Diesel car engines

[casstony]

Originally Posted by DarkArts

I'd love to see where this comes from. Where is the evidence?
.

The evidence for lower reliability was word of mouth from my mechanic - he's kept busy with injector and EGR repairs and says there are issues with supply of spare parts for some current diesels.

I wasn't aware that adblue is in the latest cars - that's a positive step - but my next vehicle will likely have a hybrid petrol motor (or full electric).

[leon]

Hi Glen this is the statement that i was referring to, I sort of don't know what you mean here

I have travelled extensively through the outback, and constantly see people do stupid things to diesels. If you don't know how to drive a diesel, don't buy one and then spend years complaining or seeking remedies from the manufacturer for your stupidity.

Leon

[raymo]

It will all be academic before too long, as to hark back to an earlier thread, I believe that EV take up will be much faster than most people here seem to think; witness this year's luxury car of the year being all electric. Not trying
to highjack this thread, just a comment.
raymo

[RyanJones]

20 years as a mechanic :

The OP is really right on the money here “ pardon the pun “. The money to maintain current diesels is pretty extreme. The technology that has gone into creating the modern diesel to make it not only marketable with NVH levels and drivability but also emission friendly is amazing having watched a lot of it come through the system. This has come at a price though. Yes there are plenty of mechanics in a can you can buy to help keep the system clean but the problem with these are they cause the engine to burn and exhaust the grime that has built up negating the whole “ clean “ engine premise. Short of that, all modern diesels have their problems ( and I mean ALL ). The price to repair the car after 10 years or so becomes non financially viable and so generally the car ends up being scrapped. That doesn’t sound like an overly environmentally friendly solution either. The same will happen down the track with EVs too.... time will prove that. The fact is you can’t make vehicles “ clean “. All you can do is offset who creates the mess and where it ends up. The time and energy needs to go into needing vehicles less.

That last little bit was a Segway, sorry

Ryan

[dannat (Daniel)]

Originally Posted by casstony

.

I've got a clean engine now but I think there are too many pollution issues associated with diesel for it to be used as a car fuel. There should be a ban on the sale of new cars with diesel engines.

problem is the crap oil companies call diesel, if they used vegetable oil with bit of ethanol it would run much cleaner

[CeratodusDuck (George)]

Originally Posted by dannat

problem is the crap oil companies call diesel, if they used vegetable oil with bit of ethanol it would run much cleaner

This begs the question: is there ANY truth in the nugget about good diesel vs poor?

Ford recommends BP and I "think" Mobil diesel. Several mechanics have told me this over the years too, and to avoid Woolworths-Caltex/Coles-Shell/Costco/United (and very definitely Tesco in the UK )...

Is there even a tiny bit of truth in that? My Ford runs beautifully on BP Premium diesel, but put even a 1/4 of a tank of Caltex top up, and it runs like poop. Within as little as 20km! So, I run the car almost exclusively BP (as per Fords advice). My fuel economy on the highway is 2.3L/100 and about 6L/100 city/town on BP, and almost DOUBLE that if using Caltex (Shell is a little better than Caltex)

Are formulations per company drastically different now that all diesel is a concoction of 51 herbs and spices instead of actual diesel? Last time I changed the diesel filter (after using Caltex for most of a year) it was putrid black and water coagulent present. Recent filter change after nearly exclusively BP and I reckon I could have put that old filter right back in, and the filter bowl was clear.

[Peter Ward]

I don't accept Ryan's prognosis over the future of diesel cars, or the environmental penalty of EV's.

Before I purchased our Tesla Model 3 I did a lot of research on what the car would require after the battery warranty expired. Quoting Tesla:

"The closed-loop battery recycling process at Gigafactory 1 presents a compelling solution to move energy supply away from the fossil-fuel based practice of take, make and burn, to a more circular model of recycling end-of-life batteries for reuse over and over again. From an economic perspective, we expect to recognize significant savings over the long term, as the costs associated with large-scale battery material recovery and recycling will be far lower than purchasing and transporting new materials"

In short, rather than a single-use burn of fossil fuel, the battery cells are slotted to be recycled hence reused over and over.

Tesla have also indicated that after 1500 charge cycles or about 640,000km a new battery pack will cost about $A5000.00. I suspect the figure will be significantly lower, as the cost of lithium cells looks to be following Moore's Law.

