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ps2fixer 12-17-2020 12:02 AM

Big Diesel, MPG increase ideas?
 
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1611166091

Been a while since I've been on the forum. With helps of tips here I was able to pull 38-44mpg out of my 97 corolla (26 epa average if I recall correctly) and I didn't have many mods on it, just driving style and making the vehicle in good shape.

Moving onto today... I bought a 1995 F250 4x4 with the 7.3L power stroke diesel (turbo version with no waste gate) with the 5 speed stick for hauling a trailer and doing work. I know generally trucks and mpg don't go together well but I'm wondering if there's any solid ideas.


Here's the basics I already plan to do:

Max sidewall pressure on tires (or slightly above)
full sythetic engine oil
sythetic oil for trans and axles (front has manual hubs so the guts shouldn't be spinning while in 2wd)
Front air dam (less air in radiator) atleast for winter driving to keep temps up so the diesel stays happy

Truck is not lifted, and does not have wide tires, and pretty sure the tires are stock height. Currently have a topper on it which I think should help, but I just drove it home today so no base line.

I watched a video about a programmer that the gives extra power and fuel mileage, my dad has a 96 and his experience matched what the guy said too. Then the guy went a step further upgrading exhaust size to keep exhaust temps down (death to diesels) and added a propane system. He claimed a 30% mpg increase (minus how much propane he uses). I guess the theory is propane burns hot and fast and helps the diesel to have a better and more complete burn.

I also picked up a cheap parts truck that has the same engine but is a 2001 with the larger stock turbo with waste gate, and inner cooler. I plan to try to get the truck to run first before robbing parts off it.

I'm trying to keep the truck somewhat stock looking, and also keep it's function as a truck. I burn wood to heat my house, so the plan it that it will be my new wood hauler and I'm planning to buy some heavier equipment, so needed the bigger truck.

Truck only has 190k and the engine sounds nice and tight, no hard knocks like the 7.3L's tend to get with higher miles. An elderly man had it and I think the turbo might be carboned up some since it seems like the turbo takes longer than normal to spool up.

I'm kind of thinking a belly pan might be a solid option, I live in the rust belt, so it might keep some of the salt off the body. Also planning to not drive the truck often, so I'm thinking of some sort of system to keep the batteries topped up to have less load on the alt and prolong the life of the batteries.

Front tank seems to be around 15 gal and the needle moved about 1/8th tank for 100 miles, I know not accurate at all. Assuming it's close to moving to the 1/4 tank spot, that's 3.75gal or 26.6mpg. Seems too high to me but I'll have a better idea once I drive it a bit more. The trip was mild country driving, then express way 70mph (I know slow down and mpg goes up, I had my dad following, so was on his time too).

I haven't looked too much into mpg instrumentation, from what I read it's OBD1 so MPGuino might be the main option for me, not sure how well it would play with these injectors though since they are oil pressure + electronically controlled.

Anyway that propane system is quite interesting to me, knowing how much propane it goes through is a big factor though. I plan to convert some of my yard machines (riding lawn mower, generator, etc) to propane, so currently in search for a used 500-1000gal propane tank, then I can put a nursing valve in it to refill other tanks myself, and buy the propane in bulk quantities for a pretty good price. My last fill up for my tiny leased 250gal tank was $1.45/gal, if I owned the tank it would have been $1.35/gal. Propane is my backup heat, I use atleast a tank a year purely for home heating, hot water, etc.

Long post, congrats if you made it to the end of my rambling =).

Ecky 12-17-2020 12:10 AM

Tires, air dam and synthetic fluids all sound spot-on. :thumbup:

I'm no diesel tuner, but my reading has suggested most diesels have severely power- and economy-compromised tunes, because there's a very large tradeoff with emissions (think back to the VW TDi scandal). Tuners (as I understand) mainly adjust injector timing to get these gains. It's not something you can do easily without a dyno, but these trucks are old enough that the changes to be made are extremely well documented and you should see large improvements with a canned tune.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 12:33 AM

Yea, most tuners are generally looking for more power. Really stock it has plenty of power for 99% of what I want to do with it, I just wanted the diesel over gas. Personally not a fan of Ford engines, IH made the 7.3L and it's a known long lasting engine with not many problems long term.

I'm sure the tuning is pretty crippled on it, the specs I see online says it should be around 450ft-lb of torque stock, the 2001 parts truck I have should be around 505ft-lbs of torque. Inner cooler and slightly larger turbo are the main differences I'm aware of. I know diesel's love turbos to be more efficient and the inner cooler is a solid increase too.

I remember one member on here was pulling something like 50mpg out of a diesel truck, I think it was a Dodge, probably a 2wd that was areo modded.

Ideally this truck should solve my problem of overloading my truck with wood, this Ford should be more than capable for most of my loads. My last truck was a 1998 Toyota T100 4x4 with the 3.4L V6 with 5 speed stick. It got around 20-22mpg when I focused on mileage. Wish Toyota would make a true 1 ton truck, my closest 2nd pick would be a 2007+ Tundra, but locally they run around $12-15k, I have $3.5k into this truck and $1.3k in the parts truck (quite on the last owner, should be a simple fix to get running). The guy with the parts trunk cranked on it enough to kill the starter, luckily the big heavy diesel starter is only $110 shipped and is an easy job to do.

Sadly there's not many people on here with bigger trucks to compare my performance vs others. So far found a couple people with some history and trying to get mpg and around 20mpg is the line they are hanging around, general public is around 15-16mpg.

I'd guess I'm probably around the 20mpg mark but won't know until I get it legal and get some miles on it. The U joint is bad on it, so had to shift at higher rpm than I'd like (~2000 rpm) to keep from having the heavy vibration. If I can get 20mpg, that will be on par with my smaller "mid" sized truck and have tons more power and and such.

I suspect I should pull some alright numbers. My dad beat on his which was a 1996 automatic, everything else the same, and with the tuner on the first stage he was getting around 15mpg beating on it, 13mpg before the tuner. Clearly that was before we got into mpg and such. He still has his truck, 100k miles and has an electronic issue with the transmission system he hasn't dedicated time to looking into. He's had it sitting for 15-20 years. I think getting the same truck might spark some motivation in him lol.

Isaac Zachary 12-17-2020 02:03 AM

What weather do you have? Would water injection be a possibility? (At least during summer months?)

The EPA has really cracked down on diesel tuners recently. So finding kits that change the tune for any reason can be hard unless it's an EPA approved kit.

EGR delete would help fuel mileage but increase NOx emissions. One the other hand, a water injection setup would help reduce those NOx emissions again. (Just don't let the EPA know.)

Propane is easier to get and handel and cheaper to set up, but natural gas is safer since it has a higher octane.

Since you already cut fire wood, wood gas also comes to mind.

There's also the home manufacturing of nearly free bio diesel.

The main thing that helped me get good mileage in the diesel I had was to floor it and keep the gears as high as possible without lugging the engine. Pulse and gliding helped considerably.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 02:13 AM

I'm in Michigan, no inspections or any of that extra stuff (yet atleast). Weather is cold, at or below freezing during the day.

My dad has a tuner already, it's an old one but it's a good one. I guess it VIN locks when an engine is tuned, sounds like a way to leech more money from potential buyers. There's another tuner that's basically the same thing that's updated. These are not the ebay trick the sensors into giving false readings to the computer type of tuners, these reflash the EEPROM in the computer, no wire hacking etc, just plug in and flash.

Interesting on the pulse and gliding, I didn't even think about the load effect since I figured that was more a gas engine thing. In my corolla, for ~1 mile I tried extreme pulse and glide, something like 15mph -> 35mph then back down and the scan gauge said something like 70mpg. It wasn't something I could do long term but was fun to try out.

I'm not sure how well the diesel would do being floored though, they tend to dump excess fuel and the black smoke rolling out is unburnt fuel, aka inefficiency. There's no throttle plate in a Diesel, so I don't really understand the theory/concept behind pulse and glide with a diesel.

On the corolla test run, I was loading it to the ideal %, can't remember off hand what it was, like 70 or 80% though. It was an automatic, so there was a fine line between loading the engine enough and going too far and having it down shift.

Either case, it's an interesting idea.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 02:18 AM

I found the other member with a diesel truck that hit 50mpg. Here's the link if anyone wanted to blast to the past. The F250 is also a 3/4 ton class truck (it hauls more than 1500lbs in the back of it, it's all marketing anymore for that figure).

https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...kup-21766.html

Isaac Zachary 12-17-2020 02:31 AM

Pulse and gliding also works in a diesel because efficiency changes with load, but this time due to combustion temps. The hotter the working fluid the more energy can be extracted from it. In an ideal engine you'd use pure oxygen and fuel in the most concentrated form possible (i.e. liquid form for both) and then burn them into a trillion degree ball of molten plasma in a cylinder.

Diesels also run leaner than stoichiometric even at full throttle (unless tuned to roll coal). Yes, you get more suit at higher loads that's partially burned fuel. But all in all you usually get maximum efficiencies at 100% load, unlike a gasoline engine that drops at too high of a load due to fuel enrichment richer than stoichiometric.

