Saturday, Nov 01, 2014 at 19:02
I don't know that diesel ever was a major fuel-saving choice when it came to the smaller diesels.
It's possibly used as a sales ploy on a number of smaller vehicles, but it just doesn't pan out.
Diesel is always dearer to buy - up to 20c in some areas - diesel vehicles always command a premium price when new - and diesels are MUCH more expensive to repair when things go wrong.
For city, or suburban operations, a petrol motor is just fine.
However, if you are travelling long distances or regularly towing a heavy load, or a sizeable trailer or 'van, then diesel is a far better choice.
The superior fuel economy at half-to-three-quarters throttle, and the superior torque of a diesel then pays off.
Re the fire
hazard - I've seen plenty of ordinary 4 cyl cars set fire to straw at harvest - usually when Mum is delivering lunch or smoko to the boys.
All it takes is a handful of straw jammed in the exhaust system, and you have a fire within a couple of minutes.
One has to be vigilant, full stop, at harvest for outbreak of fire.
Fires regularly start in harvesters (jammed belts and hot bearings), they are regularly started by lightning strikes, they are started by metal components on machines striking rocks in the paddock and showering sparks around.
In the steam loco days, locos set crops on fire on a near-daily basis - despite spark arrestors.
If you've ever seen a diesel upswept exhaust working hard at night, then you would have seen the manifold and pipe glowing red and regular sparks being pumped out from chunks of hot carbon being released from the combustion chambers.
On a long grade, grossing just 38 tonnes, my old Mack F700 would hang 150mm of flame out of the exhaust - which ended just in front of the leading dual on the tandem drive!
So the DPF is just one more item to be aware of, for a fire source.
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