Thread: Pretty impressive

That's awesome truck fuel economy !

Not convinced that a diesel (modern type anyway) is more inherently reliable in the long term than a well designed low stress petrol engine. Obviously the petrol will hurt more at the bowser and for folks who do long trips and a lot of driving this will be a big issue. Most taxis are petrol engined vehicles with LPG conversions ...

I am convinced that old style low power low stress diesels last very well (eg my FIL's 26 year old diesel Hilux runs as well today as when it was new), but then so does any well cared for low stress motor.

Trip yesterday to North Sydney return 6 pax = 22.5l used (actual - filled start and end of trip) for 194km travelled in mixed highway/city/stop start (11.6l/100km). No Eco driving, flowed along gently mostly but it got a big bootful on a couple of occasions. Commonly I'd use 13 or so on this trip so seems my engine servicing/plugs etc may have had a short term (?) benefit.

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Originally Posted by Epic pooh

That's awesome truck fuel economy !

Not convinced that a diesel (modern type anyway) is more inherently reliable in the long term than a well designed low stress petrol engine. Obviously the petrol will hurt more at the bowser and for folks who do long trips and a lot of driving this will be a big issue. Most taxis are petrol engined vehicles with LPG conversions ...

I am convinced that old style low power low stress diesels last very well (eg my FIL's 26 year old diesel Hilux runs as well today as when it was new), but then so does any well cared for low stress motor.

If you strip down that 26 year old hilux engine you'll likely find cracked and broken precombustion chamber cups.

The only reason those engines lasted was by not having enough power to break themselves.

The lpg taxi thing is due to your large cars all being petrol and lpg being cheap. Throughout Europe all the taxis are diesel.

Long term diesels stay in tune far better than petrols as they are intended to run across a wide a/f range. A diesel with half a million km and worn out injectors does a lot better than a petrol with worn out injectors.

My 3.9v8 at 165,000km was so far out of tune it was basically unusable. My 300Tdi has been abused for twice that distance and might only need a new head.

I've driven the FIL's Hilux on and off most of it's life - the 20 factory horses seem to still be there, exhaust smoke is normal, no strange sounds, it just goes - I help him service it (read he's old, I do it while he 'supervises') annually and the same amount of oil comes out each year as went in ... horrid vehicle to drive, but tough as an old boot, and 4wd so useful to me at times. But, yes, you're right, not enough horses to hurt itself - but I reckon you'd notice if more than 2 went missing

My ex-D1 4.0 manual is owned by an uncle now, it has had no significant engine problems (around 220km last I looked), last time I drove it I thought it seemed to still have most of it's horses (again not that it was particularly well endowed when new ... ). He services it every 6mths and (like me) he digs deep if there are any problems. It has had a lot of front end problems (steering etc) from him stupidly mowing down a bollard at 20kmh a few years back (bollard 0, disco 1), that's been exxy but it seems fixed now.

I remember Disesal taxis when I lived in Singapore in the 80's (and the UK in the '70s) ... the Cedrics and Crowns in Singapore were the most rattly smoky heaps ever ... LPG ... so much quieter, more comfortable and I think the average 6cyl Falcon taxi motor lasts half a million k's or so (ie. useful life of vehicle).

I do agree with your general thesis that an unmaintained petrol will compare poorly to an unmaintained diesel in the same application (ie. you don't see many 26 year old petrol hiluxes getting around !).

So now we talk of taxis - even though most of the trips are short most of the time the engine is already at optimum operating temperature ( unlike most folks short trips - where the engine spends a good part of the trip coming up to optimum temperature)