Quote:
Originally Posted by cleanspeed1
I hear what your saying and agree, but the problem has been that vehicles that can satisfy those " American " needs with safety and fuel efficiency have been made by our OEMs but not sold here.
A Canadian gentleman got a hold of one of these Sprint diesels and with the factory pieces, put it into his Suburban. Very happy with it, gets way better fuel economy. ( There's a small article in Diesel Power Magazine about it, can't remember which issue though. )
We can get a 6.6L and up turbodiesel, in a 3/4 ton and up truck, that has 400 hp and nearly 800 ft/lbs of torque easily, if you have $50k + for it, yet the truck we need is probably half as costly, has half the power and gets twice the mileage, in the same chassis that we get here.
And available widely in the half ton chassis.
Hmmm.
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Actually they did make vehicles sort of like this in the 80's it was called a 1982 C code 6.2ltr diesel. The trouble was, GM liked to fix things after making them, they also liked to couple it to crappy transmissions and they liked to put them into the wrong type of vehicles.
If you couple a 6.2 with a 5sp stick 2wd with good gears you can easily get in the high 20's to low 30's in a full size vehicle like a suburban. higher still if you can figure out how to fit it into something smaller like an S10 (you need to borrow the suspension from something beefier though)
Sadly GM didn't couple the 6.2 with good transmissions from the factory with a handfull of 1993 5sp pickup exceptions.
The 6.2 is capable of up to about 40mpg if in something moderately aerodynamic from what I here of the few who have done 5.7 diesel car to 6.2 conversions.