Propane or natural gas can help burn up even more fuel so you get less suit, at least in theory.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 03:01 AM

Thanks for the theory behind the P&G on the diesel, makes sense to me.

I found a person with a similar truck as me, they have much higher geared axles though, 3.08 vs mine being either 3.55 or 3.73 (pretty sure it's 3.55 though). They have some areo mods (air dam, side skirts, and lowered 4in) and they pull ~26mpg. Based on what I've read on gear ratios and some experience, it's pretty 1:1 for the ratio difference, so 3.55 gearing is about 13.2% lower geared, so their mpg with my gearing should be around 22.57mpg, so I think an unmodded truck getting around 20mpg seems about spot on.

I never quite figured out why my corolla got such good mpg, I didn't do anything super crazy with it. When I was hitting near 45mpg tanks, it was 45mph back roads, ~1hr drive, and half engine bay belly pan and about 1/4 air block at the front of the car, max side wall pressure on tires and drive it for mpg (high load take off, cruse highest gear lowest rpm effectively). The car liked to go into full advanced timing, 39 degrees if I remember right, but if I could just barely touch the gas just right I could get it to pull back the timing to somewhere around 26 degrees and the mpg jumped way up. That car was a bit of an odd duck, it's sitting with 305k miles now, Michigan rust got to it, hoping to have it fixed for this winter.

Based on a couple sources, the effect of adding propane is similar to nitrous. Both help the diesel get burnt more completely and both added together gives a tiny bit of gain from the extra fuel (propane). The catcher is, nitrous only works basically at full throttle while propane hits a nice wide range of rpm.

I never really been into diesels much in the past, but it seems that they can really pull some impressive mpg numbers even in large vehicles. 20-22mpg Is kind of my target, if I can pull 25mpg+ I'd be quite impressed and probably be kicking myself for not doing the truck upgrade sooner lol.

Stubby79 12-17-2020 03:06 AM

Is the parts truck 4wd as well?

Isaac Zachary 12-17-2020 03:08 AM

Just be careful with propane. Propane can knock and cause engine damage. The key would be to make sure you don't use too much.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 03:26 AM

1 Attachment(s)
Yes both trucks are 4x4, the 2001 has the push button style, not really a fan of those, I'd rather have the lever and manually do it like the 95 has, my dad's 96 is also 4x4. I saw plenty of 2wd and gas models, but weren't interested. Michigan gets snow and at times 4x4 is really needed. Besides that, it's a truck mainly for wood hauling, and being a diesel, all of the weight is in the front, so it's terrible off road so it really needs the front wheels turning so I don't get stuck on wet grass =). The big mod for the Toyota T100's is manual locking hubs for mpg and less front axle wear, but the 95 came with them stock.

For the propane setup, it would be a proper kit designed for the truck if I tried it. It monitors boost levels and throttle to keep the propane at safe levels. I'll have to read up on the system more, but I think it's pretty interesting. Probably won't be touching anything like that for a while since I'd want to atleast get some miles on the truck to get something for a baseline.

Here's a photo of the truck, not great quality photos, they are from the craigslist page. The push bumper goes down a fair bit, so I guess that gives a bit of an air dam effect. I don't think it has any mud flaps either. The hood latch is rigged up some, I have to bend the hood back down and get a new cable installed. For a michigan truck from 1995, it's in quite good condition body wise. Thinking about painting the custom metal parts black to make them not stand out so much, that or a similar red color to make it blend in more. Not really a big person on looks, but gray and red don't really match too well in my eyes xD.

Talking about trucks, I can't remember which was found to be better on here, a flat topped topper/cap, or a tonneau cover. I'm thinking the topper was slightly better, but for wood hauling, the tonneau cover would probably be more ideal since I can remove it if needed. Catcher is, I have the topper, not the tonneau cover lol.


https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1611166091

Piotrsko 12-17-2020 09:59 AM

In my case for the last 21 years, the topper has not been an issue except when the load exceeds 41" tall. I do keep a wrench that loosens the hold downs so I can load 41-45" tall stuff and have a hook in the garage for those loads where I know before that I have to remove it. Takes about 1/2 hour excluding cleaning out the garage.

A sheet of 3/4 plywood and the plastic bedliner make unloading easier.

Ecky 12-17-2020 10:48 AM

To expand on how P&G works to help a diesel:

Consider accessory and frictional losses. If your engine is turning at (for example) 2000rpm, it doesn't matter if it's 20% loaded or 90% loaded, turning the water pump, alternator fan, oil pump, etc. use just about the same amount of energy. Friction goes up a bit with things like piston rings, but it isn't linear.

The way it works out in practice is, that you end up with fewer losses by running the engine half the time at twice the load, and coasting at idle or with the engine off the other half of the time. You're literally cutting all accessory losses in half.

Some modern hybrids do some of this automatically - they have electric water pumps which are not tied to engine speed, and turn themselves on and off as needed, and even the engine itself doesn't necessarily run all the time, but rather, may cycle on and off as the battery is filled and depleted, with the battery carrying the vehicle while the engine isn't running.

Taller gearing always helps with economy because slowing the engine down cuts accessory and other parasitic losses too.

Isaac Zachary 12-17-2020 11:42 AM

To go along with what Ecky said, think of it this way. At 0% throttle (e.g. idle) you're 0% efficient. Close to idle, putting along the road, and you're still pretty close to 0% efficient. The more you lay into the throttle the father away from 0% you get.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 01:37 PM

Being the bigger diesel, I'd probably avoid the engine off P&G, the traffic on the main roads around here is pretty bad. I've had enough people about hit me when I was going 45mph in a 55mph in the corolla, now the road has even less passing room and such. It went from a 2 line state highway to a 2 lane with left turn lanes and a few right side lanes to pass people turning left, but they removed the option to pass slower traffic. In the main town area the same setup is in town, and they just extended it out about a mile for no real reason, there's no businesses or anything that far out.

Sadly I don't have a garage yet to park vehicles in, so don't really have a solid way to remove a topper easily. For the wood hauling, generally my family runs racks and stacks the wood to the cab height or higher, doesn't matter if it's a little Toyota pickup, mid sized T100, F150, or F250 lol.

I haven't seen any hybrid diesels, are they a thing with the auto kill/start like the gas versions? I thought the hybrids put out electrical power to get the vehicle up to speed with less load on the engine (less efficient), then while cursing down the road and brake regen the battery is recharged for the next takeoff. Maybe the newer ones do some different things, I haven't been super active on this site for like 6-8 years.

I think the theory of the engine rpm is a bit backwards for a diesel, the only difference between idle and full throttle is how much fuel is being dumped, there's no throttle plate to cause pumping losses. I'm not sure 100% how the turbo would play into this though since it's an exhaust restriction, but it crams more air into the cylinder for a more violent dentition. Of course this is purely talking about the core engine, accessories clearly would have higher losses at higher rpm.

It would be interesting to test changing the belt to only run the water pump and alt and get an electric vacuum pump for the brakes.

I've messed around a little with the engine off coating with a Camry (mid sized car) and a Corolla (smaller/budget car) and they are no big deal. The truck though, the steering is very hard, not sure if the brake system holds vacuum well or not with engine off. The Toyota's get 2-3 brake hits before it runs out of assistance. The 2001 F250 I flat towed home and the brakes (rusty but not that bad) was barely enough to stop the actual truck against the truck in front coating in neutral (heavier so it seems to coast farther, doubt it's from low rolling resistant tires).

An areo topper might be doable, been thinking a bit on it and since I use side racks for hauling more stuff, if they were shaped to match the cab angle and taper down at a reasonable rate, I'd think it would help slightly. It's already a brick in the air so I think areo mods would be more effective on it than the corolla - passenger mirror delete, mud flap delete, the front end covering, and belly pan, and flat hub caps might have given me 3-5mpg while driving style and tires up to max pressure seemed to give the best gains, 33mpg on the trip home 60mph for ~2hr vs ~39mpg for the same speed with the areo mods and fixed alignment, tires, etc.

I don't have any good photos of the front of the truck, or a solid side profile yet, but the front bumper is a fair bit shaped like an air dam already, it extends down a bit more than I normally build them.

Probably should mention my dad and I both can weld, and my dad was an ASE cert mechanic so I do all repairs on my own or with his help.

For the gearing, I think 3.55 is pretty reasonable for the truck, the overdrive in the transmission is 0.71, so that comes out to 1500rpm for 55mph and 2000rpm for 70mph. The engine red lines around 3250-3500 according to the tach, idle is around 450rpm. It's first gear is basically a creeper gear, so even with the somewhat higher geared axles, it has plenty of gearing for starting off with a pretty good sized load I'd think. The toyota I'm running is 4.10 gearing and with the v6 engine it can struggle a bit taking off, it really could use a creeper gear type of setup. I haven't done it yet, but in theory I could drop it in low range and get to say 2nd gear then swap to 1st gear high range, that truck can be shifted into and out of 4x4 while moving, into low max speed 5mph, into high any speed, and into 4x4 from 2wd 50mph. Have to love owner's manuals. I think the ford manual will say either stopped or under 5mph but I haven't looked for one online yet, the truck didn't come with the manual.

