mass-hole wrote:
tjkj2002 wrote:
Mountainman wrote:
Does diesel really pollute more than gas with extraction, refining, and shipping emissions included? More NOx, but less co2. How much gas vs diesel is in a barrel of oil? I've been wondering about a true comparison as my jeep gets at least 30% better mpg's as a gas kj.
That maybe true but your maintenance costs are usually 50%+ more than a KJ with a 3.7 which brings the overall operating costs in favor of the gas KJ.Take your 100k service,having a shop do it is about $1200 on average,the 30k/60k/90k service on a 3.7 KJ at a shop is about $700 for all 3 services combined.
I can tell you also there are far more gas KJ's with 250,000+miles then CRD's.I have 2 good customers at work that both have KJ's with 250k+ miles with OE engines and trans still in them,seen dozen's more come in now and again with 200k+ on them.
This is what I have been trying to get across. A 30% fuel savings is not that much in actual dollars unless your driving a heinous amount of miles per year. In fact, at one point, diesel cost enough extra per gallon that it was almost cheaper to drive my F150 that was averaging 17-18 mpg at the time vs 24-25 for my jeep. Now its back down to a 10 cent difference so its in favor of the Jeep again.
But ultimately, if you gotta spend $2000+ in preventative maintenance(tune, EGR delete, rocker arms, Timing belt, silicone intake tubes, fuel filter head, lift pumps, etc etc etc) you have probably wiped out any fuel savings for the next 10 years. if you dont do the labor for the timing belt job yourself thats $2000 right there.
I would guess though that an unfiltered diesel, between the soot, nox, etc, probably burns dirtier than a modern gas engine. I remember that the folks who uncovered the VW diesel gate thing were seeing out put numbers 100x greater than they should have been. 30% better MPG wont account for 10000% more output in that case.
I agree with your rough calculation on fuel economy alone, mass-hole... I can sometimes get better fuel economy with my 2011 Chevrolet Silverado with its 5.3L V-8 than I can with either of the Liberty CRDs the family owns.
However, it is not a fair comparison. Pollution control has been in existence on gasoline engines for almost 50 years now and is well-developed. Gasoline pollution control systems were terrible in the beginning, causing all kinds of reliability issues, power production and fuel economy problems for the first few years before consumer and consumer advocate demand for more reliable vehicles with better fuel economy forced manufacturers to develop better designed engines with more refined pollution control systems.
Diesel pollution control is barely 15 years old, and is still in the initial stages of development. Unfortunately, just like the difficult beginnings with gasoline pollution control, diesel pollution control is going through its experimental stage where manufacturers are using diesel vehicle consumers as guinea pigs to find out what works inexpensively. My contention is that all of the problems of diesel pollution control could have been avoided if the E.P.A. did its due diligence to avoid repeating what happened 45-odd years ago with gasoline engine pollution control.
Furthermore, and to a greater degree than what has happened with gasoline engines years earlier, the pollution control standards foisted upon diesels are ideologically driven by an Environmental Protection Agency that has been influenced by environmental pressure groups for years. The E.P.A. had a chance to do things better with diesels in the early 2000s than they did with gasoline engines in the 1960s to 1970s, but they didn’t bother… all they wanted were their super-stringent standards so that they can look good in the public’s eye, and to heck with the consequences because the consequences do not affect them.
The manufacturers are complicit in this because – for most of them, (VW is the exception here) - it affects a very small percentage of their entire vehicle line-up and it plays nicely into the following narratives…
1) The auto manufacturers live and die on planned obsolescence. They have no problems installing pollution control systems in diesel vehicles that just do the job of getting clean tailpipe emissions with no regard to fuel economy or reliability. The manufacturers actually like the fact that there are long-term reliability issues in these vehicles as they know this will encourage consumers to turn over their diesel vehicles after a few years of struggling with them… essentially they sell more vehicles this way.
2) The auto manufacturers want to look like they are being environmentally responsible as well as the E.P.A. Being “Green” has been in vogue for several years now, and it also helps to sell vehicles. I can recall a TV advertisement for the Chevy Cruise Diesel touting how clean and efficient it is. VW also had a significant advertising campaign promoting their “Clean Diesel” engines, (yes, I know they cheated… that doesn’t mean that they were not going to advertise that they were clean).
As mentioned, VW, (and now other German/European auto manufacturers), is the notable exception. Why? Because diesel vehicles make up a much larger percentage of the number of vehicles they sell. I am absolutely convinced that the people who made the decision to cheat did so because they felt that their brand could not take the reliability hit that would result from complying with the E.P.A. diesel regulations.
