Gas vs. Diesel (Ecodiesel)

carringb wrote:

Tystevens wrote:

jus2shy wrote:
I still find it funny that people assume that its maintenance costs are going to be just as bad as the HD trucks.

I wonder how many people complaining about diesel maintenance costs have actually owned and maintained a modern diesel.

I was managing a full fleet of light and medium trucks. Newer gassers have the same oil change intervals as newer diesels, but take less oil and filters cost less. All the other drivetrain servicing is the same (trans, diffs, even coolant on the Fords). So yes, diesels cost more to maintain, but that cost is pretty trivial to the cost of the cr@p getting stuffed into new trucks anyways like touchscreens and seats you are afraid to get dirty. The bigger concern for me is long-term repairs, which are certain to cost more for a newer diesel.

Well, I'd say that your experience and my experience shows that, at a minimum, it depends on the particular engine; as it pertains to this thread, there is no certainty that the VM diesel will cost a lot more to maintain than the gas counterpart just because it happens to be a diesel.

For my experience, my GMs have all had the oil life indicator, which is what I went by. My Duramax went 9500-11,000 miles before it asked for a 10 qt oil change; my 5.3 Suburbans have gone 7000-7500 before they want 6 qts of new oil. So for those particular trucks, oil was a wash. I think the Ford and Cummins diesels have much larger oil sumps, so obviously that could factor in.

I'm certainly in agreement that complaining about, at most, a couple hundred dollars annual increase in maintenance on a $50,000 truck doesn't really make sense to me.