Also I plan to remove the hub caps, they don't look like they are too areo, they are fairly heavy, and the valve stem is hard to get to with them on.

I'm thinking making atleast a short belly pan for the front and seal up the hood a little would be a good benefit since diesels generally don't like the cold, there is excess heat from the turbo that I have to be careful about though so the back side will be the vent for the air that makes it through the radiator.

I'm also reading about the 50mph diesel truck thread to get more ideas. Sounds like 70-80% of the mileage is purely driving style and slow average speed ~30mph. I have nearly zero city driving as I live far out in the country, and when I do go into town, the city driving aspect is about 1-2 miles long. No stop and go traffic, and generally I don't get stuck at the lights more than once.

Anyway, back to that other thread, he mentions about unplugging a heater for quicker warm ups, it's an EGR truck, mine didn't have any of that stuff though. I know the newer truck has a waste gate and it has some sort of exhaust brake setup that helps warm the engine up faster while lowering power to the wheels, I think that truck has some sort of heater system on the turbo area too, not sure what that's for, but if there's any heaters, 100-200amp heater delete would probably be quite a mpg increase I'd think. The mention of his heater is at post #57.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...tml#post365990

Btw, I went to school for computers, and I've played a little with programming micro controllers. I have a reasonable understanding of electronics (the actual circuits), so I'm keeping that in mind too while thinking of mods. This engine doesn't have much electrical going on with it though, the newer one has a ton of stuff I'm wanting to look into.

I've also been seeing people mention that mufflers on a diesel only makes them get worse mpg, I'm not one to have loud exhaust though (the turbo might be enough, not sure). Pretty sure it still has the factory exhaust, looked to be about 3in. I didn't look over the whole system much, but I remember seeing a muffler. Maybe a cherry bomb style muffler would be the best of both worlds (center wide open, packing material around the outside muffles it a little).

A bit of a side topic, if that 2001 we can't get going within a reasonable budget, it might have some pretty major mods. 2000 Tundra cab (4 door but shorter), custom box (oem one is rusted to nothing). The engine/trans would likely end up being the 2000 Tundra engine, 4.7L v8 gas with auto trans. It would be a bit on the high geared side for the engine/truck since the axles are 3.73 and the Toyota generally comes with around 4.10 gearing. Low range as a creeper gear, I think it would work fairly well. The cab on those trucks are a lot shorter than the fords, a bit narrower and such so I'd think it would do pretty well. I'm looking at hauling ~10,000lbs once in a while, and that's just a bit much for the stock tundra for that era, probably would do it but the suspension, axle, and maybe frame are a bit light duty for that. We've came up with a name for it already if that happened - Tord (TOyota + foRD). Toyota has great engines and electronics, and fords have great axles and frames.

I wish I had photos, but back in the 90's my dad built a truck out of a ton of different parts and made a truck he called the "Ka-truck", it was half "car" and half "truck". Cab was a station wagon front end made into a cab, frame was a heavy 3/4 ton chevy, heavy 3/4 ton rear axle with dually adapter, and powered by an oldsmobile 350 v8. 4.10 gearing, automatic, home made box (very heavy), and home made pipe front bumper. He literately pushed junk cars sideways around the yard. He wrecked the truck into a big pine tree one night, so that truck is long gone, but he still misses it lol. Back then he was a scrapper, lived off scrapping metal. $20/ton and vehicles were either free or the owner would pay a little to get rid of it. If it was something desirable, he might pay $20-50 for it. He had a small collection of Oldsmobile Cutlass cars 1969-1974 era until the township got on him for having too many vehicles in the yard (no junkyard license). The ordnance was changed, before it was fine for unlicensed vehicles to sit behind a fence out of sight from the road, now they want every vehicle to have an active plate or insurance, whichever one. I live a township over and it's no problem here. I like having a parts vehicle encase I need a part, no wait and no running to the store, just have to do the job twice to get it out and put it in the other vehicle.

Anyway, back to some work (self employed) and reading a bit more on that other thread.

Isaac Zachary 12-17-2020 04:35 PM

Did someone say hybrid?
From what I've heard, modern hybrid trucks are usually about power and torque delivery and not so much about fuel mileage, although there can be an advantage.

Consider: all vehicles come with engines that are oversized for your average power consumption. For an example, a lot of vehicles only use some 20hp to cruise along at 60mph, but usually have an engine that's around 10 times bigger since acceleration takes a whole lot more power. A hybrid can help by allowing you to use a less oversized engine, which is better for your average power consumption, like cruising, but still allow you to have the same torque/power/acceleration characteristics by combining the smaller engine with an electric motor.

Alternator mod/delete?
There's also the advantage of regenerative braking with a hybrid. Which also throws into my mind alternator mods. I do believe Mazda has an ultracapacitor system that keeps the alternator off most the time, but runs it full blast when you let off the throttle pedal. This then rapidly charges an ultracapacitor bank which in turn is used to charge the 12V battery.

Of course if your drives aren't that long, you could delete the alternator (or just disconnect it somehow) and charge it up with a 12V battery charger at home. But obviously if you're going to be running a lot of electric stuff, like electric vacuum pump for the brakes, you may want to keep the alternator.

Crazy mod
It would be a major mod, but if you have the knowhow and trust a good custom cam company you could get a cam that allows for a atkinson o miller cycle. You'd also might have to change the turbo for another or maybe even a supercharger instead. Of course you'd have to be able to tune it a lot with your tune kit. In the end you'd have less power, but better efficiency and fuel mileage. And if you figure out a way to hook up an electric motor and HV battery you could have yourself a hybrid.

Turbo's effect
Good question about the turbo. A turbo helps efficiency since it allows you to use a higher load, which a higher load in a diesel means better efficiency. A turbo also is able to take advantage of exhaust gas pressure that would have otherwise been lost, unlike a supercharger. (Although the atkinson and miller cycle engines kind of take advantage of that exhaust gas pressure at the piston itself.) But there is also the question of turbo efficiency at different speeds. This isn't the same as engine efficiency, it's how effective the turbo turns exhaust gas pressure into intake pressure.

Engine heat
I had a 1,500W block heater on my 1.6L diesel I'd use for 15min to 2hrs (depending on the weather) before driving and am looking to get that kind of block heaters installed on my current cars. But my dream has always been to make a very large heat storage tank on my cars that works a lot like the 2nd gen Prius' heat storage system, and then to insulate the engine as best as possible.

BLSTIC 12-17-2020 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ps2fixer (Post 638540)

Looking at that truck, it's an aero nightmare. Nearly everything is a sharp edge. Sharp edges have the effect of keeping the air going whatever direction it just was, so for the bumper/air dam and windscreen, that means the air keeps going up, down, and sideways long after the vehicle dimensions have ended. The hole you are punching through the air could be 20-30% larger than it needs to be. It's also going to be a lot of work to fix, and not particularly pretty

Looking at a profile pic of a similar truck, if you were to install a full length flat undertray at the height of the transmission crossmember, side skirts to meet it, make your front air dam with a rounded bottom and sides (about a 6" radius would be a good starting point to try), and taper the undertray up to meet the rear bumper you could largely eliminate underbody drag.
Because the entire exhaust system is above this point height, though, you would need to have cutouts underneath the exhaust to ensure the exhaust didn't overheat anything.
Don't entirely block the bottom of the engine bay or you will not get very far up the road, but keeping the undertray uninterrupted until, say, the back half of the engine can increase cooling airflow by making the airflow where it does join a much cleaner and higher speed thing. You can tune this airflow exit the same way you can tune a grill block.
Ground clearance, departure and approach angles would remain unchanged, but break angle would be reduced slightly and the vehicle would appear visually a lot lower.

Installing a low profile roof box with a curved front would also help a lot. Apply the same 6" radius to the top of the windscreen and see how high it ends up, it will likely be a bit taller than your current lights, but not by much. If you make the front section clear you could mount your lights in it. Increasing the frontal area might seem counterintuitive but it's better than a square edge.

As for the side-front edges, well, you're pretty much screwed on that front.

The wheel gaps, you could fill in with mudguard skirt brushes like they do on semi's, to allow for cleaner airflow and less road spray with full articulation (but they wear out). That's at least a "real truck" thing too.

