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

mgratner wrote:
Ace,

I took your advise and went to the site you recommended. How the heck you can compare drag strip results to trips of 1000 miles in real life highway conditions is beyond my understanding. There is no way that a stock gasser will climb a 6% 5 mile grade at speeds aproaching what a diesel can do. In 4 years and some 50k miles of towing I have seen many gassers in the right, truck hill climbing lane, with the diesels pulling 11k 5th wheels running in the center lane.

Cigar Mike

I knew you couldn't stay away. By the way, I'm not comparing drag strip results to trips of 1000 miles in real life highway conditions. I'm not comparing them at all. Someone else did and I provided the link so you could read "their" comparison. I don't know this to be the case, so you can enlighten me, but did you take the current offerings from the Big 3, 3/4-ton and 1-ton, gas and diesel and drive each 1000 miles? If so, I'm sure your word is gospel and if you say diesel is better, in each circumstance, it must be true. Otherwise, I just read the article and provided you the link. One question though, why was the V10 gas truck traveling faster than the diesel at the end of each test (if you don't know, it's because the diesel torque curve is much lower in the RPM range and then drops off when the gas truck torque curve continues to climb...regardless of your real world driving, it's what happens when the trucks are compared side by side with the same loads over a "test track", it's also what happens when you put them on a dyno...I know some people have dynos in the seat of their pants, I've heard it before, that they can tell by the seat of their pants experience, regardless of what the high tech machines tell them)?

There is more to torque than what you have at the flywheel. There's more to each of the trucks than that, AND, what works for you in the real world doesn't have to work for others, OR they may have different experiences based on what they have and where they drive it. They're both "torque monsters", and they have a differently designed engine to work differently (diesel peaking lower in the RPM range and the gas truck peaking higher, just their design). You know though, I'm kind of tired of "arguing" about it. The facts are what they are, regardless. You drive A truck and I hope you're happy with it. If you had the money and time, or if I had the money and time we could get all the trucks lined up together, do the math on paper, then run them on the dynos, then run them up the highest peak on Interstate 5 (not 30 miles from where I live) and we could test them all. I think I'd still take away the same thing though, that each of the Big 3 offerings, gas or diesel, will pull the same trailers up the grades we have. You'd probably take away something too, that a 2004.5 Dodge diesel is the only truck that can do it, your way.