Diesel vs gas......................

Tom Holsinger wrote:
Diesels need longer to warm up than gasoline engines, and their emissions systems need a hot exhaust to work properly. If too much of your driving produces a greater proportion of unburned fuel, aka tarry gunk, relative to dry soot, the emissions control system will require expensive maintenance and will feed the engine such hairballs that the latter will need a lot more maintenance too.

My wife and I have close to worst-case commutes for diesel engines. Hers involves 32 full stops in a 40-mile round-trip commute on county roads, while mine has 28 full stops in a 25-mile round-trip commute which is mixed freeway and city driving. That would make a diesel emissions control system beat the poor engine to death.

So we're going to get a used F-250 with a V-10 engine next year when we get our first RV. A diesel will wait until we retire.

ken burke wrote:

imfrito wrote:
I was looking at fords today and was told no more v10's.........was the guy just trying to sell me a diesel

Don't know. I am looking for a V10 also, as I want to pull a heaver trailer and don't want the expenses of a diesel. ken

I'd disagree that stop-and-go commuting is hard on a diesel. Repeated cold operation (without ever reaching a nice hot operating temp) is hard on the diesel, as it needs high temps to make clean combustion. But if the engine is hot, it doesn't matter if you are at a stoplight or running on the freeway, the engine will be burning nice and clean. Now, lots of idling can be a problem, but I'm talking about idling for 30 minutes at a time, not 1 minute at a stop light. I mean, look at all the UPS trucks, running around for short bursts, stopping, turning off, etc. If this was killing their engines, don't you think they'd buy gas powered trucks?

Also, my diesel warms up just about as fast as my gas truck does.