petrol/diesel hybrids for a few miles after oiling lol.

 

Less power ✅ Slightly noticeable.

More Noise ✅ Extremely Noticeable.

Can it be done for cheap if you don’t really care, about performance or the remote possibility of having to clean a sensor.
Absolutely.

Would I do it on my pride and joy?
Nope.

 

Thought the petrol/diesel hybrid was funny..

I wonder how many actually touch them after fitting though? Many probably don't have the cars long enough
to think about cleaning and re-oiling and many just treat them as fit and forget.

Probably a very small minority that actually clean and re-oil. Have seen comments on various forums from unhappy owners
where they had the cars serviced and they swapped the K&N for a cheapo paper filter.

 

I keep my cars a long time, in the last 20 years I have owned 3, two V6 Mondeos and alongside the first V6 Mondeo I also had a VR6 Galaxy (boy that thing was a giggle to drive with all the rear seats removed!), when my first Mondeo looked tatty I had to have another and owned my current late 2002 for something like 7 years now and fingers crossed at 80,065 miles ill have it for some time yet.

I have a very, very specific spec of 2.5T Mk4 I have to have when this one has to go so I do periodically do searches and will have to bite if the right one comes up as they are rare full stop let alone the spec I must have, things like a sunroof are a must have, I will not consider a car that does not have one and its not a standard thing on all Titanium X Sport 2.5T Mk3's

Another thing is the stereo, it must not have the infotainment system, the climate controls are integrated into it and I need to rip out the factory stereo and install my system.

 

I was the same with the MK4.5. Kept looking for ages then the Zetec Business popped up and it ticked all the boxes.
I mentioned years before that I kept looking at the MK4's.

Right car, right price.. Just the mileage which was normally where I sell them. 170k but it had the rear arms recently done
and it was cheap. £3k in 2018, during the pandemic it was valued far higher.

Only issue was the failed regen which I reset thinking it was going to need a vaporiser but no, its all good, never done it again.
Probably down to the many many short sub 1 mile journeys the previous day helping the sister in law move. Probably needed
a regen but never in the right condition and it probably hit the 300% and gave up.

Reset all the values to zero and it did a regen and all good since. Think that was 2019?

 

I was smart enough that as soon as I bought my current V6 I immediately started saving for my next car and the money is there to buy should something suddenly spring up or my current car has something happen to it.

I have 12k saved so could even afford a Mk5 but none of the quick ones have a manual box, seriously?

That said, i like my V6 Ghia X and have no burning urge to replace it just because I have the money to do so, if it wasn't for the insane tax, I would buy a low mileage 2007 Mk3 V6 but those poor things get scrapped because nobody wants them, what I dont get is that the Mk4 2.5T has the same emissions as our 2.5 and 3.0L V6 Mk3's but is the same tax per year as the pre 2006 V6 Mk3's?

Im a little confused about how the tax works for the next shake up they did, on big engine cars the Gov website says its big £££££ for X number of years after first registration then the tax falls to very little, its unclear if thats the registration of the car when new or if that applies to each new owner.

 

From what I gather if a car is subject to the 5 year tax increase then any 2nd hand owner within that 5 years also
gets to pay the increased rate until the 5 years from registration are up. The clock does not reset.

When buying a car I made sure I had at least £1000 to buy a cheap runaround, but these days you need more
than that because there is little around for under that price that you could call a reliable runaround.

 

From what I gather if a car is subject to the 5 year tax increase then any 2nd hand owner within that 5 years also
gets to pay the increased rate until the 5 years from registration are up. The clock does not reset.

When buying a car I made sure I had at least £1000 to buy a cheap runaround, but these days you need more
than that because there is little around for under that price that you could call a reliable runaround.

What im confused with is after that 5 years, if someone has had the car 5 years and the tax is now cheap, does it stay cheap or does another 5 years apply to a new owner when they register it.

I would consider jumping the ford ship and getting something 5+ years old with a big V6 or V8 if the insane tax does not reset to another 5 years with each owner.

 

Just the first 5 years of the car being registered/used.

I would of had that issue if I bought the Transit Custom Tourneo that I wanted, but that idea went out the window when Covid came along. Prices are stupid now.

 

Yeah after 5 years its the cheap rate whether the original owner or bought used.

Yeah many prices are still silly. They are coming down but still silly.

