Is diesel a dead end as a technology?

[cptsideways]

Just buy an older Landcruiser, simple mechanicals, little or nothing to go wrong, eg on a 12 valve 4.2 td the only electonics in the engine bay is the the starter motor, a fuel pump cut off, a water temp sender & an rpm feed for the gauges. Thats it!!! I can guarantee that it'll be pretty much be running just as well in another 200k too.

Makes the whole eco warrior emissions based new tech look silly if the cars are financially written off within 5 or 10 years

[Deva Link]

rhinochopig said:

The thing is though, that the cost of the tech is one thing, but it's the labour costs for changing the failed components that is just daft. To change fuel pump or SCV is a massive job on some diesels. It can't be beyond the designer to streamline this activity to offset some of the material cost - can it?

The other issue is that when older diesels start running badly it can be caused by a combination of issues - air leaks, glow plugs, injectors and high pressure pumps. Not to mention things buried in the engine like swirl valves.

Colleague of mine had a 6yr old Tourareg and both the dealer and a recommended indie said they could spend many (costly) hours trying to find what was wrong and might end up replacing everything anyway. So he agreed they should go ahead and replace it all - cost £3500.

There's a post somewhere on here about a 5yr old Touran effectively being written off by VW's porous head issue. Even things like TDCi Mondeos can be a nightmare to get running properly again once they start playing up.

[HellDiver]

Deva Link said:

There's a post somewhere on here about a 5yr old Touran effectively being written off by VW's porous head issue. Even things like TDCi Mondeos can be a nightmare to get running properly again once they start playing up.

Yep, that was my post - a collegue had power loss issues and poor starting from his Touran. After lots of fannying about and lots of money, the mechanic still couldn't get it going right. Another collegue bought the car for a grand in the hopes of fixing it himself and punting it on. He finally discovered it was the head, and wasn't worth fixing. He broke the car and sold the parts on Ebay.

5 years old, less than 60k on the clock, stripped for parts. Shocking.

[magic77]

one thing worth pointing out, current latest petrols are now often running high pressures on injectors than diesels, I know of enough petrol owners who have had as many if not more issues than ones driving a diesel.

Also a injectors would set you a 1k but not each. In past only issue I had with diesels has been glow plugs and turbo but then no different that spark plug and well turbos on petrol

[Puddenchucker]

cptsideways said:

Just buy an older Landcruiser, simple mechanicals, little or nothing to go wrong, eg on a 12 valve 4.2 td the only electonics in the engine bay is the the starter motor, a fuel pump cut off, a water temp sender & an rpm feed for the gauges. Thats it!!! I can guarantee that it'll be pretty much be running just as well in another 200k too.

Family member has just been landed with an £800 quote (excluding labour) for failed suspension components on an S-reg Landcruiser. Just about any mechanical part of a vehicle can wear out or break - not just the engine.

[finestjammy]

In my personal experience the engine and fuel systems have been very reliable. However I've had three dual mass fly wheels (DMF) replaced. One on a Golf and two on a Vectra. In my opinion it's the bits attached to the engine that don't always seem to be able to cope with the torque of modern diesels. That and the bits attached to dampen vibration, engine mounts, DMF's etc

[Engineer1]

Arguably Diesel has a longer future life than petrol, Diesels will run on pretty much any st that will burn under compression, coal dust, veg oil etc, so to improve the emissions it may be a case of creating a new class of diesel fuel the like 2 stroke used to exist in parallel, the new fuel having increased bio element or what ever is required to improve the emissions.

[RicksAlfas]

magic77 said:

one thing worth pointing out, current latest petrols are now often running high pressures on injectors than diesels, I know of enough petrol owners who have had as many if not more issues than ones driving a diesel.

Agreed. My Dad's E92 330i has been a horror.
His E46 330i was relatively trouble free.

Cars are getting too complicated and in many instances the dealers don't seem capable of tracing and curing faults. Many of the EGR/DPF issues mentioned as causing problems on diesels are brought about by legislation forcing manufacturers down a route they perhaps don't want to go down. It's not an excuse I know, but just a sign of the times. People will still change their cars though. Reading PH sometimes you wonder why we're not all still driving sidevalves, or maybe building up confidence to go to a new fangled OHV design...

[B'stard Child]

RicksAlfas said:

magic77 said:

one thing worth pointing out, current latest petrols are now often running high pressures on injectors than diesels, I know of enough petrol owners who have had as many if not more issues than ones driving a diesel.

Agreed. My Dad's E92 330i has been a horror.
His E46 330i was relatively trouble free.

Cars are getting too complicated and in many instances the dealers don't seem capable of tracing and curing faults. Many of the EGR/DPF issues mentioned as causing problems on diesels are brought about by legislation forcing manufacturers down a route they perhaps don't want to go down. It's not an excuse I know, but just a sign of the times. People will still change their cars though. Reading PH sometimes you wonder why we're not all still driving sidevalves, or maybe building up confidence to go to a new fangled OHV design...