If somehow we could go back in time and change the pollution control standards for diesel engines to only allow increases in those standards that still retain maximum efficiency, (and by default, the reliability), of the engine, then I am certain that your fuel economy calculations would be off.
In fact, I believe that any future increases to pollution control standards that affect the efficiency, power production and reliability of any internal combustion engine should be outlawed. The current situation is with the E.P.A. is not only counter-productive and deeply flawed, it is also HYPOCRITICAL.
Sure, there currently is cleaner exhaust, but a significant amount more fuel is burned to achieve it using the archaic technology the manufacturers have provided. Is this being environmentally friendly? I think not. Neither is it environmentally friendly to design vehicles, (and for that matter, virtually everything else), with a short service life. Planned obsolescence is very bad for the environment.
Hopefully with Scott Pruitt now at the helm of the E.P.A. the current situation will change. Had pollution control standards been more reasonable, and had a legal mechanism been in place to force manufacturers to develop reliable pollution control systems that do not affect either the efficiency or the reliability of the pollution control systems or the engine itself, then we would not be having this conversation right now. I am not holding my breath on this, however. There is too much at stake with manufacturers needing to sell as many vehicles as possible to keep their unionized employees working and dealerships making money. So the consumer will likely keep getting SCREWED.
IMHO, I believe that if the E.P.A. and the auto manufacturers tackled emissions by developing technologies for all internal combustion engines to 100% completely burn the fuel/air mixture the 1st time it is in the cylinder, rather than trying to re-circulate partially burned fuel through again and again, then we would be light years ahead of where we are now. We would end up with engines that we really desire, that have extremely low emissions, more power, better fuel economy, and better reliability.
I certainly is possible… technology exists to have a diesel engine that emits very little pollution and is extremely efficient, powerful and reliable all at the same time. It simply is not done because it is bad for business. There are powertrains designed a long time ago that will maximize the efficiency of the diesel engine AND have an incredibly long service life that requires very little investment in upkeep. Automobile platforms can easily be designed that will last 50 years and are upgradeable to newer technologies. Neither of these great ideas are put into production for the same reasons.
masshole, most of the preventative measures you list are not due to the fact that the engine is a diesel, so your assertions here are also not fair comment. These kinds of problems are on all vehicles in one way or another, albeit it is worse on some vehicles than others. Timing belts, for example, are VERY common. Most of the blame for all of these upgrades that we have to perform can be laid at the feet of the manufacturers themselves for worshipping at the altar of planned obsolescence and adopting the use of the following tactics to pull more money out of our pockets...
1) Proprietary technology; manufacturers designing parts in a way that cannot be easily copied by the aftermarket. The Liberty CRD thermostat assembly is the poster child for this.
2) Designing a service life into individual parts, assemblies, and indeed the entire vehicle so that they simply wear out or rust out. Unibody construction is perhaps the #1 example for planned obsolescence... you essentially have to toss the entire vehicle if the unibody rusts out... you not only lose the vehicle's good looks, but the structural integrity is lost as well. Remember all of the hype years ago about unibody being better than body-on frame construction? YOU WERE BEING LIED TO. The Jeep Liberty rear disc brake backing plate is another great example, and factors in proprietary technology at the same time; FCA rubs salt into the wounds of Liberty owners by making them pay for an entire rear brake assembly rather than just a rear backing plate.
3) Employing less than desirable designs that have to be serviced, rather than designs that provide rock solid reliability for the entire life of the engine. The use of timing belts that wear out and need to be replaced is a good example of this. Timing chains, (good), or timing gears, (way better), are slowly being phased out of most engines because
4) High mark-ups on parts prices. Nothing more needs to be said here... we have all seen it.
These tactics are used in all vehicles today, with perhaps hand-built custom cars, exotic cars and Rolls-Royces being the exceptions to the rule. This is because boutique manufacturers are not concerned about selling you another vehicle, as there is always more demand for their vehicles than they can supply.
Finally, mass-hole, you do not know for sure if the 30% extra fuel economy is worth achieving when the output of NOx is 100X what it should have been. It could be that the standards are so ridiculous that 100X that ridiculously low amount is still quite small.
Tjkj2002: Your comparison is also not fair comment… there are at least 50 gasoline model KJ Libertys to every CRD… of course you are going to find more 3.7L gas models with mileages above 250,000 than you will CRDs.
For the edification and benefit of all LOSTJEEPS.com members, click on the following article written on August 11 by David Veksler of the Foundation for Economic Education. It details a very similar situation to what we are experiencing here with the Liberty CRD, and lays out what we are up against when we deal with environmental lobby groups like Greenpeace.
https://fee.org/articles/this-is-the-re ... les-break/
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