 

The jaguar XF would be tempting, there are V8 variant's, rear wheel drive and the cars are so cheap for what they are but it looks like no manual box was available on any XF model, all are Auto go karts which is a no go for me!

 

Also looked at some XF's Twin Turbo Diesel 300+ BHP on the later ones. But estates are stupid money for some reason.
Saloons can be picked up cheaply but the last time I looked the cheapest estate was £7k and I know it will break.

Far too many plastic bits.

 

I will possibly look for a toy V6 or V8 in a couple of years once I've replaced my current car (later this year hopefully). Miss my V6.

 

I love My V6's My last 3 cars have been two Mk3 2.5L V6 Mondeos and a 2.8L VR6 Galaxy, the lack of a V6 Mk4 is what has kept me from them and clung to Mk3's for so long but my car wont last forever so have to at least look into other options and the 2.5T straight 5 Mk4 is the only option for me if I go that path.

When I got my current V6 I went looking for a 3.0L Ghia X but only Autos were for sale which is an absolute no go for me and then what I have now (late Dec 2002) came up in a colour I like and was in good condition and low miles (still only a hair into 80,000) so another 2.5L it was.

It never gets old having that purr when driving it sensibly and the roar it makes when ringing its neck to 6,500 rpm!

 

I had an auto Rover 825i. it was rapid for what it was at the time. You need to drive them properly...

Left foot is for the brake and the right foot is for the throttle..

Holding the revs a little higher with the brake and throttle it would take off spinning its wheels in 2nd and enough
torque steer to change lanes without steering input. 160bhp may not sound like a lot today but it weighed a fair
bit less then most modern cars.

Im old so the Auto is not a major problem as long as its not the dreaded powershift box.. 300bhp and diesel
sounds like a nice combination.

 

I had an auto Rover 825i. it was rapid for what it was at the time. You need to drive them properly...

Left foot is for the brake and the right foot is for the throttle..

Holding the revs a little higher with the brake and throttle it would take off spinning its wheels in 2nd and enough
torque steer to change lanes without steering input. 160bhp may not sound like a lot today but it weighed a fair
bit less then most modern cars.

Im old so the Auto is not a major problem as long as its not the dreaded powershift box.. 300bhp and diesel
sounds like a nice combination.

My old man used to drive 827's, the ones with blue lights on the roof, they also had one Sapphire Cosworth which they all fought over lol, years before that, he stuck an SD1 up the arse of a transit after falling asleep at the wheel and had to go through re training before he was allowed to drive at work again.

Given what my old man was, my driving always wound him up big time, he's chilled out somewhat over it now he's in his 70's.

 

I sold the SD1's to buy the 825. Always some issue or other with the SD1's. 825i was great but I only had it 2 or 3 years.

Strange to think at the time that an auto would spin it's wheels when kicking down when already doing 30mph (ish).
Signs of the future, after the slushbox SD1 2600 (converted to V8) and a proper V8 that came many VP extras but was
only an SE.

When I went to part ex it they only spotted from the distance and saw the rear head restraints with their extra padding
and asked if it was a VP.

 

The ones my Dad drove were all VP's, I remember him saying that there had been complaints about the police having a high trim spec model but they shut that down quickly as it was cheaper to buy those in bulk and modify than buy custom built vehicles.

I think they were on 3.0L V6 Omegas when he retired, Vauxhall had a police package for those, much like U.S police get interceptor packages from manufactures, the Omegas had tuned engines with different cams ect and also bigger brakes than standard 3.0L omegas.

 

Yeah the Omega's were another choice, I do remember articles saying the police stockpiled SD1's when they stopped
production. Preferred over the Rover 800 that replaced it. But they had a lot of the 800's and I remember a truck driver
saying they were using the 800's to tow trucks up the motorway hills in the snow...

Health and safety prevents all that now.. One lorry struggling for grip, shut the motorway down...

 

Not sure what the biggest thing he towed with a car was but I know he pulled plenty of broken down Artic's with the land rovers and range rovers they had.

He got permission from his boss once to take his break when i had a dentists appointment and to use the land rover he was assigned that day, turns up at my school in a marked land rover and in full uniform and thought it would be funny to escort me to it holding my arm like I had been nicked and then put me in the back lol.

While my mates all knew my old man was a copper, the vast majority of other pupils would not know and he thought he would have a giggle ha ha.