We do about 15,000km per year on average, hence the 640k figure is unlikely to be tested by yours truly in 42 years from now....
The cycle limit will likely come up first, give we charge the car once every 4 days or so, and will arrive in about 16 years from now. But this is all moot.

The longest I have kept a car is 7 years (an E250 Diesel Merc...now 13 years old, and BTW I bumped into the new owner recently and pleased to hear he was delighted with the car and has not spent a cent on it other than regular services/tyres/pads....hardly "scrap" ).


As for me I'd expect to be pottering about in a "Tesla model 7" long before the Model 3 actually needs retiring.

[CeratodusDuck (George)]

Only real EV issue I have read about is the fact VERY few retrieval companies can or will collect the molten debris after a lithium burn after one of these crashes. An Austrian chap had to fight insurance for a year to find a scrap recoverer who was able to and willing to deal with the remnants of his Tesla (he had crashed it into a tree and had instantaneous ignition of the lithium after the cells ruptured in the crash - he was lucky to get out)

[casstony]

Originally Posted by raymo

It will all be academic before too long, as to hark back to an earlier thread, I believe that EV take up will be much faster than most people here seem to think; witness this year's luxury car of the year being all electric. Not trying
to highjack this thread, just a comment.
raymo

I hope you're correct. Popularity will depend on affordability. I guess my next car will be a 2 or 3 year old hybrid with 4 years of manufacturers warranty left. Most people can't afford a new electric car.

[RyanJones]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

I don't accept Ryan's prognosis over the future of diesel cars, or the environmental penalty of EV's.

Before I purchased our Tesla Model 3 I did a lot of research on what the car would require after the battery warranty expired. Quoting Tesla:

"The closed-loop battery recycling process at Gigafactory 1 presents a compelling solution to move energy supply away from the fossil-fuel based practice of take, make and burn, to a more circular model of recycling end-of-life batteries for reuse over and over again. From an economic perspective, we expect to recognize significant savings over the long term, as the costs associated with large-scale battery material recovery and recycling will be far lower than purchasing and transporting new materials"

I don’t want to distract too much from the original post suffice to say that quoting the statement about the sustainability of the product provided by the person promoting the product isn’t my idea of in depth research. Mars told me that one a day would help me work, rest and play too but the obesity epidemic would suggest otherwise.....

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by CeratodusDuck

Only real EV issue I have read about is the fact VERY few retrieval companies can or will collect the molten debris after a lithium burn after one of these crashes. An Austrian chap had to fight insurance for a year to find a scrap recoverer who was able to and willing to deal with the remnants of his Tesla (he had crashed it into a tree and had instantaneous ignition of the lithium after the cells ruptured in the crash - he was lucky to get out)

As crash tested by the NTSB, the battery cages of Tesla's are proved to be remarkably robust. To actually rupture the cells and ignite them you need to seriously crash /write the car off...and the fact the guy did that and still walked away says volumes.

Sure there have been a handful of Tesla's go up in smoke....but an air-petroleum mix is far more volatile. I'd bet an order of magnitude (or two) more of ICE vehicles have gone up in smoke globally over the same period yet are we really worried over whether they can be recycled ? Seriously?

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by RyanJones

I don’t want to distract too much from the original post suffice to say that quoting the statement about the sustainability of the product provided by the person promoting the product isn’t my idea of in depth research. Mars told me that one a day would help me work, rest and play too but the obesity epidemic would suggest otherwise.....

Suffice to say, the Tesla Spin machine was not my only source.

But the facts are, just as Space-X have reusable launch vehicles, Tesla are putting a recycling system in place for their EV batteries....

But suggesting all modern diesel powered cars have a shelf life of just one decade before the need "scrapping" might be a little fanciful.

[RyanJones]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

But suggesting all modern diesel powered cars have a shelf life of just one decade before the need "scrapping" might be a little fanciful.

10 years is probably at the extreme end of the scale I’ll admit but not something I haven’t seen either. Also, please don’t think I’m saying that these cars “ need “ to be scrapped, they don’t. What I’m saying is that a lot of owners of these vehicles are not able/interested in repairing them at such high repair costs. This is not an option, it’s an observation from within the industry. Most of the components that I’m currently diagnosing faults with that have excessive repair prices are fuel delivery systems and/or emission control systems. That is the current nature of the beast.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Originally Posted by RyanJones

10 years is probably at the extreme end of the scale I’ll admit but not something I haven’t seen either. Also, please don’t think I’m saying that these cars “ need “ to be scrapped, they don’t. What I’m saying is that a lot of owners of these vehicles are not able/interested in repairing them at such high repair costs. This is not an option, it’s an observation from within the industry. Most of the components that I’m currently diagnosing faults with that have excessive repair prices are fuel delivery systems and/or emission control systems. That is the current nature of the beast.

