Diesel engines - the good & the bad

IIRC the baddies were called “The Smokers”. At the time I thought that was about cigarettes (which they smoked, and which are, like, yknow, BAD) but I didn’t have any experience of 2-strokes then.

NOW it all makes sense.

Worrying, really.

Re pics, yeh yeh, soon as I can find a cable
Re escape plan, that’s supposed to be a secret. That’s what the “P” in “PM” implies. :unamused:

Gee…not even vaguely worded references permitted? Apologies, I didn’t realize it was that high a security clearance. :blush:

They could have been still “The Smokers” with badly tuned injectors.

My previous company in the States had several diesel trucks (I drove a Dodge Ram 6.0L Cummins Turbo Diesel 3/4 ton to the job sites). Depending on the severity of emmisions controls, diesels are not necessarily more complicated to service and maintain than gasoline engines. The fewer the emissions controls, the more similar the maintenance schedule is to a gasoline engine. Load it up with a tons of emisions controls and you’ve got a ton of additional maintenance. Gasoline and diesel engines have similar basic maintenance requirements – it’s the emissions controls on modern diesels that require a ton of additional maintenance.

In my experience, the diesel engined trucks in my company lasted longer than the gasoline engined trucks. Maintenance costs were about the same. Operational costs slightly less on the diesels because they lasted longer. Fuel costs were about equal since diesel is more expensive than gasoline in the USA (which offset the better mileage on the diesels). Diesel engined trucks could tow a LOT more than the gas engined trucks (the diesels could accerlerate up hills that the gas engines could barely maintain speed on).

One caveat though. You MUST use diesel-specific engine oil for diesel engines due to the higher stresses involved with diesel engines. If diesel-spec is not available, put the highest grade synthetic gasoline enigne oil, limp home and change back to a diesel-grade engine oil. Given that this is Taiwan, I can see the back-alley trained mechanic pouring 5w-30 into a turbo diesel and taking years off the lifetime of the engine.

[quote=“Elegua”]Gee…not even vaguely worded references permitted? Apologies, I didn’t realize it was that high a security clearance. :blush:

They could have been still “The Smokers” with badly tuned injectors.[/quote]

Re escape plan, no big deal, just (a) Didn’t want to give my naive stupidity wider publicity (b) Its arguably outside the titular scope for this forum. En passant, my impression now is that plan A would unfortunately have been near suicidal, so thats out. Havn’t done anything about B or C.

Don’t think they do a Perkins 4 litre jetski, though I suppose they could have made some for the film, Mad Max stylee. Would have the advantage that it would probably run on the crude in that VLCC tanker/rowboat without further refinement.

Think helping hands…

Yes, you did.

I reckon a wet (water) filter could work quite well in removing particulates without clogging, and could be third world low-tech, (I did a few back-of-envelope sketches for a slightly different purpose) but (a) no one designs/builds for the third world, and (b) I guess the maintenance would be high. You’d have to drain out the sludge and top up the water regularly

I understand they are introducing sophisticated urea-injection wet filters on trucks and buses in Europe, but thats as part of a catalytic system for eliminating NOX, not wet removal of particulates

Edit: Apparently they fit wet exhaust scrubber filters on diesels used in mines, where air quality is obviously of particular (no pun intended) concern.

http://www.msha.gov/accident_prevention/ideas/filterfires.htm

Dunno the details of the design, but it seems they use a disposable “paper” air filter after the wet stage as a final filter.

OK, a bit OT, but also a bit interesting, I thought.