2 questions about Diesel in U.S.A.
 

I have 2 curiosities:
1) In the '70's-'80's there where some Diesel automobiles manufactured in the U.S.A. Did they ever managed to made rebalible engines?;
2) Some one told me that he seen at an gas station the Diesel fuel pumps somehow in the back of the station, while the gas pumps where in the front. Is this the exception or the norm in U.S.A.?

Diesel cars except Volkswagen and some Mercedes are not so popular due to a variety of reasons, including historically cheap gasoline, higher initial cost, worse performance versus the gasoline version, and fairly strict pollution regulations.

Notwithstanding, the big three US auto companies do sell lots of diesel powered light trucks, which many people use as their primary car. They are extremely popular and reliable, because diesel engines are so good for trucks and especially hauling trailers. Not every gas station sells diesel, but it's very easy to find in areas where trucks are popular.

Diesel fuel is commonly availible at gas stations along side gasoline in areas where people own a lot of trucks. Diesel fuel pumps have a slightly wider spout so won't fit into a gasoline car's fuel filler.

Some GM cars were diesel. They were DOGS. They converted
the 350 CID Chevy engine & it just didnt work. The 350 running
gas was about as good an engine ever built BUT not the
diesel. Pick up trucks I believe all used purpose built diesels &
are fine. I would never get one just because of repair costs.
The bill can look liker a telephone number !

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

If you're regularly hauling a large travel trailer, or a horse trailer, the fuel savings of a diesel truck make economic sense. Diesel car engines have a tough sell though - worse performance and more cost in everything except fuel efficiency, but even that advantage evaporates with the new direct injection gasoline engines. They do tend to work forever though with minimal maintenance. My 1986 Toyota diesel is as reliable as anything I've ever owned. Like all other diesels though it's noisy and it stinks!

And with the whole VW scandal ruining public opinion of diesel engines, I can't see them getting more popular in the short term.

Some stations have diesel hoses on the same pump as the gas (usually in pickup truck country), some have the diesel pumps separated under a different awning (usually in places where big-rig semi-trucks are the main customers since those things are huge and hard to maneuver in a swarm of small cars), others don't carry diesel.

I've also seen places (usually rural) where only one pump is diesel...Some of those places also have a separate pump for kerosene and or heating oil.

Actually, they were Oldsmobile engines. Same 350 CID displacement.
The Duramax of today is actually an Isusu design. :scratch2:

<-- recovering diesel head, I've had 6 diesel VWs, from '91 to '12, a Ford 6.0 Powerstroke, and a 91 Mercedes SDL Turbo. The '12 VW TDI is actually being bought back by VW next month :sadwave:

Anyway, yes some stations in the USA do have the diesel pumps in their own island away from the gas pumps. As long as they aren't all high flow rate truck pumps, I preferred this since a gas car wouldn't be blocking the diesel pump while they filled up!

At newer stations all the pumps are generally together.

Regarding the GM 350 diesels, from what I read by 82 they had figured out the issues.... but the problems up to that point, and horrible dealer mechanics had so tarnished the brand that when fuel prices went down in 85 they stopped selling them in 86.

PS: Here's a nice bit of diesel trivia: What's the only automotive engine with no belts and no chains? A: The VW V10 TDI. Everything, including the accessories is gear driven off the back of the motor. The are also 15 fuel pumps on that vehicle. We have one of those too... it's currently parked waiting on replacement camshafts :no:

-J

I'm curios how relaible would be an 1988 "Cadillac" Diesel.

At least some gas-powered cars can accommodate a diesel spout. I've heard of people filling their gas tank with diesel, one car being a late-model Crapolla. The owner was only able to drive a couple of blocks before the stuff got into the engine and wouldn't ignite. Once the diesel had been pumped out and the car was running again it was smoking like it had a bad head gasket.

IIRC all classic cars that used leaded gas had fill spouts that could accommodate a Diesel nozzle...Sandy G posted a hilarious tale about making that mistake way back in the day...Apparently, carborated cars can take a good portion of their tanks being filled with diesel and still begrudgingly manage to run.

One day I was in a small "Daewoo" Damas van with somebody (I don't poses a driving licence) and he ask me to put the fuel. I thought it had an Diesel engine, but luckly I asked if I have to put Diesel fuel (motorină)... the vehicle haves an gas engine, not a Diesel one.

