Everyone, the OP is posting about a RAM 1500 with the ecodiesel. Much of the advise dispensed these past 2 pages are mostly applicable to the HD truck diesels.
To the OP. Ninerbikes is right about the price of oil being high, being that the smaller diesels in use in the US require a special oil (meeting ACEA C3 specs) which isn't exactly common in the US at this point. The oil change interval for the Ecodiesel is roughly 10,000 miles or yearly, and takes 10.5 quarts of the oil. The cheapest I can find the oil is about $7.50 a quart for Pennzoil Ultra-L for a one time purchase from
Amazon. However, if you subscribe and they automatically ship the oil to you every so many months, then the cost drops to $6.38 a quart. So costs are dropping for this oil. So your total oil cost will be roughly $64 to $75 bucks per oil change.
The oil filter is ridiculously expensive for this specific motor. Mopar branded filter is roughly $50 bucks.
The Ecodiesel motor only has 1 battery, so that will be roughly the same in cost.
The fuel filter is ridiculously cheap for this vehicle at only $25 bucks and needs to be done every 30,000 miles or 3 years (this is a very long fuel filter life for diesels).
Diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) usage is anywhere between 1.5% to 3% of fuel burn. So factor in roughly 5 cents additional to the price of diesel per gallon when bought from the truck fueling stations (roughly 2.80 per gallon of DEF). That will paint an accurate cost of fuel when factoring in DEF usage.
Here's the thing you don't get with a diesel. you don't have spark plugs to change. That's basically the difference maintenance wise. There's also the aspect of part failure replacement, but given the variability of parts failure (frequency and cost), it really is tough to weigh that on a gas vs. diesel debate. A diesel injector may cost roughly 600 or 800 bucks a piece, but then they're meant to last 300k or more miles under the worst of conditions. What's the failure rate and cost of gasoline injectors? Sure they're cheaper, but how often do you change them out? It differs per brand and make and a whole list of other factors that just make these kinds of comparisons difficult.
So these are the pros/cons to weigh maintenance wise with the Ecodiesel you're thinking of purchasing. Also note that it has the Bosch CP4 fuel pump in it which is known to be a fragile unit and maintenance is critical for the fuel filters (though with 3 year intervals, seems like it should be easier to stay on top of this for the Ecodiesel).
So for a short Recap on the Ecodiesel:
You may have a little longer oil change interval (don't know what it is for your silverado).
Those italian oil filters must be made with unicorn tears to cost so much.
You have to change fuel filters every so often, but really isn't much of a factor for the Ecodiesel.
You have the inconvenience of filling your truck with DEF (You'd most likely do this once or twice a year, as that's what I average at 15k miles a year)
You don't have spark plugs to ever think of (even though this happens very rarely in modern gassers).
In my case, I compare my maintenance expenses against my 2010 F-150. I'm not paying much more yearly to maintain my RAM and my fuel economy savings make up for the extra cost easily, especially during the summer months in my region. The whole fuel price thing is really regional. There are places around here where I can buy Diesel for only 2.39 a gallon (gasbuddy newberg, OR). Gas is only 2.25 a gallon. Comparing my 3500 against my F-150, I reliably get 4 mpg better with my 3500 (19mpg vs. 15mpg in my half ton). That is just a hair under 30% fuel economy increase. I'm sure the Ecodiesel will perform better as that's a Light Duty diesel meant for fuel economy, not so much as HD towing.
