Friday, 13 May 2011

POWERFUL, SMALL CLEANER DIESEL FOR RENAULT


Renault in South Africa seems to be improving all the time, thanks to its 110% commitment, part of the Confiance agreement with the public. Their market offerings are groundbreaking, and sometimes so are their engines. Take the new dCi 130 for instance, a turbo diesel with so few emissions one could run it up and down a hospital ICU ward. The company has promised to deliver this motor to Mzansi sometime next year.


What’s behind these claims of ultra-greenness? Firstly it’s a small capacity engine, displacing only 1.6-litres. It has four cylinders and 16 valves, as well as a compression ratio of 15.4:1. For something so small, one wouldn’t expect 96kW at 4000rpm and peak torque of 320N at 1750rpm, but that’s exactly what one gets!

To put it into perspective, it has the same power as a previous-generation Ford Focus 2.0-litre and the same torque as a previous-generation Audi A3 3.2-litre V6. A 6-speed manual gearbox is standard, and when it’s used in the Scenic, some very impressive data is reported. For example, the average fuel consumption recorded is 4.4 litres per 100km or equivalent to a full tank range of around 1300 kilometres. C02 emissions are 115g/km.

This dCi 130 engine will also be applied to other cars in the range, most notably the Megane and even possibly the Clio.

1 comment:

Thami Masemola said...

Apologies for the unavailability of the comments section over the past two days. There was a technical glitch at Blogger.