To me, this seems more like a sustainability and parts supply issue. We need to ween ourselves off the disposability of everything. Making a vehicle (regardless of power source) that is economically repairable for extended time periods should be a priority - and that means, the car companies not gouging for parts sometime down the line.

Of course, this goes against their interests...they want us to throw away the old one and buy a shiny new one

[AstralTraveller (David)]

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

To me, this seems more like a sustainability and parts supply issue. We need to ween ourselves off the disposability of everything. Making a vehicle (regardless of power source) that is economically repairable for extended time periods should be a priority - and that means, the car companies not gouging for parts sometime down the line.

Of course, this goes against their interests...they want us to throw away the old one and buy a shiny new one

In that sense Cuba is an (unintentional?) leader in sustainability. The US economic embargo means that they are still driving around the 1950's vintage vehicles that were current at the time of the revolution. There must be a nice little industry in spares. Similarly, I heard fairly recently (last decade or so) that in Sri Lanka you can still buy all the spares for a Morris Minor 1100 - a practical little car that can be repaired in any village workshop.


A friend of mine researched sustainability (in an academic role) and says that there is so much embodied carbon in a car that it is basically always better (in terms of emissions) to keep it running rather than buy a new one, even if it uses significantly more fuel. In that regard I'm pleased to say that my troopie is now 17 years old and I'm hoping for a few more decades yet (basically until I'm too old to use it). My mechanic has a customer with a '98 troopie that has done >900,000km and it hoping for 1,000,000km.

[CeratodusDuck (George)]

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

To me, this seems more like a sustainability and parts supply issue. We need to ween ourselves off the disposability of everything. Making a vehicle (regardless of power source) that is economically repairable for extended time periods should be a priority - and that means, the car companies not gouging for parts sometime down the line.

Of course, this goes against their interests...they want us to throw away the old one and buy a shiny new one

Designed Obsolescence

My father still has a 40 year old Kelvinator fridge that works as good as new (new seals courtesy of a bungee strap ) We ourselves have had 3 fridges - and no, not cheap Chinese ones - in 15 years marriage.

[CeratodusDuck (George)]

And yet another Tesla glitch today - one was filmed driving without any occupant (no not asleep reclining - NO occupant - car went off by itself).

Could be fun.

[RyanJones]

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

To me, this seems more like a sustainability and parts supply issue. We need to ween ourselves off the disposability of everything. Making a vehicle (regardless of power source) that is economically repairable for extended time periods should be a priority - and that means, the car companies not gouging for parts sometime down the line.

Of course, this goes against their interests...they want us to throw away the old one and buy a shiny new one

Well said. There are cars like that, they’re called Toyota’s lol. Yes I have one in the shape of a Hilux but we also have a Benz in the stable.

It is a sustainablity issue first and foremost but it needs to be solved with a holistic approach. The fact is that there are emissions targets that MUST be met. The longevity of the parts used to meet those targets is secondary at best. Throughout my years as a mechanic I have watched as cars have become less reliable ( as a complete product ) and less repairable in favor of replaceable. The amount of parts, and as I have referred to before, complete cars that have to be replaced now is far greater than it was in the past but there is no “ headline statistic “ to quantify it.

[casstony]

Originally Posted by Gary47

Last time I was in his shop he had a stack of Toyota KD engines a horse could not jump over, all waiting to be rebuilt, all failed due to overheating.

It's a sad state of affairs when we can't even rely on Toyota.

I like the engine in our Camry hybrid - the smallish petrol motor doesn't hinder general driving because the electric motor provides extra torque when needed - no need to rev the motor.

Kluger hybrids are being released next year. If the Territory can give me another 4 years of relatively trouble free driving a 3yo Kluger hybrid might be a nice car.

[casstony]

I've done several hours of driving since the carbon clean and the car does seem to run smoother and fuel economy seems to be improved. I had noticed a decline in fuel economy over the 5 years I've owned the car.

The car averages 7.5 l/100km on freeway runs now (110km/h zone) and 9.3 around town.