The other way around is potentially much worse - I had a girlfriend who filled her Dad's Diesel Jetta with gasoline, luckily the car figured it out and shut down before anything got damaged... he was furious at her! It had to be towed to VW, fuel tank drained, engine cleaned out.. I think he paid $400 to have it fixed. I am always careful not to do it with my Toyota, it would be a fast way to ruin the engine!

As for running carbureted cars on diesel.. never did that, but if you want to troubleshoot an exhaust leak on an old car without a catalytic converter, one thing you can do is put a vacuum hose into a cup of engine oil.. it sucks it right into the engine and makes the car smoke like crazy.. drawing attention to the exhaust leak. I think a modern car with sensors and stuff could be damaged by this practice, but it didn't seem to harm my old 69 ford.

If I recall correctly it was a 1976 Cutlass. Gas-powered cars that will actually run with diesel in the tank will smoke like a tire fire. On the flip side, according to something I saw on TV (Mythbusters I think) only a modern vehicle will run reasonably well on hi-po hooch that would be poisonous to drink.
Yes, gasoline's much lower ignition point would likely grenade the engine in short order. Must have knackered the car's computer settings as well. With diesel in a modern gas car one can just disconnect the line under the hood and hook the pump directly to the battery or a charger and pump the diesel out. Got to use a meter for that part to see which two wires go ~12 volts for a couple of seconds when you turn the key on; don't want to hook up to the sending unit and burn it out. Then, re-fill the tank with gas, turn the pump back on and flush the system through. Finally, plug the pump back in, re-connect the line under the hood, hold the gas pedal half way down and crank 'er.

I'd say you're right about the test you described. I reckon the worst thing that could come out of doing that to a classic car is attracting the fire department. Personally I'd rather use some kind of sensor like the gas company does; being around that much smoke would probably be like being near someone who's trying to get high off hemp.

Heh, the VW didn't "figure out" it had diesel instead of gas in the tank... it just couldn't run on gas. On a 2009+ TDI filling the tank with some gas will make the high pressure fuel pump come apart and fill the entire fuel system with metal shavings. The normal dealer procedure is to replace every single component fuel touches, to the tune of $6000+ :eek:

Leaded gasoline and auto diesel fuel nozzles are the same. High rate truck nozzles are bigger. 2013+ VWs have a device in the fuel filler neck that prevents the smaller unleaded nozzle from going in!

There are no 1988 Cadillac diesels... unless someone was swapping things around. I've seen swaps where a 6.2 or 6.5 is plug in place of the 5.7 gas a Broham would have come with. 1985 was the last year GM sold their "classic" IDI diesel passenger cars, with the 5.7 V8, 4.3 V8, or 4.3 V6. None of the old GM IDI diesels were very powerful, though they could get acceptable fuel economy. A 6.5 TD mounted in a car would probably give acceptable performance, and with the 4L80e's lockup torque converter you might be able to touch 30 mpg!

-J

I used to drive a GMC pickup with the 350 Oldsmobile diesel. I actually liked it; it seemed to have the power of decent 6 cylinder. I didn't own it, though, and I didn't have to pay for the head gasket it blew one day! I did own an early 80's GMC with the 6.2 "Detroit". S-L-O-W, without much pep, and acceleration was very poor. Also, it was weak off the line, and sluggish to boot. Great fuel mileage, though! How else can you take a big-old hunk of Detroit iron, designed in the early 70's, and push it down the road at over 20mpg?

GM was the only one of the American automakers to build it's own diesel engines back then. Chrysler offered a Mitsubishi for a short time & Ford used International engines in trucks; a rare option was a diesel Escort which I'm guessing used a Mazda engine.

My mother had a diesel Mercedes in the 80's. There was only one filling station in town that sold diesel and the pump was way off to itself at the corner of the lot. When that station stopped selling gas in the mid-90's there was a period of 5-10 years where nobody sold it in are little town. Even now, all the little stations that sell it have it over on the side of the parking lot. The bigger, nicer stations do have it at the same pump, though.

Oh, and my mother-in-law once pumped a hafl-tank of gas into my father-in-laws Cummins powered Dodge. It ran enough for her to drive it 30 minutes to me, so I could have some body clean it out before he figured out what she did! Not much power on gas, I remember that.

But a 1984 Diesel "Cadillac" woul be a relaible car?
How was the "Mercedes"? :)

The Mercedes diesels were quite reliable. Finding ones that don't have 400,000 miles and is generally worn out is getting difficult. As of late, finding good quality replacement parts has become harder... there's a lot of knock off crap on the market.