Also being a diesel, engine intake and exhaust flow is especially important as they are full airflow all the time (varying only with boost). Intake and exhaust flow improvements will result in fuel economy improvements even without fueling changes because at full load it will be running leaner. Even if boost somehow corrects itself load on the turbo will be reduced and you will get slightly better throttle response.
Is it intercooled? If not, do that. 100% do that if you modify nothing else on the engine for this truck.
Check the condition of the injectors and pump (somehow). Spray pattern is much more critical on a diesel than a petrol and you might pick up some (lost) power and reduce smoke emissions.
Google says your downpipe is the best $$$ per performance increase you can do on those trucks, but it requires firewall massaging (probably with a really big hammer)

Also, lose the stone deflector. Replace it with a piece of clear or red vinyl if you're worried about chips on the leading edge of the bonnet.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 05:54 PM

I defiantly stand corrected on the diesel efficiency at load, the member getting 50mpg was using P&G with engine off to get those figures and it sounds like since his focus went elsewhere he's getting around 35mpg with his current driving habits. Sadly no mention what has changed, but I'm guessing he's not P&G any more.

The coldest week in my area gets down to about -10F at night, so a block heater is basically a must around that time. I already bought a couple mechanical timers a while back for another project (off grid lighting in a shipping container I use for business storage) and the idea was to burn up the excess power from the solar to keep standard car/truck batteries topped up since I have a few spares around that I might recharge once a month or so. I generally get junker vehicles quite often, so I haven't had to buy a new battery except once to get a vehicle home.

The PSD (power stroke diesel) has a static turbo, so the peak efficiency would be interesting to investigate. It has no waste gate, 100% of the pressure is pushed into the intake. I suspect being smooth into the fuel rather than quick jabbing would be more ideal to let the turbo spool up as the load is increased (more fuel to take off for example).

The page I found on the atkinson cycle is quite interesting. Seems like the down falls (low rpm power output) could be offset by increasing the compression ratio for the shorter stroke on the compression stroke, but have the power stroke be the full length. At least the concept makes sense to me for gas engines. Not sure how well it would translate into diesels. Probably a bit more over kill than I'm looking for since the power stroke diesels are an engine designed to have a lot of bottom end grunt.

If I remember right, my corolla was making roughly 14hp to go 55mph. I thought it would be an interesting design to have a small engine,say 20hp for your cursing engine and a larger say 80hp engine for a small car that would lock in and fire up for take off power. Lot of dead weight but weight effects mpg so much less than a lot of other factors.

That reminds me, there was a user on here building a custom car with the ideal tear drop shape, 3 wheeled, and a small diesel engine to power it. I should try to dig up that thread, maybe there's some engine related mods that could make sense for me.

Capacitors and super capacitors are an interesting topic too, over on another forum we were talking about them for atv's with out a battery, but a way to get solid and reliable 12v dc power (technically 13.5-15.5v dc) through a regulator/rectifier. I suspect maxing out the alternator is no big deal as long as it doesn't build up too much heat. In theory, the alternator could be used for the regen brakes and also an electric motor to help with take offs. I'm not sure if there's enough efficiency in the required parts to pull something off like that, but for a 3-4 cyl car I think it could be a fairly large gain. I guess the question at that point would be if it would give better benefits over just deleting the alternator from the get go (or a disable switch).

Poking around some threads and such, it seems like there's only been 2 members that really posted much info about driving full sized trucks with diesels for mpg. Their mods were mainly air dam, grill block, side skirts, and I saw a mention of a belly pan and areo cap. The 2nd member had a 7.3L diesel like me so I have atleast a point of reference. They were getting around 26mpg which isn't bad and it looked like very minor mods. I didn't check but I'm thinking they had an automatic and the manuals are known for better mpg, atleast for the typical driver.

I guess there's two versions of the 5 speed transmission, I have to check the ratios and try to figure out which one the truck has. Basically mine has a creeper gear first, so take off is in 2nd gear.

Power Stroke Diesel Transmission Guide

It's the ZF-S5-47 about the middle of the table. Wide ratio vs narrow. Based purely on rpm and what I've read other people with the transmission had for rpm with 3.55 gearing, it sounds like mine should be the wide ratio (slightly higher geared over drive). 70mpg is dead on or just the tinyest bit above 2000 rpm, the other post I saw the person said they were around 2100rpm.

The truck is at my dad's place since he has an area to work on it, so I'm not 100% sure of the tire size. I know it's slightly wider than stock, something like a 265 75 R16. Yay math time lol.

1 mile = 5280 ft
70mph = 369600ft/hr, 6160ft/min
Tire diameter: 31.6in, circumference: 99.4in

wide ratio 5th gear, 1 rev of the engine = 0.3706 turns of the tire, or 36.8421 inches -> 3.0702ft. 6160/3.0702 = 2006.4rpm

close ratio 5th gear, 1 rev of the engine = 0.3658 turns of the tire, or 36.3636 inches -> 3.0303ft. 6160/3.0303 = 2032.8 rpm

They are so close, can't really tell the difference in 5th gear :(. I guess the best test would be speed at 2000 rpm in 1st gear or if there's some sort of markings to id the two apart. I think that kind of confirms my rear axle must be 3.55 since the math lines right up with the tach and speedometer.

The heat storage system sounds interesting, I suspect it must use a fluid that has high heat capacity (generally highly corrosive with salts etc) and the bulk of the stored fluid is in a highly insulated box/container? This crosses over with some of the research I've done for rocket mass heaters, water is great, but adding a type of salt in it increases the capacity more, I think it has a lower freezing point too.

For the hybrids, my reading dates back to around 2012ish, so maybe in 8 years there's been some pretty major design changes and marketing focus. Newer vehicles always have to put out higher hp numbers to keep the average person wanting to "upgrade" their vehicle. I'm perfectly content with ~450ft-lb of torque at the flywheel on this diesel, I don't need the near 1000ft-lb of torque that the newer trucks have. If they took the updated tech and put it in half the size of engine to match the old machines, I bet some pretty impressive mpg figures could come out of them while still being a very solid power house for work. I've seen the same trend while researching GVWR. A 1 ton truck used to have a payload of 2000lbs, now they are something like 3 1/4 ton (7000lb) or more. In the 80's Toyota made a couple trucks that were badges as a "1 ton" but I suspect they were meaning it's payload capacity was truly 1 ton instead of the 1 ton "class" of truck.

Anyway, my wheels are turning in my head lol. If I can hit over 25mpg, then it would almost make no sense for me to have my car on the road. Not really an ideal mpg car, a 1990 Lexus LS400 with a V8 gas engine, RWD. I wanted to try one out and they are an awesome car, it's like 5x the quality of a Corolla if not more. I've been thinking of maybe getting a newer Lexus with a hybrid system, something around 2006ish. One guy I talked to with one was pulling pretty impressive numbers for a fair sized car, it was around 35-40mpg. With me driving it I'd think I could hit 45mpg pretty easily and make the corolla pointless to get going again lol. Of course the cost of the car isn't cheap, so the fuel savings won't pay for the car for an extremely long time. The corolla is rusted pretty badly, so it's only got probably 2-3 years for the body left.

BLSTIC 12-17-2020 06:32 PM

I can't believe I'm saying this (because it's EcoModder.com not TightwadDriver.com), but how much spare cash have you got and how much load-free driving do you do?

A 2010 Prius gets 51mpg according to the EPA. If you sell the Lexus and the Corolla you shouldn't be too far off buying one.

Your F250 probably gets 17mpg, or 5.88 g/100mi, at $2.44/gal that's $14.35/100mi
A Prius gets 51mpg, or 1.96g/100mi, at $2.05 for regular that's $4.02/100mi

At $10/100mi price difference that's 50,000 miles in total to pay for the entire cost of a 2010 Prius, and that's only considering fuel costs. The rest of the operating costs are so much smaller too

oil pan 4 12-17-2020 06:57 PM

The propane just needs a pressure switch so it cuts off above a certain boost level.
Oh and get an intercooler if you dont have one and a bigger turbo charger.
One from a powerstroke would be sufficient.

Isaac Zachary 12-17-2020 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLSTIC (Post 638587)
I can't believe I'm saying this (because it's EcoModder.com not TightwadDriver.com), but how much spare cash have you got and how much load-free driving do you do?

A 2010 Prius gets 51mpg according to the EPA. If you sell the Lexus and the Corolla you shouldn't be too far off buying one.

Your F250 probably gets 17mpg, or 5.88 g/100mi, at $2.44/gal that's $14.35/100mi
A Prius gets 51mpg, or 1.96g/100mi, at $2.05 for regular that's $4.02/100mi

At $10/100mi price difference that's 50,000 miles in total to pay for the entire cost of a 2010 Prius, and that's only considering fuel costs. The rest of the operating costs are so much smaller too

Good point. A lot of people these days think they need an AWD/FWD pickup or SUV because that's what the media tells us. I'm not saying the OP doesn't need one to go get his fire wood and driving in snow. But even for those things a sedan, hatchback or station wagon might me all that's needed.

