Secondary air pump removal

The secondary air pump blows fresh air into the exhaust manifold for the first
minute or two after a cold start. That extra oxygen helps the catalyst reach working
temperature faster, which is when most of a journey emissions total is produced.

It runs briefly and then stops, which is why the failures tend to be a seized pump, a
blocked combi valve or a failed relay. Common on older VAG and BMW petrol engines. The
symptom is a check engine light rather than anything you can feel.

What we would rather do first

Most of the cars that arrive asking for removal do not need it. They need the
underlying fault finding and fixing, and the system putting back into a working
state. That is diagnostics, and it is a real service rather than a way of hiding a
warning light.

We have the diagnostic equipment and the rolling road to prove a repair worked
rather than assume it did. If a repair is not viable and the vehicle is genuinely
off road, export or competition, we will talk about the alternative.

The legal position, stated plainly

It is an offence in the UK to use a vehicle on the road with its emissions
control equipment removed or defeated. Since 2014 the MOT test includes a visual
check, and a missing filter is an automatic failure. Insurers can and do treat it
as an undeclared modification.

We say this on every page because we would rather lose the job than have a
customer find out at their next MOT. If your car is a road car, the answer is
repair, and we are set up to do that properly.

Where removal is legitimate: vehicles used solely
off the public road, competition vehicles, plant and agricultural machinery, and
vehicles being exported to territories with different requirements. We ask which
applies before we quote.

For the trade

This is one of the jobs available through our dealer file service. Send the
original read, tell us the vehicle and what you need, and the file comes back
checked. If a job carries mechanical conditions on the car, they are listed in the
coverage table below and they apply to your customer’s vehicle too.

More about becoming a JFA tuning dealer