Posted on 12/01/2006 5:49:41 AM PST by Red Badger
You do indeed need to use a different oil for a diesel engine and (typically) much more of it.
Most autos using a gasoline engine will have between 5 and 6 quarts of engine oil.
Most diesels in pickups will use between 14 and 20 quarts of oil.
Most of the diesels in my farm tractors use 5 gallons per change.
Many OTR (over-the-road) trucks use 5 to 10 gallons of oil.
But... I don't change my oil every 3,000 miles as in a gasoline engine. Because I have so much more oil, the oil lasts longer. Through use of oil sampling, I now change the oil in my F-350 only about ever 10K miles, not 3 to 5K that Ford recommends.
Oil fouling: I'm not sure I know what you mean here. You mean gunk in the oil? That's typically not a problem in diesels. The oil in a diesel with "blow-by" (ie, loose rings) gets filthy black and needs more frequent changing, but in a diesel that is operating properly, the issue is in making sure the oil is clean of particulates (which can be done with good filtration) and it still has the right chemistry. Good filters keep down the particulates, and oil sampling will tell you the chemistry of the oil.
The premium oils for diesels will be oils like the Chevron Delo 400 15W40, or Shell Rotella 15W40 oils. You could, if you wanted to, use these oils in a gasoline engine, but you should be aware that the detergent packages will likely cause some gunk in poorly-maintained, high-mileage cars to come loose, so the first time you used these oils, you'd need a rapid change of the filter and oil.
Until recently, diesels didn't have catalytics on them. The latest TierIII regs will likely impose particulate filters on the exhaust, and that will be a pain.
What I don't miss about not having a gasoline engine in a pickup:
- no plugs
- no ignition stuff whatsoever
- less stupid fiddling with all the emissions crap and sensors on the car, especially the O2 sensors.
what I have to put up with:
- maintaining the coolant chemistry (very important in diesels)
- oil sampling
- draining water out of the water bowl in the fuel system
- adding anti-gel to the fuel in winter
- using a block heater
- changing glow plugs and the glow plug relay every 'n' years
The glow plug issue varies from manufacture to manufacture. I hate glow plugs, personally, and I hate the weenie relay Ford uses for their glow plugs. Dodge/Cummins don't use glow plugs.
Here's the deal: Diesels don't like starting when it is cold out. You have to attend to a bunch of little details to operate diesels in cold weather. If you have a block heater, you'd best plug that in the night before you want to go somewhere, not 10 minutes. Glow plugs burn out occasionally, as to their relays. Some engines use other cold-starting aids. In farm/industrial diesels, there are ether systems to apply ether into the intake manifold. Due to the problems of the typical brain-dead consumer, you'll never see an ether system on an auto diesel. You'll likely see more cold-start systems like you see on the Benz and Cummins engines, where one glow plug lights up a little bit of fuel in the intake manifold, and that heated air gets sucked into the engine.
#2 diesel fuel tends to precipitate little crystals of wax when it is below, oh, about 7F. These little crystals build up on the surface of the fuel filter, and pretty soon, your engine is fuel starved and shuts down. Ford handles this by putting the fuel filter on top of the engine, so if you can get the engine going and warmed up, the heat from the engine will keep the fuel filter warm and prevent gel formation. Most all diesel operators will add anti-gel additive to the fuel in cold weather -- a quart will treat 100 gallons of fuel (or more) and keep the crystals from forming down to about -20F.
Water in the fuel: there is water dispersed in diesel fuel. Most all diesels have a water drain under their fuel filters to drain out water that accumulates. This is a little pest of a thing, but it has to be honestly admitted to people who are going to own a diesel.
Other than these issues, diesels require little fiddling. If they have fuel, and you can get them to turn over, they light up.
On coolant chemistry: this is pretty esoteric stuff, and if people want me to explain this, I'm happy to do so, but it isn't something most people who have never been around diesels will understand without me giving lots of explanation and background of the issue.
