Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:36:36 -0800
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: Diesel vs Gas Vanagons
In-Reply-To: <HHEAJIOMDPBGGCKHACGJEEKBCPAA.al_knoll@pacbell.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Of course, all conversions can't be justified by any cost savings numbers.
Gas or diesel.
'usually' you can show on paper that the 'payback' or break even periods on
many investments - solar for the house, SVX engine conversion, tdi, diesel
etc........If it was purely about dollars, we'd just drive some beater we
got for 800 bucks, leaving us with 9,200 to spend on gas or diesel fuel for
a long, long time !
if you talk in purely dollars per mile............many conversions or
even investments in cars, like tdi passats or whatever, do not 'pay back'
for a long, long time. That's not why you should do it, cause the real pay
back time is usually a 'long time' like you calculate here.
But, if one didn't have a vanagon in the first place, buying a reasonably
good diesel one in the first place, for a reasonable price, and hoping it
has no seriously major expenses as the years go by.............that could be
valid.
But to convert a gas vanagon to diesel for 5k to 10K dollars.........like
you show, you won't get that money back for a long, long time, and, in my
opinion, ahem, you'll be putting up with some downsides that you wouldn't
have in gasoline. In that case, it won't pay back just on fuel savings.
Btw, Karl, I believe you said your tdi engine would last 300 to 400
thousands miles.
Is that with reboring and new pistons or rebuilds or what ? I believe you
had that Mexican 1.9 block break a main bearing support or something like
that, then 6 months ago you had that crankshaft blow up
thing.............all of which points to the terrible stress diesel engines
are under, especially if you hop them up, and push a big vanagon, or heavy
syncro vanagon with one.....so if you did say 300 to 400K I'd have to say
that's exaggerating a lot.
I can see that in as stock Jetta tdi car maintained impeccably, driven
nicely, and driven longer periods of time, and not short trips around town.
Or a Passat, but not a hopped up tdi engine pushing a big heavy syncro
vanagon.
In pure dollars per mile terms...............I've got this 84 vanagon I
bought running pretty nicely for 250 bucks. As long as we can get the fuel
( ! ) .....let's see, against a 10K conversion that gives me yikes, $ 9,750
for fuel ! that'll go a ways !
But we don't do them for fuel cost savings. We do them for the great
reward of creating something useful and different, something we can have
pride in. After all, anybody can just buy a stock newish high fuel mileage
car - that's not so creative, but building one is ! and that's fun and
rewarding.
It's all good, but the 300 to 400K miles, now I'm going to say 'come on
Karl.' ............;-)
And check out Jim A there - he thinks high miles on an engine are dumb. You
just slap in a inexpensive low miles, very abundant cheap ford focus engine.
He even thinks if the head has been off and engine they can never be the
same again quite.
And cost wise- there's guys with 1.8 inline vw fours in vanagons that say
they can get them all day long for 300 bucks, that they'll go forever, and
they don't mind very high revs at all.
But it's all fun !
Smiles, scott
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Pensioner
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 4:53 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Diesel vs Gas Vanagons
>>> And if you only drive 10000 a year it'll take you 25 years to break
even.
By then, I'll be er ah pretty much way older, not as old as Unca Joel but
older none the less.
<<<<
There are a few other considerations worthy of note. How many miles do you
drive your petrol vanagon per year?
Diesel here in Governator Ahnold's hometown (Sacramento, CA) hovers around
3.60/gallon with petrol at 3.15/gallon. So you pay about 0.50 US more per
gallon for diesel.
If you drive 10000 miles a year and get say 20 mpg with yer gasser that's
roughly 500 gallons 3.15/gallon so dividing 3.15 by half to get 1.58 and
rearanging various decimal places you spend 1580 USD per 10000 miles at
today's optimistic prices for gasoline. If you get 30mpg (very optimistic)
with a TD or TDI on diesel then you buy 333 gallons of diesel for that 10000
miles. With suitable dividing of 3.60 by 3 to get 1.2 you spend 1200USD for
the same 10000 miles with your TD/I conversion. Per 10000 miles you save
380 dollars over petrol.
How many incidences of saving 380 dollars will you need to pay for lets say
a 10000USD conversion. Just for an outside guess up the savings to
400/10kmi. Jiggling the RCH just so and slippin and slidin shows that a
mere 25 instances of that savings will pay for that 10000USD conversion.
That works out to 25x10K mi or 250Kmi. You gonna get that many more milas
out of your 20 year old 150Kmi vanagon? Perhaps. Then it would have
400Kmi.
Set up the model in your spreadsheet and tiddle the figgahs until you have
your favorite alternate reality. Then toss in another 2500US to upgrade
wheels, tires, and transmission (conservative estimate).
If it makes you feel green to spend that kind of green, don't let the math
dissuade you.
It's still frydaye here in the not so golden state (14B$ projected deficit).
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