Advantages v disadvantages of a diesel!!!

Well, it appears that I am..... and I can feel your pain from here. 'Shelf stacking' pays good money these days, you know.

And I can smell your shit :)

Well it would needs to, wouldn't it - I'm sure twenty year old bangers cost a fortune these days.

Got a bit of an arse fixation?

Question: which one of the 5 vehicles I own is 20 years old?

You only get one chance at this.

Absolutely, I'm finding this current conversation with an 'arse' extremely entertaining !

Who cares, none of them are interesting enough to warrant flashing around you seem to be making of them in some strange tribal attempt to make me feel 'jealous'.

I believe they're calling you to aisle 7, someone has knocked the tinned beans over.

HTH.

Well, it's obviously winding you up a bit. I mean, I'm only a 'shelf stacker' and I have a fleet of 5 vehicles, that's gotta be hurting.

Keep it coming. You only have one trick, you may as well milk it for all it's worth.

which is totally irelevant since I claimed that deisel wears faster than petrol, which it does! I never mensioned or remarked about why or how they were scrapped.

That has to do with many other external factors, that are not part of the claims.

They're not twenty years old, they break down all the time because they're italian...

Tee hee - nice wriggling. So you accept that this extra wear you propose isn't actually a problem in real life? Thus it isn't actually a disadvantage at all, in fact it's irrelevant.

cheers, clive

In news:4301af60$0$1198$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net, Clive George decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

Still a great excuse for not driving a nasty, horrible, Diesel thing though.

I'm with the burgerman on this "discussion", but possibly because I despise Dr D's evil invention and Burgerman does appear to know what he's on about.

You dxrive a V8 rangie and a 6 cyl beetle - no wonder you're against Dr D's evil machinations.

It's relevant if true, if it actually shortened the working life of a car, which it patently *doesn't*.

Alfa Arna. Do they even admit to that one? Will Steve?

Stamp "Chrome Vanadium" on it and paint it silver. He'll accept it then because it must be.

I pay 34.9p a litre :)

Perhaps, but warrenty claim records aren't anecdotal.

No, it is true by definition. I said for an *ideally flat torque curve*, i.e. with exactly same torque at all revs. If that is the case, then power obviously scales completely linearly with revs, and 90% power occurs at 90% of revs of peak power, and peak power occurs at the rev limit, *by definition*. Therefore you get >90% of peak power for 10% of the rev band.

That is nice, but I think you missed my point a bit. I know that real engines don't have flat torque curves, but an ideal petrol engine would.

Surely that's clear? To give a wider power peak, the slope of the power curve must drop off. Since torque is proprtional to the slope of the power curve, it must also drop off.

I never said otherwise - that is trivially obvious. This boils down the the semantics of what 'equivalent' engines are. We clearly have different definitions.

It seems you are choosing to ignore facts to sustain your prejudice.

No it isn't. A diesel with the same peak power as a petrol engine _is_ comparatively torquey. You know this.

You drop back to something below the peak power after a change. A diesel, properly driven, will still be _at_ the power peak after a change.

Because of the way that _most_ people drive, obviously. They simply don't use the full rev range.

Yes. However a petrol of the same cost, weight, power willalways lose out the the oil burner. I would argue that peak power is a valid point on which to judge equivalence.

There would never be any peak power point! Your idealism prevents you having one!

and peak power occurs at the rev

But engines are designed to be strong enough to have the rev limit slightly past peak power. IE 13000 rpm bike engines etc. Your power curve is straight and never ending so no peak...

Therefore you get >90% of peak power for 10%

Who says that a flat line is the ideal? And of course that would imply an endless power supply as if the torque curve always stayed flat the power would keep increasing with rpm for ever! No gear box needed.

Torque curves of course can never be flat obviously as you cant flow much gas at 200 rpm or at 30,000 rpm because of the mechanical pumping limitations, and speed of combustion etc...

Err it cant! And it wouldnt be ideal and would feel featureless too, and would make people want to keep rteving harder as torque wouldnt fall away as revs rore high. So no flat isnt ideal.

No. An engine that makes useful torque over a greater rpm range is always more flexible and needs less gears to match loads and speeds The torque curve on diesels drops off about 2000 rpm earlier than on petrol, and is lower to start with!

No sense... More at any rpm is always better.

2 LITRE DIESEL TURBO

Anything else is not comparing either like with like or cost with cost, since turbos are expensive. And the point is to compare onre fuel with another.

You mean like a similarly sized petrol engine already has even if you ignore the top end?

Yes but to do this it needs to be much bigger or have a turbo which means that it is cheating! If the diesel can have one so can the petrol! Same turbo, same cost.

Why? To do so means you are simply using a bigger more expensive heavier engine, or a turbo, which can also be applied to the petrol!

Note the word 'tends'.

Just because something is slightly noisier, it doesn't mean it's disadvantageous to have it... unless you're a oversensitive pedant, of course.

Anyway... I'm sure if this is such a disadvantage, certain others 'contributing' to this thread, always had the quietest, road legal pipes on their bikes, in the past. ;-)

So given your explanation, where's the massive disadvantage in this respect, then?

Because they're a bona-fide pikey express? (the amount of XR3i cabriolets there used to be floating about round the pikey camps round here...)

It isn't.

Not if you buy one of the better cars out there, anyway... in my experience, which apparently counts for f*ck all, anyway. :-)

One of the last trips I did as a courier, was Kent to Newcastle upon Tyne, overnight in my Ml3 Golf TDI - no 'thrum' wearing away at me, the whole 800 or thereabouts miles I did in one hit, bar one brief nap, the actual drop, and one fuel stop.

So far, aye.

But they're about to introduce the new IS, with a diesel in the range, are they not?

Wouldn't surprise me if they came up with a diesel lump in years to come, in the bigger stuff within their range too, tbh.

Notice as well, plenty of premium models from Audi, BMW and Mercedes, all with diesel donks...

If you like.

I can probably borrow my ex car, a Mk4 Golf TDI estate off my old man, for the day if needs be.

No 'tiring engine braking' whatsoever in that thing, especially when you drive it how VW intended, and stop trying to drive it like a petrol, which is where others I feel, have gone wrong.

I've had quite a few petrols do their big ends... cars without all that nasty carbon in their oil, whereas I've yet to have a diesel do the same, no matter how leggy it was.

Nothing of course, to do with the fact that by their very nature petrols tend to rev higher and for longer periods of time, generating more heat as a result of more friction and with more pounding of any weak components therein.

My mate recently picked up a Peugeot Expert 1.9D which has done its big ends, for peanuts... the head gasket initially went, and the previous owner drove it long enough for water to get mixed in enough quantity with the oil, causing for said bearings to fail due to lack of lubrication.