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I'll try and put this debate in perspective. I have personally owned diesels for over 30 years. I currently have a diesel Excursion 7.3l motor and a empty weight of 4 tons (8,000 lbs). I have a VW TDI (diesel) Bug. Worst case mileage EVER recorded in my Excursion was 17.5 mpg. That is the WORST. It was achieved while towing a 5,000 pound boat on a large tandem axle trailer and the boat was crammed full with a bunch of stuff and the truck had its roof rack piled high with stuff and a bike rack on the back of the truck and a full load of people while we were average about 75mph. My empty FJ on the highway has never ever seen 17.5mpg on any tank.
On a trip to Texas from Minnesota and back, my diesel Excursion AVERAGED 26mpg round trip running about 75mph there and back and some extensive city driving in Houston and Gavleston. Best obeserved tank was 29mpg!!!!
Average city driving is 21mpg. I can't even get that on the highway in my FJ. My VW TDI bug weighs 3200 pounds which isn't exactly lightweight. Bugs aren't know for their aerodynamics either compared to a Jetta or Passat. It has a 1.9l TDI motor that I built from the Euro parts bins. It put out 150HP at the wheels on a dyno and over 300lb/ft of torque. This is after drivetrain losses. If this were a motor the size of the FJ's, it would have put down over 300HP at the wheels AND over 600lb/ft of torque. That meant with this size motor the FJ could have ran 0-60 in the high 5 second range and the truck likely could get somewhere in the mid 20's on the highway even with its crappy drag coefficient and effective frontal area. My bug has never gotten worse than 37mpg and typically day in and out gets about 45-48 driving pretty close to 80mph on the highway. I had this same motor in a VW Passat but not quite as modded but with better aerodynamics. I once went from Atlanta, Georgia to Iowa City, Iowa on one tank of fuel. This worked out to 62mpg! I drove between 65-70 on that trip.
As I mentioned in other posts and someone else did here, check out the Audi R10 diesel race car. It crushed everone at LeMans this year in the open class. Most likely it will be banned or severely handicapped next year as it dominated the race.
Economy of diesels is the way to go. Look here the records Honda set with the Accord 2.2 liter diesel, 92mpg!!!
Here is a quote from the site "You might be thinking, "Right. Big, slow, smelly diesels. Competing even! How droll." How about a diesel-powered pickup truck in street trim that yanks a 30,000 pound sled down a 300 foot track in 13 seconds? Or a 7,000 pound, full-size, four wheel drive, crewcab pickup truck driven on the street every day running the 1/4 mile in 10.6 seconds at 125 MPH? How about a 360 CI, straight-six diesel, daily driver pickup truck laying down 800HP and 1500 lb-ft of torque on the dyno?
Nope, today's diesel engines are anything but slow. And how about a DuramaxTM that competes in both sled pulling and drag racing and tows the team trailer and backup tow vehicle? And this is just the beginning. Wouldn't you like to be there the first time a Cummins 5.9L diesel-powered rail dragster runs the 1/4 mile in 6 seconds @ 210 MPH? When a diesel-powered 5500 pound street-driven pickup truck first runs a 9 second 1/4 mile? "
Hey chrisngrod, where are you deploying to? Im assuming by being in Savannah youre at Ft. Stewart? 3ID? Im in Baghdad now with 2ID. Enjoy the time at home and good luck on the journey over. I had a post "Fall IN" for all the military and former military on the forum. Nice to see other like-minded folks from the military here. Good luck man.
i have a landcruiser prado (european model - diesel engine) in my country Morocco and I can tell that it rocks ! It is quiet even if it is diesel and very powerful engine 3.0 l turbo diesel. I feel sorry that US clients are not benefiting yet from this technology which certainly makes them save a lot of money from gas !
I'll try and put this debate in perspective. I have personally owned diesels for over 30 years. I currently have a diesel Excursion 7.3l motor and a empty weight of 4 tons (8,000 lbs). I have a VW TDI (diesel) Bug. Worst case mileage EVER recorded in my Excursion was 17.5 mpg. That is the WORST. It was achieved while towing a 5,000 pound boat on a large tandem axle trailer and the boat was crammed full with a bunch of stuff and the truck had its roof rack piled high with stuff and a bike rack on the back of the truck and a full load of people while we were average about 75mph. My empty FJ on the highway has never ever seen 17.5mpg on any tank.
On a trip to Texas from Minnesota and back, my diesel Excursion AVERAGED 26mpg round trip running about 75mph there and back and some extensive city driving in Houston and Gavleston. Best obeserved tank was 29mpg!!!!
