One of Dad's favorite comments had quite a ring of truth to it- - - -"Diesels are just like sex- - - - -highly overrated and stinky!"
Listen to this man
Jeebus.....that makes three of you that are wrong.
Other than a little time out for Uncle Sam, I have been in the heavy equipment repair business for a half century plus. The reputation for longevity, reliability, and thusly economy...was made on the design and engineering of industrial engines. Very heavy engines, with lousy power to weight ratios. But, they ran forever, with minimal maintenance, often in marine and power generation at full rated load. I personally maintained engines that were still reliable at 28,000 hours of near full load service. That is about 1,680,000 miles equivalent. Think about that. So what happened to light truck engines, why such a relatively short life, so many stories of expensive component failure, and in many cases, basic failures of cranks, blocks, heads? Well, I think it was sales departments at the big automakers. The first big gas shortage, 1977, GM puts the 5.7 "diesel" in the Oldsmobile, 1979 Ford puts the International IDI engine in pickups...and the rest is history, but the damn toy diesels never got much better. More power out of already weak designs, lower power to weight ratio's...all at the cost of reliability and longevity. In trucking service, industrial quality engines routinely run 750,000 miles. In toy diesels, guys start bragging at less than half that, in the meantime, they have replaced a turbo or two, rebuilt the injection system and replaced the head gaskets. Large fleet mail contractors keeping track of costs down to the penny determined long ago, there is no financial benefit in toy diesels...they would need to run trouble free for 500,000 miles to break even. And that's before diesel became more expensive than gasoline. Love your toy diesels, it's fine with me, but they don't pencil out.
