Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:11:48 -0800
Reply-To: VW Doka <vw.doka@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: VW Doka <vw.doka@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Bluetec diesel
In-Reply-To: <000001c874e5$a347bea0$6501a8c0@TOSHIBALAP>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hmmm, I just read somewhere that 65% of all new cars sold in Europe are
diesel.
Someone should tell those silly foreigners that they're wasting their money
on expensive, unreliable, dirty, and slow vehicles...
Is it Frydaye yet?
Cheers,
Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf
Of Scott Daniel - Shazam
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 3:58 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Bluetec diesel
We shall see.
There are exactly 4 advantages to diesels I have identified so far.
All the rest our downsides or disadvantages.
And I drove a TD vanagon for a long time, so it's not like I'm not familiar
with the beast.
I even own 3 vw diesel engines and 2 diesel vanagons right now.
If all we had were diesels, people would be nutso over getting smooth quiet
gasoline cars to drive.
It's 'the cool and different factor' that really motivates people to drive
diesels.........
And the fuel economy is a short term gain........
Why heck, just a few minutes ago ...............typical deal............on
the diesel vanagon list.........guy's injection pump is binding up inside.
Pump repair or rebuild time.
Long term, diesels are not especially cheaper to operate than gasoline cars
and the older ones for sure are polluting, rougher running, harder starting,
and have expensive parts on them like injection pumps to go bad........
And you know..........this is REALLY FUNNY
..............BECAUSE.........traditionally they used to say 'diesels are
more reliable' and 'there's no tune up on diesels', and so forth, and
yet........in modern times gasoline engines are CONSIDERABLY more reliable
and under less stress than diesel engines., and last better than many vw
engines, and are under far less stress, and some of them are
non-interference engines.
Your timing belt gets off for second on a vw diesel, it's the sound of
hundred dollar bills being cast to the wind by the handful.
Try to explain that to your wife, if you have one. Women, being more
practical around things like cars, in general, don't get 10,000 + dollars
being spent on a vanagon engine conversion, and regardless whether vw diesel
or subaru or whatever, if a catastrophic event occurs that wipes out
thousands in a second, they are not going to be very simpatico at all.
Just had a case the other day - the reason for the hole in the side
of the new VW TD engine isn't known yet..............but I'll will have to
say.........it's *extremely unlikely* ( though possible of course ) that
that same thing would not have happened, or at least not so
catastrophically, to a gasoline. From the sounds of it maybe 3 rods and the
head are salvageable........the rest is gone money, big money. I guess it's
the macho factor about diesels- maybe that's it.
There's these nice rednecks near me that just love to fire up their
monster diesel Ford pickups, which they mainly use for a one person commute
car, at least between hunting seasons, and fire up two big fords and let
them sit there idling away at 80 decibels or whatever it is for 25 minutes
while they shoot the bull. "Me big strong man, me have big diesel truck'
..........yucko baby.
I made the comment recently that a rebuilt injection pump on a tdi
jetta costs 250 gallons worth of fuel to get rebuilt and one guy said that
the IP rebuilt on his Chevy diesel or whatever it was wiped out two years
worth of fuel cost savings over gasoline.
So.........other than the 'I want to be different than the masses'
............and 'I love the better fuel economy' ..........and I suppose a
bit of 'more low end torque' ........as long as we can get the gasoline at a
good price, and other than the biofuel/veggie oil ability, there's no real
reason to drive a smoky vibrating blows-up easily vw diesel - sorry !
If we can't get fuel, or we barely can, or we have to be really miserly
with fuel, then I'll get one of my diesels going.
As it is a barely need to drive anyway, like I can go 4 months and only
put 1,000 miles on my car if I'm not doing trips. And when I do go on a
trip, I am happy to get 20mpg on gas and have all that wonderful smooth
power and easy 80 mph cruise, and that's a 20 year old turbo gasoline car
that I got for about 300 dollars. 160 hp is very decent power in many
vehicles, and not even that uncommon or hard to get in gasoline engines.
And it's so smooth and quite and not smelly too !! Plus a non-interference
engine in many cases.
But everyone do what ya 'all like of course. But if you want something
reliable, durable, trouble free, not under huge stress all the time, plus
instantly starting, and smooth and quiet ..........get a nice
non-interference gasoline engine.
If you like lots of vibration, expensive parts like an IP that gas
engines don't have, and a critical engine under a lot of stress.....yeah,
then do vw diesel. I would so love to document or research how many VW
diesel heads get ruined. I've got lots of them and have seen lots of them.
Vw diesels that is. Bottom line, if I can't really trust it, I don't care
if it does get better fuel mileage. Btdt.
It ain't fun being a long, long from anywhere when things blow badly, and
diesel vw's are far more prone to that than many, many other engines out
there. They just cost more to drive except for the lucky few that get many
hundreds of thousands of good miles out of them.
Scott
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Zeitgeist
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 2:16 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Bluetec diesel
Pfft, whatever...yer livin' in the past, dude. Audi just won the 2007 24
hours of LeMans with a diesel powered R10 tdi
Diesels rock, by their very nature
On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 1:58 PM, Scott Daniel - Shazam <
scottdaniel@turbovans.com> wrote:
>
>
> and Honey, sorry to say it, but they just ain't no way around it that by
> their very nature, diesels are noisy, dirty, expensive, and slowish.....
> ( and not to deny that there are now fantastically quite and very, very
> powerful diesel engines in the automotive world ) . But I notice Ferrari
> and Porsche don't mess around there.
>
>
| 