What I did personally is I got a used 2013 Toyota Avalon HV and all I've done to it is install a block heater and a tow hitch plus I picked up a set of wheels off a burnt car for cheap and threw studded snow tires on it. Now I have a roomy car, much roomier than any SUV or Pickup I've ever been in both in front and rear seats, that gets 40mpg, can haul up to 1,000lbs on the trailer, which is also exactly 4" x 8" so any sort of panels, like drywall, plywood, foam insulation and the like, all fits perfectly, and it drives perfectly well here in the steep, icy Colorado mountains. Great for camping, fishing, skiing, and lots of other off road/winter sports as well as all the construction and remodeling I've been up to lately. Leather heated seats, dual climate heater, sun roof, multi position electric seats, and a one of the biggest trunks on the market (and a really happy wife as a result). Plus it has one of the lowest statistics for death to passengers out there. Our first year we did over 30,000 miles in it.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 07:19 PM

@BLSTIC

Yea, it kind of seems most trucks are quite the nightmare for areo, kind of the nature of the beast. I almost got a 2wd Van with the same engine that was converted into a truck, the front would probably be more areo, but the back half with a flat bed and tommy gate would be terrible.

It sounds like you've had a lot of experience with areo, and everything you said makes sense to me. clearly changing the shape of the cab isn't a simple task, but top cover over the roof is an interesting idea.

The truck does have the rain cover things for the door windows, I haven't looked in person, but in the photo it looks to curve a bit where the air might stay attached and depart at a slightly better angle (in my mind atleast). I suspect doing something similar on the A pillar and matching it on the door could help round out the edge a little, probably hard to get solid gains.

I know the underbelly areo is probably the worst on it vs most other vehicles. My thought was something like a fairly heavy rubber (similar to a mud flap) that hang down from the front bumper to help push the air around the front instead of allowing it under the truck in the first place. The rubber idea was so it could hit inclines and such and bend out of the way, and the weight would keep the shape somewhat well at speed. If That idea worked out well, I suspect the side skirts could be done the same way so performance off road wouldn't be hindered, but get the benefits of better areo.

The side skirt setup I haven't seen before, pretty interesting idea, I would like to reduce road spray since road salts really kill vehicles in this area.

The truck does not have an intercooler, I know that's a huge power and efficiency upgrade for the engine, I haven't had a good luck to see if/how I could make that happen. I suspect anything, even a thin intercooler would be better than nothing.

For the fuel injectors, the truck has 190k and the injectors sound to keep a good spray pattern for a very long time, the internals get out of spec though. This is a very unique design injection system that was designed by CAT that IH bought rights to use, to be installed in a Ford, weird company politics huh? Basically the engine oil is ran through a high pressure oil pump to bump the pressure to 500-3000psi and the injector uses that to increase the fuel pressure to direct inject into the engine at up to 21,000psi. The fuel injector is also cooled with engine coolant. The design is called HEUI (Hydraulic electronic unit injection). Because of that design, these engines require a good cranking rpm to fire off, so cold weather with a weak starter or batteries is about the worst case scenario for this truck. I got it with a new starter, and it fired right up with temps just below freezing.

The 2001 truck has a bad starter, so testing out a "high torque" version of the starter on it. It's a Denso design, while the OEM design is Mitsubishi. The one I got is a china knock off, but the core design should be the same and for just over $100 it's quite cheap for being a massive starter (4kw, over 5hp!).

The fuel pump is external to the tank, so checking pressure and flow is possible. Generally people focus more on the fuel filter, and check the flow when refilling the filter housing to make sure the screens in the tanks aren't plugged. The fuel pressure these trucks run at I think is around 40psi.

I've watched a few videos about these engines and signs of bad injectors and such, and that hard diesel knock, the almost metal to metal type of sound is the sign of bad injectors. Mine sounds great, it has the diesel noise, but not the hard knock. This is probably something better to show with examples, so here's a couple youtube videos.

Fresh rebuilt engine (mine sounds extremely close to this one) - https://youtu.be/BVKlEKbRmBQ?t=460

This one sounds to have the knock noise, kind of a tick. Almost sounds like a gas injector.

https://youtu.be/a-yo0mqThzU?t=79

From what I read, bad injectors that sound like that give less power and mpg so getting some base line numbers would help keep an eye on the fuel system, same thing for the rest of the fuel system, less fuel pressure or flow would also cause lower mpg and less power. It does seem to have a bit of a week bottom end, like taking off ~1000 rpm, but it also has a bad U-joint I was trying to baby home, and I think the exhaust side of the turbo is dirty. I clearly have some work I have to do to it before it goes on the road any more.

The down pipe is an interesting one, I'd have to check it out. I know the van's with this engine had a very restrictive down pipe, the 2001 truck I got already had it replaced, or factory it's not like the vans. I think this 95 was the same way. Could check the diameter, I suspect it's 3in and I've read people running 5in exhaust (with tuners etc) get a 4in down pipe.

For how far I drive, I don't work a "normal" job any more, so I go to town every 2-4 weeks (~50 mile round trip) , and the post office about 3 times a week (10 mile round trip), I probably put 5-8k miles per year on my vehicles. I have a car and the truck, the car is for general driving (town, post office, etc). The truck is for wood hauling, moving equipment, etc. The Toyota wasn't doing bad, but I'm eyeing some larger equipment.

I favor the older vehicles a bit more, but I was thinking of a Prius, but the Lexus brand impressed me so much (it's a high end Toyota). My 1990 barely has any rust and it's the first year they existed. Over 10 years ago my first vehicle was an Oldsmobile cutlass ceria with just under 100k miles it died due to rusting out just like the corolla (gas tank straps and the cross support it bolts to), except the corolla has 305k miles (I put 80k on it).

Money wise, I live a unique life style, 100% debt free. I recently got a couple credit cards just to build a credit score because I found out auto insurance here takes into account your credit score and a person that has zero debt (no credit cards, loans etc) has a pretty poor score so they charge extra for no logical reason. I generally gravitate to cheaper older vehicles that are known to be reliable since cost of replacement is so much cheaper. Things happen so I'd rather be financially secure in the way that I can buy another vehicle at a drop of a hat in the case of a wreck than to pay for full coverage and only have the option of cashing in if I got in a wreck and likely still pay more than the benefits offered (they have to make a profit somehow).

I have about $1000 into the Lexus, it's worth probably $1500, the corolla I paid $600 for, put probably $500 in parts into it, but with it being rusty it's probably a $800 car after the gas tank straps are fixed. The 2010 Prius seems to run around $12-20k with my quick searching for local listings. The Lexus car I'm thinking about I think was around $6-7k. I bought the V8 car just to experience it and it was $650 with a couple issues (power steering and wheel bearing).

Anyway, the Lexus gets around 20-22mpg on reg gas I got 27mpg on the trip home on the express way going 70mph, so the math would have to be against the car since the Prius can't haul a Skid Steer xD. 21mpg vs 51mpg is about 59% fuel savings for a vehicle that costs me roughly $523.81/year (5000mi/21mpg*$2.20/gal). That's $309.05 savings and 38.8 years for the break even point, or return on investment. I used a higher fuel price since the current prices are lower than they've been hanging around plus it favors buying the Prius more in the math.

I kind of did the same thing for the 2007+ Tundra option, worse mpg, less capacity, and the truck costs more, it's hard to offset the Ford's price even with some repair costs added on top. I know people say time is money, but that's not quite true, time is only money when your time is being converted to money (aka at a job, or a profitable hobby/business). I'm willing to invest some time to save the repair costs, and know the job was done right.

I'm into investments a bit too, a pretty solid figure is 5 years ROI and 5 years after that to double the initial investment. That's an average of 10% gains which is pretty common in the stock market per year. Like say a solar system to off set the electric bill, if it doesn't pay for it's self in 5 years, you'd be better off throwing the same money in the stock market, housing market, etc. Of course their life span is longer, so 10 and 10 works too, just higher risk of something having a problem in that time span (20 years total).

I find it interesting you have two similar vehicles in your sig, and the older one you pull slightly better mpg out of. I know the sig vehicles are pretty old for the fuel logs so maybe you don't have them any more. We don't really get anything sub compact here, I figured with such a small engine they'd get a bit better mpg, maybe the emission standards are strict in AU?




@oil pan 4

The video I watched on the propane injection system was a bit of the opposite, it only allowed propane once it met a min boost level, and the throttle wasn't at idle. I haven't looked into them much though so I suspect at higher load/rpm it might have special cases too.

For the turbo, it is a power stroke (one of the first years to have it), 93 maybe 94 it was a 7.3L IDI (no turbo), the 2001 truck I suspect has a slightly larger turbo, not sure if it would be worth the effort trying to see if they interchange or not. The 2001 truck has a lot of electronics going on that I'd have to check into. Intercooler I'll have to look into for space and such. The grill is fairly thick, so might be able to modify that to sneak a thin one in, I don't think it would do any good putting it behind the radiator with an electronic fan to save space.


I'm thinking with some basic mods and my driving style I should be able to hit 20mpg pretty easily. I'm not expecting too much higher since I don't plan to drive the truck often, so getting the experience will be a lot slower than like with my corolla which I was driving ~80 miles per day for work.

freebeard 12-17-2020 07:30 PM

Twenty posts in <24hrs!

As a first approximation, I'd go for 1/3 hypermiling, 1/3 powertrain and 1/3 aerodynamics.