Average city driving is 21mpg. I can't even get that on the highway in my FJ. My VW TDI bug weighs 3200 pounds which isn't exactly lightweight. Bugs aren't know for their aerodynamics either compared to a Jetta or Passat. It has a 1.9l TDI motor that I built from the Euro parts bins. It put out 150HP at the wheels on a dyno and over 300lb/ft of torque. This is after drivetrain losses. If this were a motor the size of the FJ's, it would have put down over 300HP at the wheels AND over 600lb/ft of torque. That meant with this size motor the FJ could have ran 0-60 in the high 5 second range and the truck likely could get somewhere in the mid 20's on the highway even with its crappy drag coefficient and effective frontal area. My bug has never gotten worse than 37mpg and typically day in and out gets about 45-48 driving pretty close to 80mph on the highway. I had this same motor in a VW Passat but not quite as modded but with better aerodynamics. I once went from Atlanta, Georgia to Iowa City, Iowa on one tank of fuel. This worked out to 62mpg! I drove between 65-70 on that trip.
As I mentioned in other posts and someone else did here, check out the Audi R10 diesel race car. It crushed everone at LeMans this year in the open class. Most likely it will be banned or severely handicapped next year as it dominated the race.
Economy of diesels is the way to go. Look here the records Honda set with the Accord 2.2 liter diesel, 92mpg!!!
Here is a quote from the site "You might be thinking, "Right. Big, slow, smelly diesels. Competing even! How droll." How about a diesel-powered pickup truck in street trim that yanks a 30,000 pound sled down a 300 foot track in 13 seconds? Or a 7,000 pound, full-size, four wheel drive, crewcab pickup truck driven on the street every day running the 1/4 mile in 10.6 seconds at 125 MPH? How about a 360 CI, straight-six diesel, daily driver pickup truck laying down 800HP and 1500 lb-ft of torque on the dyno?
Nope, today's diesel engines are anything but slow. And how about a DuramaxTM that competes in both sled pulling and drag racing and tows the team trailer and backup tow vehicle? And this is just the beginning. Wouldn't you like to be there the first time a Cummins 5.9L diesel-powered rail dragster runs the 1/4 mile in 6 seconds @ 210 MPH? When a diesel-powered 5500 pound street-driven pickup truck first runs a 9 second 1/4 mile? "
Taz, Thank you for helping in the clearifcation dept.
If they do get the deal to work with Toyota and the motors meet the new regulations this really could be a sweet deal.
Toyota has taken the hybrid route so far whereas Honda has stated that they are taking the diesel route. See article. Also you can find many others by searching Honda+diesel or Toyota+ diesel.
It seems that Honda is leaning hard on developing new clean diesel technology. There is a new plant being built a few miles away in Greensburg, Indiana which will be building 200,000 cars per year initially. They have only stated that the car will be a small 4 cylinder model. Much speculation is that this will use the new 4 cylinder diesel they are developing.
Sure, this isn't specifically related to the FJ but the clean diesel technology and obvious diesel advantages make me think the spillover will continue to cover all types of vehicles in the next several years. In addition, Toyota won't let Honda take over the small fuel-efficient car market.
Another thing happening - the increased use of ethanol from corn is straining the corn supply (lowest inventories in years) and the corn prices have increased accordingly. For those of you who are non-farmers, not all land will support corn year after year. You must rotate the crops and plant beans to replenish the soil. Diesel can be made from soybeans so this increases the ability of the nation's farmers to supply at least some percentage of the annual fuel needs.
Oh yeah, for the naysayers, keep in mind that diesels have fewer moving parts and much longer life-spans.
I run bio-diesel in my diesels as much as I can. They will actually run on all kinds of oils, kerosene, filtered oil from the deep fat fryers at McDonalds, Wendy's, etc. (as long at it isn't too cold).
I drove the Accord diesel in Europe earlier this year. It is the Acura TSX platform here. Great car and fun to drive. I think Toyota has it wrong with gas/electric hybrids. They really should go with diesel/electric hybrids as well. Almost half of all cars sold in Europe are now diesels as people have finally figured it out there. Diesel doesn't require as much refinement as gas so it should be much cheaper to produce and sell.
When I grew up diesel was always far cheaper than gas and still is in Europe. What has happened is states tax the crap out of diesel now so that the trucking companies pay the increases more than the average driver so they can get away with it. It wasn't the case just a few years ago.
The longevity of diesels is well known. The last high mileage diesel I had was a Mercedes 300SDL. I put almost 500,000 miles on that car with no major issues. I would still be driving it but someone actually stole the car even though it was 16 years old at the time.
Almost everyone has a SUV with a diesel in their lineup except in North America but even now the Jeep Grand Cherokee now has the MB 3.0l diesel as an option. They've sold in Europe for a while. I drove one there and it was a great combination in that truck and mid to upper 20's in combined driving and close to 30mpg on the autobahn. You can even but a turbo diesel in the Chrysler minivans as well.