Back in the day, we had a diesel research engine and a gas research engine in the college engineering lab. The best thermal efficiency I saw the gas engine get was 30%; the best I saw the diesel do was 40%. And diesel fuel had a higher heating value per gallon than gasoline did. As the saying is, your mileage may vary.
Anyway much smaller and way more effcient, they said..
It dropped off the charts.. was it a scam or BS?...
Thanks for the info; so is it likely this technology will make it into passenger vehicles soon?
I called maintenance, and they said it probably would help clear the gelling, so we went out and continued to drive/work with no problems.
What's your take on what happenned there? (Nah! I didn't fire the grunt...LOL!)
BTW are you in the Minden Gardnerville area?
"Obviously, the diesel will be much more closer to the price of gasoline and thus will achieve a better cost per mile......."
Not to mention as diesel cars become more common, diesel fuel will also become more common....and market forces will make it cheaper...possibly cheaper than gasoline, as it is in the rest of the world (and used to be here).
My take, which isn't based on actual experience in adding gasoline to #2 in the winter, is that would work on older diesel engines, but I wouldn't be at all eager to try that on today's engines. It probably did help reduce the gelling problem.
The post-'96 engines have very different injector systems and the latest diesels to meet Tier III standards get more finicky yet. I'm not saying it won't work, I'm just saying that I wouldn't try it on an engine in such a random manner. I'd probably start off with less gasoline in the tank.
Add to this the fact that today's gasoline has ethanol added instead of MTBE and now I'm not at all certain of what is going to happen when today's gasoline formulations are added to diesel fuel.
The current anti-gel products out there are added in ratios of 1 quart to 100 gallons of #2, up to the stuff that my fuel man dumped into the latest 500 gallons of #2 we bought yesterday: 1 quart treated 500 gallons. So they're relatively compact to carry with you on the road.
We're located about in the middle of the state, about 250 miles east of the bustling metro area of Mindenville.
Your correct, them ol dinosaurs we used would probably run on maple syrup if we wanted it to! LOL!
Reason I asked about your location is a old friend that I grew up with in Tahoe lives down that way, his name is Dave as well and has the impressive motorhead knowledge you do...
BTW: Welcome to FR!
I"ll see your 4-6-8 engine and raise you the HT4100, Cadillac motor, they all messed up around 90,000 miles, blew heads and cracked them. Another GM wonder, and could throw in the fuel injected Seville.
The reason is, they have their own R&D teams and they do not want any interraction with someone with a "new" idea that their own in-house guys may have already come up with, but not disclosed publicly. They could be sued for "stealing" that person's invention and would most likely spend more money defending themselves than the invention was possibly worth. Case in point, a few years back, a man sued GM, claiming that they had "stolen" his idea for a "wiperless windshield wiper system" because he had seen it on some concept car they had displayed. GM had to prove that the idea was theirs from way back by producing drawings from as far back as the 40's to substantiate their claim that it was originally GM engineers that had come up with the idea, but never used it in a production design.
There are scams and true designs out there all over the world. Some of the true designs are being developed by private money (as it should be) and some by government study grants (I hate that, but that's the way of the world). Keep your eyes on "diesel engine technology". I believe that new developments in the diesel engine combustion chamber, fuel delivery systems, exhaust systems and computer controls will shake the automotive world to it's foundations within the next decade. Gasoline engines will become as diesels are now, uncommon and a curiosity to most people.............
Done!.....
Gasoline engine car with a 10 gallon tank that gets 35 mpg.
Diesel engine car with a 10 gallon tank that gets 50 mpg.
Gasoline price $2.50 per gallon.
Diesel Price $3.00 per gallon.
Gasoline car goes 350 miles on one tank at $25.00.
Diesel car goes 500 miles on one tank at $30.00.
Gasoline fuel cost: $0.071 per mile
Diesel fuel cost: $0.060 per mile
Yes and if Federal taxes on fuel were waved price per mile would drop by a third.. yet again.. plus the price of literally everything else..
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