For the aero, fix the hood and dump the bug deflector. The airdam is fine, but add air curtains on each side. Your search term is 'edgarwit'. Seal the cab bed gap. Maybe a slab of magnetic stick-on car door sign material.

A compound-curve aerocap is best, but a half-tonneau is very close. You'd have the front half of the bed open and a trunk/toolbox/camp kitchen with a vertical tailgate.

For the hybrid drivetrain, consider that 20hp GM E-assist altermotor. It would need a controller and 55-72v battery pack, but that how you get serious regen.

cRiPpLe_rOoStEr 12-17-2020 07:50 PM

Diesel engines tend to respond quite well to supplemental water injection, and eventually worth to consider a simultaneous usage with propane, to mitigate its tendency to knock. On a sidenote, last Saturday I saw a Mercedes-Benz truck fitted with supplemental CNG injection, which is becoming more widespread in my country (Brazil) recently, and since it has better anti-knock properties than ethanol it suits well to the lean-burn in a Diesel engine. And even though some CNG fumigation might decrease the Oxygen concentration at the combustion chambers much like an EGR does, it's better than EGR as the CNG increases the flame spread for a more accurate burn of the Diesel fuel, not only generating fewer soot but also extracting a higher amount of energy from a given volume of Diesel fuel or even if it's partially replaced by the CNG to retain stock power and torque figures.

Isaac Zachary 12-17-2020 07:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr (Post 638595)
Diesel engines tend to respond quite well to supplemental water injection, and eventually worth to consider a simultaneous usage with propane, to mitigate its tendency to knock. On a sidenote, last Saturday I saw a Mercedes-Benz truck fitted with supplemental CNG injection, which is becoming more widespread in my country (Brazil) recently, and since it has better anti-knock properties than ethanol it suits well to the lean-burn in a Diesel engine. And even though some CNG fumigation might decrease the Oxygen concentration at the combustion chambers much like an EGR does, it's better than EGR as the CNG increases the flame spread for a more accurate burn of the Diesel fuel, not only generating fewer soot but also extracting a higher amount of energy from a given volume of Diesel fuel or even if it's partially replaced by the CNG to retain stock power and torque figures.

When I had my diesel I was favoring doing a CNG system instead of an LP system simply for those reasons.

I like the idea of both water and LP or CNG.

cRiPpLe_rOoStEr 12-17-2020 08:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary (Post 638598)
I like the idea of both water and LP or CNG.

LPG is not allowed as a road-going motor fuel in my country, even though some industrial and material-handling applications such as forklift trucks resort to it. On a sidenote, since water injection usually requires some alcohol (most often methanol) added into a proportion more frequently around 50% to prevent its freezing, and the fact that ethanol concentrations below 80% won't self-ignite so easily, experiencing with different alcohol concentrations sound quite tempting.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 08:29 PM

I probably should clear up that I'm not bashing buying a more efficient vehicle, generally older stuff does need more work/repairs, and if someone drove a lot more miles it probably makes a ton of sense to buy something newer.

Here's a fun photo of my dad's truck, that was a 1989 Mazda 2.6L manual 4x4 and on a good day it would get 20mpg with my dad driving it (not quite an ecomodder level driver for mpg, but not as bad as the average driver). The same racks went on my dad's T100 when I convinced him to upgrade trucks, same or better mpg, more power, bigger truck.

He burns about 20 facecord per year, I burn around 12-15. Generally we are getting ash wood, so 1 full cord (3 face cord) weighs about 2880 lb dry or 4184 lb wet according to google. The T100 hauls around 2 face cord in the box with racks and about 5 on my dad's trailer if we completely max out the load, we are looking at about 10 tons in just wood. That's clearly beyond the designed capacity of the T100 and we drive effectively empty roads slowly if/when we get that big of a load. The Ford would handle the load much better and probably get better mpg while hauling due to the nature of diesels.

https://i.gyazo.com/e0e6f6b4b16e28b1...c94d1c29d1.jpg


Here's my car, the areo on it I think isn't super bad for the overall shape. The rear window clearly slops too fast, I can see the line where snow and such doesn't blow off (attached air flow), it's a small almost triangle shape at the top of the window. It has a factory belly pan for the engine, I think the rear doesn't have one though. Wheels aren't half bad for areo, nearly flat with some styling along the edge. It's just the size, weight, and the fact it's a v8 that kills the mpg. If it was a stick I'd think I could hit 30mpg pretty easily with it, it holds gears way too long and doesn't hold gears as well as my corolla for loading the engine.

https://i.gyazo.com/46fef220a5391d8f...d9c02c1454.jpg

Here's a snow storm to give an idea of Michigan weather, this clearly is a more worst case type of storm, but it seems we get a storm atleast once a year that dumps 4-12in on us for 1-2 days. All of the video shows around the city, the country is plowed much less often, sometimes a week or longer after the snow comes down, like my road is a dead end dirt road. Also should mention, I can tell those guys aren't used to snow, they got stuck so easily, but I grew up in this stuff so I guess I have the experence. I've drove my corolla to work before dragging bottom all the way (for over an hour drive). When I got home I had a HUGE ball of ice built up from the engine heat melting the snow and refreezing to ice. The car had about 1in of suspension before the ice hit. Decided after that that if I'm dragging bottom, I'm not going for the trip unless completely required. Having a truck has been nice, I generally drive a car in snow if it's not too deep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZV96Txp6D4

I should mention, I don't watch TV, news, and very very rarely on social media. I don't buy a 4x4 just because of the snow, it's just an added benefit of having one available. If the truck gets 25mpg with the mods and such, the cost of driving the current car is pretty pointless because I can drop the insurance and not drive it and only drive the truck and get a better savings. Clearly a better mpg car is a different story, just thinking short term on that.


@freebeard

Yea, pretty shocked how many replies in such a short amount of time. I guess it's a different topic than normal so maybe that's why it peaks more interest... like who in their right mind tries to get better mpg out of a big heavy diesel truck xD.

The bug deflector is a solid delete, never really liked them, but for some reason they are quite common. My dad's truck came with one too, I'm thinking the 2001 truck also has one, maybe it was a factory thing.

The hybrid setup is quite interesting, I just read the start of the thread, but looks like someone already did what I was thinking since an alternator can also be used as a motor, sounds like a larger motor was used in the thread though. I suspect the belt drive would be the limiting factor but I'm sure the thread goes into more details about attachment and such.

I also check my email often, so being the OP, I try to reply somewhat quickly.



@cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

I remember your user from way back when I was active on here. I'll have to look a bit more into the water injection systems. I saw some place (don't recall where) that it gave around 5% gains, does that seem about right? I think that was in context for a gas engine.

CNG is pretty interesting, I suspect the tanks are at pretty high pressures, propane runs around 100psi to get to liquid form. I'd think the propane systems would be a bit more established.

For water injection on a diesel, I suspect the concept is similar to a gas engine, cool the combustion chamber? It's been a long time since I read about those systems, and I always was looking at it from a gas engine point of view. Diesels seem to be so much more robust to mods, it seems to make sense to try things as long as I don't go to the extremes.

The video I watched about propane was talking about it with the priority of being more power, but the side benefit of good mpg too. He claimed with a fuel system mod, 4in exhaust (and gauges to monitor exhaust temps, boost etc), reflash style tuner set to +90hp setting, and propane, the engine put out about 600ft-lbs of torque at the wheels and the typical mileage was reported around 21mpg. I haven't looked into the fuel system mod, he only mentioned it in the video, but the guy specializes in powerstrokes and everything technical he talked about lines up with what I understand about diesels and my dad also agreed with what he was saying (ASE Cert mechanic). I don't need the extra power, but that should translate into getting even better mpg than the typical person that's beating on the truck using that 600ft-lbs on take off.

Anyway, CNG vs Propane (LP), I'm not sure if there's a place around me that refills CNG tanks. I can get tanks filled at a local gas station for LP, or if I get a nursing valve in a bulk tank, I could refill my own tanks and pay bulk price. To give a real world number, to refil a 20lb tank like a grill uses, it would cost me roughly $6.08, while the store near me that does tank exchange charges $20 (maybe it was $25, been a while since I used that service). I'm not sure what the gas station would charge, they use a scale to weigh how much LP you get and charge by the pound.

I keep making huge replies lol. It's a byproduct my tech background, I can type somewhere around 70-100wpm.

Anyway, thanks for all the ideas so far, I have so many directions to look into. It's always great having several options. If I can get my truck to hit into the 30mpg range while still having the capacity of using it as a truck (on and off road), I'm sure I could get my dad into cloning what I do to my truck and stop driving his Camry that gets around 30mpg and his T100 that gets around 17mpg (his rear axle pinion bearing is bad, it vibrates at lower speeds 5th gear, he doesn't drive over 70mph generally to hit 5th gear). I worked a deal out with him for a 3rd member to put in his truck, he just hasn't done the work yet.

... ok I'm getting side tracked again, better hit post before I get on 20 other topics lol.

