The problem I see w/ a diesel car is the availability of fuel as not all gas stations carry diesel fuel. For this reason I would rule out diesel cars, and the cold starting issue, but mainly fuel availablity. Also I do like to push the limits of range of my car. Basically I consider anything where the fuel light is not on to be ‘full’, when the neadle gets to the E ‘line’ then I have 1/2 a tank left, when it falls to the letter E I have about 1/4 and start looking to fill up.
Incase you are wondering, it’s because I HATE to fill up, so I push it off as long as possiable.
In a diesel car I would think you are much more at the mercy of diesel availability, which would seriously cut down on the crusing range, especially in unknown terratory.
Has this been an issuse for you diesel car owners? When do you typically fill up?
We fill up when they’re below a quarter tank, or top it off if we’re going on a trip. It’s not hard to find diesel stations rurally though. I don’t know how you would go about it in the city, although I did notice at the one station I used in LA last week, there were diesel pumps.
We also carry an atlas of all of the card-lock stations in the trucks, so we can always find something. Cowboy mostly uses those.
We owned a diesel in the past, and we have 2 right now. My husband is the usual driver, and he fills once a week, usually once the low fuel alarm dings at him. When I drive it, I’m usually looking once we get to half a tank, but then, I do the same with my gas-burning van.
In this area, there are quite a few diesel pumps available, but it’s a farming area, so that may have something to do with it. But even on the road and even when we lived in Florida, we never had problems finding fuel. We just got used to looking for stations selling diesel.
I had an 81 Rabbit. I never found diesel availability to be an issue. You get to know which stations near where you live have it. On road trips, it’s even less of an issue, since every truck stop in existence has diesel pumps. Occasionally you get stuck filling up with one of the huge high-volume pumps meant for highway tractors, which is a bit of a pain, but that’s rare.
I usually filled as soon as I was down to a 1/4 tank, but I do that with my Camry, too. I have no desire to find out how much effort bleeding the injector lines requires.
Cold starting is a much bigger issue. Mind you, I started that thing at -48C one time, so it’s not like it’s impossible, but at anything below -10C or so and the block heater needed to be plugged in for a while. And I mean, it flat out would not start without being plugged in. Newer diesels are better in this regard, I’m led to believe.
I have a diesel truck. Availability is not an issue, although you may not find it smack-dab in the middle of highly urban areas. Unless you are a downtown dweller, it’s not a consideration.
Cold starts require a bit of forethought to plug in the block heater if you know the temperature is going to drop, but as long as your glow plugs, batteries and electrical system are good you can probably get it started even without this - it will just require cranking for a while.
As for range, I get about 850 kilometers to a tank. I don’t worry about it until it gets well below 1/8 tank. On the road, availability is even less of a problem since any truck stop has diesel, but you do need to be careful not to run out of fuel completely. Diesels are much more difficult to restart than gasoline engines after depleting the tank.
I ran out of fuel with my '82 Rabbit and got it started just by pouring a gallon of fuel into the tank. I suspect that the fuel line issue is only for the big engines (and maybe only the old engines–I seem to recall a front-end loader that ran out near my work site this summer; they just filled it and started it.) (Anecdotal, obviously: check with the manufacturer.)
I never had trouble finding fuel. (The one time I ran out, I had worked until 3:30 a.m. on an E.M. and all the usual sites on my way home were closed.)
Diesel fuel is available on all highways, at almost all farms, and at any rural filling station. You’ll never have any real trouble finding the fuel. It may be somewhat inconvenient finding it in some cities and suburbs, but most filling stations carry diesel.
One advantage of diesels is that you can carry a large jerry-can of the fuel in the back without fearing fire, and each gallon you carry goes a long way. If you’re ever out in the middle of nowhere and low on fuel, you can add a gallon from and be safe for the next forty miles.
NEVER EVER EVER RUN COMPLETELY OUT OF FUEL IN A DIESEL! IT CAN CAUSE INSTANT CATASTROPHIC ENGINE FAILURE AND/OR TOTAL LOSS OF VEHICLE CONTROL.
It might be specific to California, but farm/equipment diesel is different than road-vehicle diesel. Farm fuel contains more sulfur. Highway fuel is dyed red. They both work, but you’ll get a ticket if you’re caught using farm fuel in a highway vehicle.
We have extra fuel tanks on the back of two of our trucks - one only gets farm fuel to go in the equipment, and the other one usually gets highway fuel so we can take long trips without worrying about finding stations. You’re probably not going to want to install a 100-gallon tank in the back of your car though, and it is expensive to fill up all at once.
