Petrol or diesel?

To be fair, we can give you our opinions until you're fed up with them, but you need to borrow the 2.0 DTI for long enough to ascertain if you like it or not...

Well said. Anyone know if I can hire one in London?

I doubt a dealer will let me have an extended test drive.

Ring around the dealers until they do.

We've had a 1.6, only issue was hills would cruise at 100 on the autobahn no problem wil 6 passengers and a weeks luggage. We now have a 1.8 which is much better to drive and doesn't need to be driven as hard. Best engine is the 2.2 petrol which is geared taller and quieter than the rest.

The old 2.0 diesel is noisy, slow and unreliable (lube drinking problems) but the new common rail fiat based engines are great!

The message from HiThere contains these words:

Always diesel under every circumstance - but that's 'cos they suit the way I like to drive.

Whether you'll like is is entirely up to you.

Is it a turbo diesel? First disadvantage is that you are likely to pay for for a diesel engine than you would for a petrol For something that size you are much better off getting the diesel engine. First is the fuel consumption, usually Diesels use around 2/3rd of the fuel of a petrol engine, more than making up for the 2p more per litre, and after a short while, making up for the increased purchase cost.

Diesels are far easier to drive than petrols, they have much much more torque, which means more power under your foot at slower speeds, excellent for a large vehicle such as the Zafira.

You want good pickup? Then get a Diesel, nothing better than a turbo diesel engine for giving you lots of power when you want it. Excellent for joining motorways.

The advantage the petrol has is that is has power over a greater rev range than the Diesel, so you need to change gear less often.

Currently I own a petrol but the only reason I don't have a Diesel is that the TDCi engine in the car I wanted (Fiesta) was too small for my liking.

I'm now on my second Rover 75 diesel (both autos) and wouldn't ever go back to petrol. A lot depends upon how good the actual diesel engine is (the one in the Rover 75 is made by BMW), but so far as I am concerned it's all positives and virtually no negatives. The car is quiet, frugal, and pulls like a train from low revs. My daughter has just bought a Vx Astra diesel 1.7, and although the engine is not as refined as mine, she's delighted with it - and with the 50+ mpg she is regularly obtaining

Kev

The message from "Mark Hewitt" contains these words:

My neighbour can't get the hang of mine TD at all! He's always driven petrol engines - and rather enthusiastically, too.

That's a good sign if you're going to be doing a fair few miles. Vauxhall timing belts are a known problem (though having said that I think they've sorted that out), but timing chains are great. I'm guessing the chain could have a tensioner that operates via oil pressure, so regular oil changes are essential, but you should see easily 100k-200k+++ from a chain.

Depends on a lot of things. Potentially yes, potentially no. If it's been regularly serviced (oil changes are the most important thing) then it's highly likely nothing major should go wrong. Having said that, the same goes for most modern petrol engines as well.

These days petrol engines have a lot less things go wrong generally. In the days of contact breaker ignition, you'd have to set the points, replace them and the condenser now and again, set idle speed/mixture etc. on the carb, adjust the tappets, etc etc. These days, modern fuel injection engines eliminate pretty much all of this stuff with electronic ignition, fuel injection and hydraulic tappets. Well, having said that, they've been like that for most of the last 20 years, but for most of the first half of that, a lot of cheaper cars still had carbed engines. Now they're pretty much all fuel injection. Nice and easy.

Ages ago, all I'd had was petrol engined cars, and was a bit scared of diesels in case something major went wrong. I hadn't exactly had a great variety of cars mind you (7 Mk3 Escorts - mostly 1.1s, but a couple of 1.3s,

1 1.3 petrol Mk2 Astra van, and a 2 litre Carlton Estate). Anyway, for some reason I decided to get a 2.3 Diesel Carlton Estate. It just went. Never went wrong. Well, except the once. One of the injector pipes had split, and was pissing diesel out of the split. Got a load of paper towels, and shoved them absolutely everywhere around it, and used some tape to try and seal the crack. On the way home it used around double the fuel it should have done, and was obviously down on power, but it still got me home.

Fixing that was as simple as phoning up Carquip (vauxhall parts specialist), getting a pipe sent to me (£8 + P+P, which was a couple of quid IIRC), and it literally took two minutes to fit, and thanks to the self bleeding mechanism, started without problems.

Compare that to the running problems on one of my 2 litre petrol Carltons - I had to check plugs, leads, dizzy cap, rotor arm, coil and king lead before realising that it was the crankshaft sensor causing the problem!

But if diesel injector pumps pack up, they can be big bucks to sort out. Having said that, proper servicing should see that the chances of that happening are very slim.

At the end of the day it all depends how many miles you're doing. Diesels are cheaper to run, but are more expensive, but then they hold their value better. Personally if it was a choice between a chain driven 2 litre turbodiesel and a belt driven 1.8 petrol I'd go for the diesel engine all day long.

Peter

-- "The truth is working in television is not very glamorous at all. I just go home on my own at night and sit alone and eat crisps."

Strange really. I can understand the problem being the other way around. IMO Diesels are easier because there is much more power there when starting off, i.e you can be clumsy with the clutch and still pull away nicely, whereas if you tried the same trick with a petrol you'd probably stall.

The message from "Mark Hewitt" contains these words:

It wasn't that - it was the "I tried to dash across a roundabout and it didn't".

I had a Zafira 2.0 Dti as a lease car for 12 months. The engine was not the most refined, although 16 valves make it more revvy than other older generation diesels it averaged 44mpg with my lead boots and drunk oil at an alarming rate until about 8000 miles when it stopped using it at all.

I had a 1.8 for a few weeks and preferred the diesel. The 1.8 was nippier around town, but got bogged down on a run with a full load far more than the Dti. I was getting about 29mpg out of it.

The 2.2 petrol is sprightly but very thirsty, the new 1.9 diesel engines from Vauxhall are peaches. I suspect they'll come in with Zafira 2 which must be coming soon as the current Zafira design has got to be 6 years old at least.

Do you cover more than 10-12,000 miles a year? That could sway your costs, although good low mileage diesels usually sell well second hand, and the Dti is rarer than the 1.8 second hand, as a lot of 1.8's are used as hire cars which lowers residuals.

To be fair, yours was a bit notorious for that, we used to take the mickey out of Perkins over quite how badly it could stitch you up pulling out of petrol stations on the A1 when going to visit them.

Hmm - I'd follow what Tim says, ring around until somebody lets you.

It's a _major_ purchase. I always test drive potential vehicles for as long as I need, which is several hours.