BLSTIC 12-17-2020 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ps2fixer (Post 638592)

I find it interesting you have two similar vehicles in your sig, and the older one you pull slightly better mpg out of. I know the sig vehicles are pretty old for the fuel logs so maybe you don't have them any more. We don't really get anything sub compact here, I figured with such a small engine they'd get a bit better mpg, maybe the emission standards are strict in AU?

Correct, I don't have them any more. The Mighty Boy was at 300,000km or something equally ridiculous for a carburettor equipped 800cc vehicle. The engine had a blown head gasket that entire time and may or may not have had a gearbox that did 5500rpm at 100km/h (no tacho). That car had no emissions standards. The Swift weighed in at 1000kg and was modern in every way. It's important to note that both cars were driven almost exclusively for short trips on a tight schedule in what was effectively the city and the driving was not particularly economical. The Swift could get as low as 5l/100km when I was on a road trip, with AC and lots of overtaking. This is about 47mpg.

me and my metro 12-17-2020 09:20 PM

No EGR on the 7.3 and the early ones did not have a cat plugging up the exhaust. Intercooler will help with power especially with a tune. There might be a mileage tune out there. I get 17 with my NA 6.5 GMC with 4.56 gears and a 30% overdrive. Gears would really help my mileage but I don’t have much power so rpm is king for me.

freebeard 12-17-2020 09:30 PM

Quote:

He burns about 20 facecord per year, I burn around 12-15. Generally we are getting ash wood, so 1 full cord (3 face cord) weighs about 2880 lb dry or 4184 lb wet according to google.
It sounds like your best best would be to reduce the amount of firewood you have to haul. Do the math (miles carried) on how many BTUs in the fuel tank vs the truckbed. At about IIRC 50-60 miles you're better off to burn the diesel for heat.

ps2fixer 12-17-2020 11:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLSTIC (Post 638613)
Correct, I don't have them any more. The Mighty Boy was at 300,000km or something equally ridiculous for a carburettor equipped 800cc vehicle. The engine had a blown head gasket that entire time and may or may not have had a gearbox that did 5500rpm at 100km/h (no tacho). That car had no emissions standards. The Swift weighed in at 1000kg and was modern in every way. It's important to note that both cars were driven almost exclusively for short trips on a tight schedule in what was effectively the city and the driving was not particularly economical. The Swift could get as low as 5l/100km when I was on a road trip, with AC and lots of overtaking. This is about 47mpg.

I see, that makes a lot of sense. Over here for common cars that's affordable (under $5k), getting 35mpg+ isn't too common. The typical mid size car I'd say is around 30mpg or a little higher. The prius and some others would clearly be an exception, there's a whole social thing around the prius, I don't really care either way though. Kind of like the social pressure for a guy to own a truck, I don't have one for show, it's more about function, but a lot of guys buy trucks just for the appearance. The 2001 truck was clearly owned by a person with that kind of focus (20in rims, super wide tires, etc). It's not my style since I don't really see any benefits to it unless a person liked that style. I'm hoping to sell those rims and get enough money to buy replacement rims and a new set of standard tires for the truck. Of course that would be after I get it running and decide where to go from that point.

I wish there was more cars over here that were under 1.5L, the smallest toyota I'm aware of is the Yaris, I think it has a 1.5L, but the automatic transmissions had an issue, some plastic gear or something like that. Manuals are a dieing breed here too, most people that buy a brand new vehicle wants automatics even though there's a fair number of people in the used market that would rather have manual. Like the Ford I got, I'm pretty sure there is no manual option anymore. Here's what google tells me

Quote:

2008 was the last year of the manual transmission for the F-150. Only available in the 4.2L V6.

@freebeard

That's an interesting point of view. Using my numbers (12 face cord per year), google says 20m btu per full cord, so 4 full cord would be 80m btu.

For diesel, 1 gallon = 137,381btu, or 582.3 gal of diesel to equal the wood (not counting burning efficiencies or anything for just raw/simple math). Using the lowest price on the website I found for diesel prices (I don't normally drive one so not sure what the typical price is), it shows the 12 month low was in oct at $2.36/gal, so $1374.28 for the heating bill. I also burn propane some, but not looking at that, the $ for btu isn't as good as fuel oil (similar to diesel). Anyway, the cost of me getting the last wood I got (around 2 years supply) was a trip of about 6 miles and a week of cutting and hauling. I didn't track fuel costs, but we burnt probably 15-20 gal of mixed gas for 3 people to have wood (the property owner is my uncle and he got 1/3 the wood), so that should be roughly 15gal of gas. We buy rect fuel for the chain saws, so it's expensive, about 3.60/gal, and the oil we got super cheap, I think it was around $2.50 for enough oil to mix up 5 gal, so overall around $4.10/gal and my wood took roughly 15gal, $61.50, plus fuel for the truck to haul it, let's say 1 gal per direction to include moving the truck and all the non-efficient uses of the truck. 2 face cord each load = 6 loads or 12 gal at around $2.50/gal if I remember right. That comes up to around $91.50 out of pocket cost for a year of home heating, or about $1282.78 out of pocket savings.

I used to burn purely propane for heat, it has came down a lot in price so that should be interesting to check too since the 1/2 week of work counts for something too (remember I got ~2 years supply for 1 week of work). My last fill up was about $1.45/gal for propane, it's a 250gal tank but they fill to 80% so 200gal. I burn around 3 tanks a year. That's $870 which is quite affordable for this year. I've been more lazy and have been letting the propane burn more because I figured it wouldn't be too bad of a trade off since hauling wood is a lot of work. Still though, the wood source is close and the week of effort saved me around $1500 worth of out of pocket price.

Another figure to look at is the price of wood. I looked at a few listings and it appears to be $60-70 + delivery charge per face cord. So $720-840 plus delivery. Pretty on par with propane prices, except the fact wood stoves require actually attending to them and such (I'm almost always home, so that's not a problem, and the propane furnace fires up if I leave).

In a world where the only thing that matters is money, in theory the propane would probably be the best option, or start a wood processing business to pay for the propane and sell wood to other people.

I should mention, the wood we get is standing dead ash, it stands for several years and is effectively ready to burn when cut down. We have a LOT of wood land in the area, so finding trees to harvest for fire wood generally isn't too hard. I knew a guy down in Detroit and he said the firewood prices down there was $140 per facecord. I guess there's some limitations on how far wood can be hauled, so it has to be atleast source from the same county, not sure if that's a state law or a local law. The standing dead ash trees are from ash bores (beetle) that killed them. I still have standing dead trees on my 5.75 acres that I need to finish cutting down. Just have the very back section to clean out, but it's right in the swamp too. We recently had the local dam wash out so the water table seems to be lower than normal.

I also have a bit of the mpg go in me for the firewood stuff to. Besides the gas powered chainsaw, I have an electric one too since the running cost is much cheaper. It works well for cutting up stuff from my own land, but the batteries don't last super long when I'm at another location. Besides that, the chainsaw I have isn't a little play toy, it's a serious professional model that gets the job done right away. Long ago we used to run farm use saws and sometimes home owner grade saws, and most of the day was spent cutting wood. With these professional saws, the wood cutting time is cut atleast in half, maybe even less time cutting.

Even though the wood hauling is work, it's also pretty fun, plus it saves money so it works out alright. The whole reason for buying the Ford is that I'm planning to buy a skid steer and besides the ton of work on my property that needs to be done, I'm sure there's other people in the general area that would pay to have similar work done. It's kind of a new branch for my business, but first I want to do the work on my own land to get used to the machine and make sure it's within line of what I enjoy and that I can learn to control the machine well before trying to do something for someone else and find out the machine can't do it, or my skill set isn't good enough to finish the job. Worst case, the skid steer should resell for about the same price I paid for it plus get work done with it (renting one is quite expensive plus you still need a way to haul it), and the truck should sell for as much or more than what I paid for it.

Also on the wood usage, I'm in the middle of re insulating my trailer house since they are known to have poor insulation. It wasn't horrible but it's going to be better than new. It might not be an amazing house, but it's mine and paid for (no debt). How it got it is a whole story, but simply put, I worked with the last owner, and he gave me a deal I couldn't pass up including effectively 0% interest.

It's kind of weird pretty much being encouraged to do math, one of the other site's I'm on generally people comment about not following the math (atv related stuff, generally electricity, watts, amps, volts etc related).

It's nothing special, but I built my own thermostat using an arduino, basically it controls two fans, the wood stove fan to push heat into the house, and a fan that blows under the house to ensure the pipes don't freeze (-10f nights for a week and my pipes can freeze even with the fan on 24/7 so I need to rework that system a bit). I'm thinking to take it a step further some time and add controls for the wood stove too, air adjustment, and monitor the heat output and burn time etc. Maybe would be neat to set it up for fall/spring to auto start (like a wax based fire starter wrapped with a restive wire that gets red/orange hot when powered).