I had a diesel 1990 Toyota van. I loved it. This is in Australia, so I don’t know how it would translate to US experience but here goes:
fuel availability: excellent. I don’t remember seeing a petrol (gas) station that didn’t have deisel.
cold starting: probably better than many petrol vehicles I’ve owned. Turn the key, wait five seconds (or less) for the glow plugs light to go out, and drive away. The days of truckers leaving their engines running at truck stops are decades gone (some still do, out of habit though).
refueling: I normally did it at a quarter tank, but sometimes I let it slide. I didn’t keep the van long enough to tell if this had an effect on durability of the engine.
oil changes: much, much more fanatical about these than with a car. Every 5000km and new filter each time.
servicing: easier than a petrol engine.
I loved my diesel, but it was a bog standard one without turbos or intercoolers, so it wasn’t exactly a street machine.
When the Roosa Master pump in old GM diesels got anything but perfect, uncontaminated diesel, it disintegrated spontaneously. When the metal from the pump’s internals arrived in the cylinder, it was noncombustible and incompressible. Bang. - then possibly skid-id-id-it-id-it-id-a-CRASH if the torque converter was running at a very low torque multiplication and allowed a seized engine to lock the drive wheels.
Well, I suppose I’d be the perfect person to answer your question!
I am the owner of a 2001 VW Jetta TDI (Diesel)
It gets around 47 miles to the gallon. Yeah that’s right. If I don’t go on any major trips, I can’t really say how long it would take to burn a tank. 3 weeks maybe? Cold starting isn’t an issue for me. But I do live in the south so… But crainking in 20 degree weather isn’t a problem. People don’t have problems unless they live in Minnesota or places like that.
Well, let me put it this way. In a VW diesel, your car is going to go further once the low fuel light comes on. But the diesel availability is a problem. Unless you won’t know where the diesel stations in the area are, then you’ll be fine. I’ve pushed the limit many times, but it is possible to go 50 miles once the low fuel light comes on.
I’ve only had trouble finding fuel once, in a large city. That could cause problems. But honestly, if you dont’ like to fill up, then get a diesel. You’ll be filling up less than you would with a normal car. You get better mileage too.
For more info about diesels than you could possibly ever want, go to www.tdiclub.com
Other way around. Off-road fuel is red. It’s not only cheaper to refine, but it isn’t subject to the same state and federal taxes that over the road fuel is - the taxes that are earmarked for road maintenance. The red dye is used to indicate that off-road fuel has been used in a machine.
I had a Mazda 626 with a diesel engine. Finding fuel wasn’t a problem really, but finding a mechanic that would work on it sure was. I’m up north in Wisconsin though, so there aren’t many cars around with diesel engines.
Bah, I knew it was one of them, and I looked around on the internet before I changed my “I don’t know which” statement. No, I’m not the one that fuels up the diesel trucks, obviously!
I was also a diesel Rabbit owner in the Eighties. I had no problem finding Diesel fuel on Long Island, New York, at school in Philadelphia, or on Road Trips.
I loved my Diesel Rabbit five speed. What a fun car to drive. It was a lot of work, and it had no tach so I had to shift entirely by ear, but it was great.
I live in Southern California, so cold starts are completely a non-issue for me.
When I first got the car (2002 Golf TDI) I was worried about availability of diesel. I knew it wasn’t available everywhere, but never really paid attention. Now that I’m conditioned to look for diesel, I realize it’s more prevalent than I thought. I live in a very urban area, and it’s not a problem. I figure that lots of delivery trucks run on diesel, so as long as the stores need stocking, there’s going to be stations carrying diesel.
I will admit that when I’m in an area I’m not familiar with, I’ll tend to fill up way before I’m running low on fuel. But in my normal stomping grounds, I can think of several stations in various parts of town that I know I can easily get to and fill up.
I had a vintage Mercedes diesel.
Fuel availability was not a problem, you just had to be smart, and fill up before you were down to your last gallon or two.
Cold starting was not a problem, but I never had to start her at temperatures below 10 fahrenheit.
One thing you could do nowadays to improve cold-starting would be to run a synthetic 5W40 diesel-rated motor oil, rather than the 15W40 that was reccomended on older diesels. Shell Rotella T 5W40 or Mobil 1 Truck & SUV 5W40 are both good examples. That should decrease your cold-cranking challenges if you don’t have the opportunity to plug your diesel in overnight.
GM diesels are pieces of crap becase GM didn’t know what they were doing. Took them until the '84 model year to figure out what they’d been doing wrong but by then the consumers didn’t care.
As did my Dad in Brewster, NY. The only place we could get diesel locally was at a truck stop over in Conneticut, which was fine because we did most of our shopping in Danbury.
I know what you mean. I learned to drive a stick in Dad’s '79.