The Euro diesels tend to be more high tech than our US ones at the moment. We'd still be building a lot of diesel besides trucks if it wasn't for GM and the POS 5.7l diesel that they converted a gas motor into a diesel and they died all over the place and killed the US diesel market. It has taken from 1980 until now for the market to start to actual recover from the debacle that GM created. They literally almost overnight killed passenger car diesel sales in the US. Europe continued building and developing them and now we are way behind in passenger car diesels. MB, BMW and Audi build some awesome high performance diesels. One of the best things for me is that a simple chip upgrade in the computer can unlock a ton of performance. A chip in my VW was worth 25% improvement in HP and 35-40% increase in torque. It knocked off 2 seconds off my 0-60 time! Bigger injectors, better fuel pump and a few tweaks and I doubled the HP and torque of my motor. It has been running flawlessly in this config for over 100,000 miles and a lot of track time.
The beauty of diesels is they make a lot of torque at low rpms. My TDI motor made its peak torque at 1,600rpm. So you can short shift the car and never really need it to rev to make it go if you don't want to spin it. You almost never need to downshift to accelerate well if you are about 1,000 rpm. Even my little tiny 1.9 liter motor would pull the FJ along quicker (not faster) than the 4.0l that is stock. It would probably return close to 30mpg on the highway as well. Even when it was -10F, it started with no issues even though I'd forgot to plug in the block heater.
If you have a local Mercedes dealer, go get a test drive in the E320CDI if you can. It will change your ideas about diesel performance. If they made the FJ in a diesel I'd sell my current one immediately!
Mercedes Benz is already selling diesels here in the US (not meeting air quality specs in all 50 states - that won't happen in all states for about another 18 months when the Bluetec engines are available in Benzes, Chryslers (including Jeeps), and other makers):
I run bio-diesel in my diesels as much as I can. They will actually run on all kinds of oils, kerosene, filtered oil from the deep fat fryers at McDonalds, Wendy's, etc. (as long at it isn't too cold).
I drove the Accord diesel in Europe earlier this year. It is the Acura TSX platform here. Great car and fun to drive. I think Toyota has it wrong with gas/electric hybrids. They really should go with diesel/electric hybrids as well. Almost half of all cars sold in Europe are now diesels as people have finally figured it out there. Diesel doesn't require as much refinement as gas so it should be much cheaper to produce and sell.
When I grew up diesel was always far cheaper than gas and still is in Europe. What has happened is states tax the crap out of diesel now so that the trucking companies pay the increases more than the average driver so they can get away with it. It wasn't the case just a few years ago.
The longevity of diesels is well known. The last high mileage diesel I had was a Mercedes 300SDL. I put almost 500,000 miles on that car with no major issues. I would still be driving it but someone actually stole the car even though it was 16 years old at the time.
Almost everyone has a SUV with a diesel in their lineup except in North America but even now the Jeep Grand Cherokee now has the MB 3.0l diesel as an option. They've sold in Europe for a while. I drove one there and it was a great combination in that truck and mid to upper 20's in combined driving and close to 30mpg on the autobahn. You can even but a turbo diesel in the Chrysler minivans as well.
The Euro diesels tend to be more high tech than our US ones at the moment. We'd still be building a lot of diesel besides trucks if it wasn't for GM and the POS 5.7l diesel that they converted a gas motor into a diesel and they died all over the place and killed the US diesel market. It has taken from 1980 until now for the market to start to actual recover from the debacle that GM created. They literally almost overnight killed passenger car diesel sales in the US. Europe continued building and developing them and now we are way behind in passenger car diesels. MB, BMW and Audi build some awesome high performance diesels. One of the best things for me is that a simple chip upgrade in the computer can unlock a ton of performance. A chip in my VW was worth 25% improvement in HP and 35-40% increase in torque. It knocked off 2 seconds off my 0-60 time! Bigger injectors, better fuel pump and a few tweaks and I doubled the HP and torque of my motor. It has been running flawlessly in this config for over 100,000 miles and a lot of track time.
The beauty of diesels is they make a lot of torque at low rpms. My TDI motor made its peak torque at 1,600rpm. So you can short shift the car and never really need it to rev to make it go if you don't want to spin it. You almost never need to downshift to accelerate well if you are about 1,000 rpm. Even my little tiny 1.9 liter motor would pull the FJ along quicker (not faster) than the 4.0l that is stock. It would probably return close to 30mpg on the highway as well. Even when it was -10F, it started with no issues even though I'd forgot to plug in the block heater.
If you have a local Mercedes dealer, go get a test drive in the E320CDI if you can. It will change your ideas about diesel performance. If they made the FJ in a diesel I'd sell my current one immediately!
I concure.
Diesels are a misunderstood marvel of the modern society.
I'd give the Excursion a look for a tow vehicle. Gets better gas mileage than my Durango and the wheelbase would allow it to tow longer trailers w/o sway.
As for my deployment... I'll be out west somewhere in the Anbar province. It's been a hotbed for violence lately.
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