ULSD vs Regular Diesel / Have You Noticed?

[MEXICOWANDERER]

This is a question and not a statement...

Almost all of the lube oil contamination can be traced back to soot. And in theory more soot is formed when sulfur is present in the fuel. Of course incomplete combustion enters into the fray...

But supposedly sulfur laden fuel destroys exhaust particulate filters by overwhelming them. Thus the mandate to use almost sulfur-free fuel.

It would therefore be expected that ULSD would maintain crankcase lube oil significantly cleaner over a given amount of time.

The question is directed at owners of diesel engines of similar type that have had extensive experience with both types of fuel. Low & NO.

Does oil stay cleaner longer. Soot contamination is black. My Cummins with less than 200,000 miles on it, gets changed once a year or 12,000 miles whatever comes first. It has a Luberfiner C750L bypass filter like many big rigs.

[road-runner]

The oil in my ULSD Sprinter gets black pretty darn fast after an oil change. Way faster than with a gasoline engine.

[JaxDad]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
The question is directed at owners of diesel engines of similar type that have had extensive experience with both types of fuel. Low & NO.

Does oil stay cleaner longer. Soot contamination is black.

We have a small fleet of mostly specialty diesel powered vehicles. Most of them are pre-1999 engines, a few are 1980’s engines.

There has been absolutely zero visually noticeable, or measurable in the 4X / year oil samples, difference between ‘old’ diesel, LSD & ULSD.

Not that it’s by any means conclusive, but some of our engines run for months at a time (off road, on remote sites) on off-road diesel, furnace oil, kerosene and / or Jet A. Again, no difference in oil sample results.

Gosh, you don’t think that just like with ‘corn liquor’ the general population is being a little misled on this do you? 😜

[path1]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Locally?

Next door to the taco stand. Read the panel to the left of my message post block 🙂

If you had an older diesel, you could use some of that used taco grease for fuel:)

The question is directed at owners of diesel engines of similar type that have had extensive experience with both types of fuel. Low & NO.

While I don't have a ton of experience, I'm at other end of the stick but have done tons of reading. And have spent hours talking with a retired Cummins engineer. So maybe my post is more of a "book report" so take it for what it's worth. ULSD is not user friendly to mine at all. In my reading and many phone calls to oil analysis places questioning (weather to add two stroke oil or not) several have said that if they owned a newer (anti?) pollution machine, they would add a "spinner" or (search word) "spinner centrifuge oil filter". Removes soot down to 2 micron level. Which at that level, some detergent is also trapped. If you start researching them...first step is to find out how much oil pressure your spec's says you are supposed to have. If you don't have enough oil pressure to cycle oil into and out of spinner, useless to have one. YouTube has some vid's also. The retired engineer backs up his maintenance 10-15 percent. He also said most fuel pumped to the public in the US is at the 20 micron level. He didn't think overall additional fuel filtration beyond OEM was necessary, but he has an onboard fuel pressure gauge and replaces fuel filters when he sees a bit of restriction or 10 percent less mileage/time than what spec calls for.

Having said all that I thought one of the reasons for the new oil spec "CK" was supposed to help you guys that carry around extra 500 pounds of (anti) pollution devices? Wonder if you can buy carbon offsets for carrying around that extra weight?:)

" API introduces two new diesel engine oil standards, API Service Categories CK-4 and FA-4."

http://www.api.org/products-and-services/engine-oil/eolcs-categories-and-documents/latest-oil-catego...

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Locally?

Next door to the taco stand. Read the panel to the left of my message post block 🙂

[azdryheat]

Where do you get non-ULSD that is legal to be used in OTR diesels?