From what I've read a 1984 Cadillac diesel wouldn't be too bad. Their fuel injection system is not as robust as the VW, and much less than the Mercedes. Finding parts for the GM will be difficult (For example, the fuel injectors). By 84 the 5.7 diesel had also been de-tuned to just over 100hp.

The 3.0 iron head Mercedes 5 cylinder turbos (78-85) are 125 hp, the 3.0 6 cylinder aluminum head is 144, and the 3.5 aluminum 6 is 134 (less hp, but more torque than the 3.0). I have a 91 S Class with the 3.5.

The turbo diesel S Class was sold in the USA and Canada only from 78-80 (W116) and 81-91 (W126). Starting in 91 you could get the W140 300SD (still with the 3.5!) globally.

My brother-in-law who's a taxi driver refuses to have a diesel car, he tried one but it cost so much to get through the taxi roadworthy/emissions test every year that his next car was petrol/gasoline. Doesn't get so many miles per gallon as a diesel but less costly to maintain. The annual taxi test is much stricter than a normal cars annual MOT test, slightest defect that would pass or be a minor advisory notice on an MOT test will fail the taxi test...

I bought my Diesel Jeep Liberty in 2005. It was equipped with a VM Motori 4 cylinder turbo Diesel. They were only offered two years in the US, 2005 & 2006. It was discontinued for 2007 for sale in the US because of stricter pollution rulings. They continued to build them for other markets.
It was totaled in 2009 in a freak accident on an ice slicked rural road near me.
At the time I signed on to this website, I still had it. I never bothered to change my screen name.

I *just* bought a 1984 Mercedes 300D turbodiesel, which is now in San Francisco. Every maintenance record since new, and it's got 387,000 miles on it. Waiting for the carrier to get word to me as to when they're picking it up.

You just can't find them this clean here in the snow and salt of the northeast....

The larger size Toyota Prius Hybrid is getting more popular for Taxi use.
NY and Chicago has many for that use. :thmbsp:

"Mercedes" 300D it's an W123 (a.k.a Cobra in Romania). Those cars where made to last!
In the '90's you could see W110's (manufactured between 1961 and 1968) in use. Diesel, because they ate up less fuel and Diesel fuel was cheaper then gas fuel back then. But the "increase of the standard of living" and that darn "Rabla" ("The jallopy") program in which the Romaninan state subsidize buying of new cars if you scrap and old car made a lot of them history :tears: 10-12 years ago you could buy one in working condition an decent looking for 1,000-1,500 U.S. Dollars... try to find one at that price now :( Bastards... I hope they will end up theyr life in poverty!

Kind of like the consequences of putting power steering fluid in a braking system; good one MacGyver. Naturally dealers will soak for whatever they can get.

Some guys shoehorned a Cummins into what I believe was a 1991 Cadillac, along with a Dodge Tradesman grille.

There's a few of these being used as taxi's here as well but they're very expensive to buy. My brother-in-law has bought a second hand Ford Focus petrol/gasoline & it passed the taxi test no problem & he's out earning money..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dfwPFxPhCY
A friend running his diesel Suburban after sitting in a field for years.

It's important to remember that diesel (at least in America) was a very low quality fuel back in the day. It's been getting steadily better, and combined with tougher emission standards, diesel's a pretty decent fuel in this country, now. I'm only 30 years old, and I remember buses and trucks spewing soot everywhere when they took off from a stop, when I was little. This is a rare occurrence now.

Also, while I don't hate diesel, and I understand (better than most) that new diesel cars are pretty clean, I'm VERY thankful that most of our cars are gasoline. Because I've been to India. Where EVERY car is a diesel. Let's just say, it only took a day for my white shirt collar to become black.

Speaking of putting the wrong fuel in a vehicle... my shop's neighbor has a fleet of 3 Dodge Sprinters. One of them is BRAND spanking new. The idiot they let drive it (mind you, he's the same guy who drives the other diesel Sprinters) filled up the tank to the brim from empty with E85. Miraculously, it still managed to run, but not well. I had to siphon the tank, all 20 or 30 gallons, and fill with fresh diesel. It was perfectly fine, afterwards, thankfully.

I still have about 10 gallons of that useless contaminated fuel. It is probably about 90% E85. My dad put it in some car and it understandably didn't like it that much.

Here in England diesel is more expensive that gas/petrol, when I was in Canary Islands a few weeks ago it was the other way round. What's cheapest in USA?

