An ongoing comparison, which has been going on for many decades, is ‘what is the best way to run a car? Diesel or Gas?’ Many say that since all highway tractor-trailers use diesel, diesel must be best. Also, modern locomotives use diesel, so that’s another argument for diesel. Are these good arguments for automobiles? Yes and no. I’ve had both, so I do have a bit of experience. I’m on my 14th Mercedes. Five have been diesel, and two of them were Turbo diesels. I drove both turbos over 200,000 miles, virtually trouble free. The other three, in high altitudes, would smoke like crazy and have very low power, but they would last forever. At high altitudes, the air is thinner, and a conventional diesel breathes that thin air, and the fuel doesn’t get burned efficiently, so smoke is common at high altitudes. The turbos have turbo-chargers on them which forces air into the engine, so there is plenty of air at high altitudes, and no power loss. We were on a trip somewhere many years ago, and our turbo was going 100 MPH effortlessly. David was steering with me close at hand!
Diesel engines work without spark plugs or carburetors. The fuel is injected directly into the cylinders, and fires without a spark. How? Diesel engines have very high compression ratios, some as high as 21 to 1, as opposed to gasoline engines of half or usually less than that. Gas engines fire the gasoline in their cylinders by a spark plug. A diesel engine’s compression is so high, and the air is compressed so much, that it becomes so hot, it automatically fires the diesel fuel. This means that diesel cars are not subject to dampness or water fouling their ignition systems. Diesels have no ignition system.
Even with turbos, I don’t think that diesels have near the power of a gasoline powered car. Diesel is also at least ten cents or more higher than gas per gallon. Diesel engines are far more efficient than gas, because diesel has far more BTU’s (British Thermal Units) per gallon, and after all, any engine is transferring heat into power, so the more heat in the fuel, the more power will be realized.
Diesels are far more difficult to start on cold mornings. They have electric heaters or ‘glow plugs’ in their cylinder heads, to pre-warm them so they will start. At zero or less, at I suffered with diesel in Silverton Colorado, elevation 9218. Diesels can be a huge problem on a cold sub-zero morning. When I owned the Grand Imperial Hotel in Silverton, many years ago, I used to run ski trips from Phoenix. I told the bus driver to not turn his engine off, but to let it idle all night. He ignored my instructions, and it took several hours to get it running, and that was by having huge heaters placed under the engine, which of course made the skiers lose their ski day.
Modern diesel cars, I understand, are far easier to start in cold, and are very quiet. But giving the fact that diesel is more expensive, even though it gives more miles per gallon, isn’t, to me anyway, comparable to a modern gas powered car, which I hear doesn’t have to even be tuned for 100,000 miles. My 2014 Mercedes gas powered car has 45,000 miles on it and I have done NOTHING to it, other than a set of tires and regular oil changes. Mercedes recommends changing the oil once a year.
My Uncle Don came from Kentucky to Washington D.C. in 1920, along with my Mom, and the whole family. He got a job driving a beer truck, and this was primitive diesel. He said that they had to tow it around the block twice to get it started, and then it was never turned off till it got back to the plant in the evening. Horsepower per pound of engine weight favors a gasoline engine. Why to trucks and locomotives use diesel? Simple. They run long periods of time and miles, and the increased mileage and fewer repairs make diesel outshine gasoline by miles. In an automobile, I’ll take gas over diesel any time today with modern, computer controlled, fuel injected, solid state ignition, gas engines.
See? That wasn’t political. Don Stott 1-888-786-8822