Gasoline or Diesel

[Sir Henry]

When I drove long-haul the Volvo had an exhaust temperature and you drove to keep the temperature down which usually meant 3/4 throttle acceleration and early down and up shifts. The power RPM was only around 600 RPM.

[BigAl52]

Ive got a pyrometer in the Dodge its exhaust temp right behind the turbo. I use it all the time when pulling making sure not to get things to hot. They had the same gauge on every truck I ever drove in 45 years of over the road driving. What it all boils down to IMHO is the guy behind the wheel running the show.

[Mags]

All my street vehicles use gasoline. All my yard equipment runs on Diesel. I once had a Honda riding gasoline mower. Took 2 tanks to mow everything. After it broke down I replaced it with a JD355D Diesel riding mower. I can mow everything twice over for the same size tank of fuel.

[RanchRoper]

Drove F350 diesels for a lot of years hauling the stock trailer. Only way to haul in my opinion.

[Hatchdog]

I had a 1997 F250 with the 460 ci big block that was marginal when towing a heavy load. Upgraded to a 2011 with the 6.2 and that was a big improvement but still the typical gas engine towing limits. My motorhome (E450 chassis) has the new Ford 7.3 Godzilla engine in it and man what a difference. Motorhome is 12,000 dry and I tow a 5,000 lb Jeep. That motor gets me up and down these western mountains just fine.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Godzilla_engine

How many miles do you have on the 7.3 Hatch?

6500 to date. Probably 25% were from the delivery from the factory. Just about time to start adding more miles.

[RanchRoper]

My wife drives our 2005 F350 diesel and it has 530,000 kms on it now.

[rickhem]

All my street vehicles use gasoline. All my yard equipment runs on Diesel. I once had a Honda riding gasoline mower. Took 2 tanks to mow everything. After it broke down I replaced it with a JD355D Diesel riding mower. I can mow everything twice over for the same size tank of fuel.

I'm right here with you Mags.
I had no direct experience with anything diesel until we bought our place here. I negotiated with the seller to include his mower, which is a Deere 455, and has a 60" deck. What was immediately noticeable to me was that it almost never bogs down. Even long wet grass, it just powers through. Read up on it and joined some other forums to learn more about it, and it seems that the maximum torque on almost everything Deere makes, is slightly lower RPMs than the set RPM for running the PTO. That's genius to me. As soon as you hit an area that would otherwise slow down the engine RPMs, you're also moving higher in the torque curve by backing into it. It holds about 5 gallons of gas and I can mow my 5+ acres on about a half tank. Gotta love those little Yanmar diesels.

On another note, I had a friend that was a top level bullseye shooter that travelled a lot to matches all along the east coast. I remember talking to him about his trip to Perry, and how he took his work truck, one of those Ram diesels. He said the truck gave him gas mileage within a couple MPG no matter if he was driving it pulling a giant gooseneck trailer, or with no load at all. Like the truck didn't know or didn't care. Also knew a few friends that had the Ram trucks with the 6 cyl EcoDiesel, and they loved those trucks, getting low/mid 20s for MPG.

[5shot]

This was my last diesel before I retired. 565 Cummins dialed up to 620 hp with 18 speed transmission. GVW on this load would be 235,000 lb.
My tractor is a 31 horse diesel and the F150 is gas since I seldom pull a trailer with it.

wolves 017.jpg (605.73 KiB) Viewed 1874 times

[dave77]

That's a impressive load. What is it, some kind of a concrete I-beam? How far did you have to haul it?

[rickhem]

Damn 5shot, that thing occupies two different zip codes.
Is there someone steering the rear part of that?