Believe it or not, I paid $1,500 for the one that I'm getting. I could barely believe it :)

Of course, it is costing me almost as much to get it transported from California to NY.....

Nice find on that 300D. 84 is a good year.

I've been basically trying to give away my 91 SDL... nobody seems interested :(

Did you know that 1985 California market Mercedes diesels were the first vehicles ever to have a DPF?

I just might be interested.....I'm quickly realizing that owning a '97 Miata in Buffalo means that you can take it out and enjoy it almost never.....so there's a 50/50 chance that's getting sold. I have a whole bunch of genuine Mazda tune up stuff coming for it, and it's only got 109K on the clock. Down side is that it's an auto.

I'm a neophyte when it comes to Mercedes, but I'm a quick study. I looked at an '83 W126 locally....looked decent from the photos, but although it ran, it ended up being a basket case.

Diesel fuel sometimes was bad in Romania too. But older cars dind't had too much problems with it. You could (ilegally) buy it from truck or bus drivers.

Diesel used to be much cheaper up until... maybe 10 years ago. These days they hover right next to each other, diesel seems to be more stable and changes price slower, while gas prices fluctuate a lot more. I think last week I saw diesel the exact same price as regular unleaded.

I'm not sure that I've seen an 80's Mercedes diesel with less than about 160k, and that was 20+ years ago! Most were between 250-350k. Lower body rust was common. Vacuum powered central locks, when bored I would sit there with the key in the door and see how many cycles I could get before the vac ran out! The engine cut-off is vacuum powered as well. If you have a leak, well, the engine won't shut off even if you turn off the key, pull it out and walk away. You have to use the manual shut-off on top of the engine. They have a unique smell inside which I'm told is due to the horsehair stuffing in the seats (likely combined with the diesel exhaust smell). The wood trim on the dash and console always cracks. The turbo lag can be pretty wild, though it varies. On some cars acceleration can be downright dangerous until it kicks in, at which point it feels a little like a jet taking off (a little!) I've driven a non-turbo Benz, a total slug. With their oversized steering wheel and that diesel under the hood, I liked to imagine I was driving a bus :)

Ya, there are a lot of basket cases out there.

By 84 the turbo lag was improved. For 85 it was further improved with a higher stall speed torque converter, and a taller rear end ratio which helps fuel economy.

Be aware that most reman R4 ac compressors are not appropriate for the Mercedes. MB mounted it upside down compared to GM, which results in the oil passage for the bearings not getting oil.

This might be helpful for you:

http://eva2.homeip.net/

https://www.startekinfo.com/StarTek/...tedDocId=12265

The later 6 cylinder cars get out of their own way quite nicely on a cool day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srXc2xV0fO8

On a 100*f day the hot air does cause a fair bit of power loss... it feels like 30 less hp at the wheels. Add the power draw from the AC compressor and things do feel rather sluggish.

Actually 15 years ago. When I bought my 2005 Diesel Jeep Liberty, Diesel fuel was about 10 to 20 cents cheaper than regular, then later in the year it shot up about 40 to 50 cents higher. That little scheme about lower operating cost backfired on me. Plus the oil changes were a lot higher too. The engine used synthetic oil.

For it to have taken that long you must have taken refuge indoors whenever possible.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1529609142

Was indoors quite a lot, but no A/C, windows open. Actually, as I recall, that happened when I was in Akola - not a terribly large city. Wasn't wearing white shirt collars while in Hyderabad, which is much more densely populated.

Cadillac Diesel piece of unreliable, underpowered junk. Oldsmobile Diesel engine. Mercedes Diesel engines good, reliable workhorses if maintained. Slow like all other non turbo Diesel engines though. Mercedes mechanics tend to be more likely to know how to fix one over say a Cadillac mechanic. Oldsmobile diesel also didn't have a water separator (a very bad piece of design engineering)

Ive owened a few diesels, includieng a 2002 VW and a 1980 Rabbit. the rabbit only had 48 hp orignally, and after nearly 500,000 miles the engine was very tired, had to disconnect the crankcase breather hose, it had so much blow by it would suck the oil into the intake, then the car would accelerate on its own, and leave a huge black cloud behind... Once the hose was disconnected, almost as much exhaust came out of the breather as the tailpipe. id love to find a Volvo diesel station wagon.

1980s Volvo diesels were actually VW engines too. 6 cylinder version of the 4s used in the Rabbit / Golf and Jetta.