I put triple dellortos on a 24V six instead of the std injection - mainly for the fun of it mind...

[filski666]

oh god, I do so hope that diesel is dead and people will stop pretending it is "economical" when they only do short shopping trips and a small forced induction petrol would have actually been much better for them.

f**king hate diesel........yep, even when mapped with a rolling start.

[heebeegeetee]

filski666 said:

oh god, I do so hope that diesel is dead and people will stop pretending it is "economical" when they only do short shopping trips and a small forced induction petrol would have actually been much better for them.

f**king hate diesel........yep, even when mapped with a rolling start.

But they are more economical on short trips, much more so. Vastly cleaner too fwiw, compared to cold petrol engines.

Smart cars are popular small FI petrol cars. Their engine wear out at 60-70k miles though, unless they've had Mobil 1 in every 9,000 miles.

[filski666]

heebeegeetee said:

filski666 said:

oh god, I do so hope that diesel is dead and people will stop pretending it is "economical" when they only do short shopping trips and a small forced induction petrol would have actually been much better for them.

f**king hate diesel........yep, even when mapped with a rolling start.

But they are more economical on short trips, much more so. Vastly cleaner too fwiw, compared to cold petrol engines.

Smart cars are popular small FI petrol cars. Their engine wear out at 60-70k miles though, unless they've had Mobil 1 in every 9,000 miles.

ok, badly worded on my part :- I meant people who do very low mileages (for example just popping to the shops) where the better fuel economy of the diesel isn't enough of an advantage to out weigh the extra cost of the initial purchase and the higher cost of fuel.

I worked it out once on a Golf between the diesel and equivalent performing petrol 1.4 TSi engine that you would have to do 60,000 miles before you drew even based solely on the difference in purchase cost and fuel cost.

[lescombes]

Glad I have an older Turbo diesel not one of the HDI FAP etc jobbies.....and I can run Veg oil too either straight or with a diesel mix.....

Diesel isn't dead....just wait and see....It's just napping....
And with the EU mainland biased towards Tractor Juice, I can't see it being killed off...

I agree Diesel Pump prices are expensive but when you consider the job they perform you will understand why....

[willhollin]

Why would anyone in their right mind buy a diesel in the first place.

[300bhp/ton]

zeppelin101 said:

Hence the downsizing to small turbocharged gasoline engines which are powerful and efficient with much cheaper parts.

The only real hurdle for the above to overcome is turbo lag really.

Are they really cheaper? VAG with a supercharger and a turbo, doesn't sound cheap to me, to either manufacture or replace. DI petrol engines will require just as fancy injectors and pumps as DI diesel engines.

[maniac0796]

sjg said:

Max_Torque said:

ALL engines will have high pressure common rail injection systems, with pressure charging and EGR.

This is the key thing. The same drivers for this technology in diesels apply to petrols too - more power, better efficiency, lower emissions. Something like the VAG 1.4TSI petrol engine has a 150 bar common-rail injection system, plus a turbo and a supercharger to potentially go wrong.

Very few new car buyers are planning to keep that car longer than 6-7 years so the benefits of the tech outweigh the cost of keeping it going under someone else's ownership.

Amusingly though, does this mean that through the EU's hope to save the air, with euro 5 and 6 emissions, that these cars will become more complex, and therefore less reliable, and ruin the earth when they're sat there leaking their fully synthetic oils into the ground and leaving deposits of heavy and exotic metals?

[5lab]

I'm not sure I believe some of the pricing thrown about here. If a VAG diesel engine really had £6000 of injectors/diesel pump, surely it would cost at least £5000 more than the equivilent petrol engine to buy new (afaik, the cost difference is around a grand?)

There's another side as well. If parts start to break regularly, some smartarse will start making pattern parts to fit. VW obviously source their parts at at a lower price, surely the backend garage will (at some point) be able to as well

[Welshbeef]

Ok given the cost quoted for the 6 cylinder jobbies being £6k plus fitting well how about just simply buying a complete new engine for similar cash if your spending that much that to me makes a lot more sense.

[Welshbeef]

I'd add the cost of removing and fitting a new engine is probably cheaper and less time consuming than stripping engines and replacing parts. Win win.

[redgriff500]

I don't think diesel is dead but manufacturers seem to be trying to make cars effectively uneconomical to maintain when they get older.

I have many friends in the trade and the electronics are getting very expensive as light switches etc are now 'control modules' and most electronic parts are deliberately coded to the car so they cannot be used on another car.

Diesels do have more expensive parts than petrols as do Automatic cars with the electronics (only related to the gearbox) costing around £4k on a modern BMW.

Hence why you can buy a big complex car cheaper used than a simple small car but this is not a new concept - my Dad learnt to drive in Jags as they were the cheapest cars available.