I've also thought about attempting to convert the wood stove to also burn waste oil (used motor oil, fryer grease, old fuel oil, etc). There's a lot of fuels people use, and a lot of them are switching to natural gas as the piping gets installed and expanded out from the city. Used motoroil goes for about $1/gal if the person charges anything at all for it. Old fuel oil was going for around $0.50/gal last I checked (few years ago). Fuel oil is like diesel, if it sits long enough it can have algae grow in it. I've read it grows in the moisture since water will sit at the bottom of the fuel.


@me and my metro

Thanks for the numbers, it's interesting to see what other people get with atleast similar trucks and their gear ratios and such. I suspect one of the biggest upgrades you could do with that truck would be a turbo for power and fuel econ. The cost of the turbo I'd guess is more than what benefits it would give for short term though (say ROI of 2 years).

I knew a guy way south of me (like 3hr drive) that had a GMC diesel. He wanted a truck box off one of my parts trucks, but he couldn't make the drive with his truck because the fuel cost would kill the deal. I recall it was a military truck, around the same era as yours. I remember him saying the top speed was pretty low so 4.56 or maybe something like 4.88 gearing I'd guess. I didn't give much thought on it. I never got to sell him the box even though I had a couple times I would be in his general area for other deals. I'm not scared to travel for the right deal, like my dad's T100 we went something like 1500 miles to get his truck, but it was rust free and locally it was worth about $4000 more than the asking price at the time for our local market (rust free vehicles have a huge inflated value when they are older). Like my F250 box, there's ones listed from Texas for $2000, I paid $3400 for the whole truck just because it had a little rust which is repairable and quite minor vs other trucks I saw priced for more, and the guy was a bit hard to deal with so I suspect he lost some potential buyers from that too.

wjohn 12-17-2020 11:09 PM

Hey, it could be worse - you could have a dually. I have an '03 Dodge Ram 3500. It's got the Cummins and 6-speed manual [Edit - does at least have 3.55 gears], but otherwise it's about as bad as you can get for fuel economy - 4x4 without locking hubs or a disconnect, quad cab, dually, with a flatbed on the back. It does have stock size all-terrain tires. The truck weighs right around 8000 pounds and it's an aero nightmare. Not exactly apples to apples with your truck, but the best I've gotten was 22 MPG driving mostly 55-65 highway/interstate, and the worst I've ever gotten was 15.7 MPG pulling a 2000 lb. car on a U-haul trailer at 60 MPH. Actually I did get 14-ish once (I'd have to pull out the log book) but that was because my accelerator pedal position sensor was going out and the truck was either getting fuel all at once, or not.

I bought it to be a truck, though. I can't haul 3000 pounds of stuff in the back of the Civic, or tow a 17' disk harrow around with it.

I think the thing that surprised me the most is how much my fuel economy shoots up in town driving. I anticipate stops and coast a lot, and aerodynamics aren't much of a factor at 30 MPH. The speed limit on most highways out here is 65 MPH so I try to stick to that and not hold up other drivers by doing 55 unless they have plenty of chance to pass.

I am curious to know what it would get with highway tires but I need the traction often enough that I won't be trying that expensive experiment.

Good luck with your truck. I would've had no issue going with a 7.3 if I had found a nice enough one when I was in the market for a 3/4-1 ton.

freebeard 12-17-2020 11:35 PM

Quote:

I figured it wouldn't be too bad of a trade off since hauling wood is a lot of work. Still though, the wood source is close and the week of effort saved me around $1500 worth of out of pocket price....
I like stacking firewood. Good clean exercise. It sounds like you have good reason to proceed (clearing the land).
Quote:

It's kind of weird pretty much being encouraged to do math, one of the other site's I'm on generally people comment about not following the math...
You'll notice I got you to do the heavy lifting for me. :)

ps2fixer 12-18-2020 12:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wjohn (Post 638619)
Hey, it could be worse - you could have a dually. I have an '03 Dodge Ram 3500. It's got the Cummins and 6-speed manual [Edit - does at least have 3.55 gears], but otherwise it's about as bad as you can get for fuel economy - 4x4 without locking hubs or a disconnect, quad cab, dually, with a flatbed on the back. It does have stock size all-terrain tires. The truck weighs right around 8000 pounds and it's an aero nightmare. Not exactly apples to apples with your truck, but the best I've gotten was 22 MPG driving mostly 55-65 highway/interstate, and the worst I've ever gotten was 15.7 MPG pulling a 2000 lb. car on a U-haul trailer at 60 MPH. Actually I did get 14-ish once (I'd have to pull out the log book) but that was because my accelerator pedal position sensor was going out and the truck was either getting fuel all at once, or not.

I bought it to be a truck, though. I can't haul 3000 pounds of stuff in the back of the Civic, or tow a 17' disk harrow around with it.

I think the thing that surprised me the most is how much my fuel economy shoots up in town driving. I anticipate stops and coast a lot, and aerodynamics aren't much of a factor at 30 MPH. The speed limit on most highways out here is 65 MPH so I try to stick to that and not hold up other drivers by doing 55 unless they have plenty of chance to pass.

I am curious to know what it would get with highway tires but I need the traction often enough that I won't be trying that expensive experiment.

Good luck with your truck. I would've had no issue going with a 7.3 if I had found a nice enough one when I was in the market for a 3/4-1 ton.

Ironically, a dually was in my list of machines to buy, like you said, a truck for being a truck. If you don't haul anything that actually requires duals, you could run single tires in the back, 2 less tires of wear to expense for, and the lower rolling resistance of 4 tires on the ground instead of 6.

About the only thing I kind of wanted was a truck that was new enough for my OBD2 reader (scan gauge 2). Instant mpg is kind of nice to have, but with out it, it's still possible to learn and improve on tank to tank fills.

It's interesting you got so much worse mpg while hauling a vehicle. With my T100 hauling a Camry or another Toyota pickup (not T100, the smaller ones), I generally got better mpg while in tow than empty. I think it's because of the things you mentioned, basically preserving momentum when possible and planning ahead more. I didn't really try to push the T100 for mpg too much, but no areo mods, driving 45mph home one night from my parents, I hit around 25mpg average. In my tacoma I could hit about 27mpg doing the same thing (also 4x4, manual, but standard cab, same engine). One difference is, I used a car dolly, I suspect you used a car hauler?

So far it seems diesels like high gearing. I'm kind of glad the red truck has 3.55 instead of the 3.73 or 4.10. My dad would prefer the 4.10, but he generally goes all out with loads too.

Does your Dodge have a double overdrive transmission? The Ford 6 speed is creeper gear, 2nd - 4th are normal gears, then 5th for over drive, 6th for a 2nd over drive.

Kind of a funny short story with this truck so far, I'm used to my T100, there's a tiny incline where the 2001 parts truck is sitting, and I wanted to try to jump it with a known good pair of batteries from the red diesel. Since it's on an incline, natrually it wants to roll back down the hill. With my T100 I can just pop the clutch and the tires will dig a small hole and it will sit there just fine (parking brake cable broken). I tried the same thing in the ford and well... that engine weighs a lot more, so it still wanted to roll down. The parking brake pedal on it is real stiff, so it's probably rusted up (most domestics get like that here, and if you force it, then the parking brake is stuck on). Kind of funny though, generally speaking, the Toyota ones don't get stuck on, it's just the cable that rusts in 2. Out of 20+ Camrys (1992-2001) I've never seen one with a parking brake that doesn't work. Yea... my dad and I kind of have a personal junk yard. I've sold parts, used parts, etc to fix up machines. It's quite handy having parts on hand to swap to test if something is bad or not for quick diag instead of grabbing actual specs and doing proper tests.

Back on the Ford, there was another F250 that was a lot more rustier for $3750 with the 6 speed manual, might have been worth going for that instead but generally speaking, the body's condition is the biggest thing in this area. That's why the parts truck might get a Tundra body, they seem to hold up to the salt fairly well, and a replacement body isn't crazy priced like the Ford body is ($5000 for a cab + box), a whole 2000-2005 Tundra can be bought for that kind of price in really good condition.

To confuse things more, my dad also has an F350 sitting with a gas engine that was "rebuilt". Thing has no power and was probably rebuilt like 200k miles ago. It was a nice truck at one point in time, but it's pretty trashed now. He bought it to tow in a school bus and a big dump truck. I got the drive the school bus, the engine was locked up and it was a manual bus, so the clutch was the brake, talk about a brain teaser. He also scrapped a 6 ton bulldozer when he had his 96 7.3l diesel going. Scrap prices were up back then, something like $300/ton, so timing was pretty good for scrapping those things. Anyway, that F350 is like an 87, and the top of the cab rusted out around the lights, so the interior is full of mold and stuff. Besides that I think the box is pretty good, dually box. I was tempted to throw an engine in that and swap another cab over if the red F250 deal didn't work out. Lot of work, but out of pocket cost wouldn't have been too bad. We have no clue how many miles are on it, the odometer rolls all the numbers when going down the road.




Quote:

Originally Posted by freebeard (Post 638621)
I like stacking firewood. Good clean exercise. It sounds like you have good reason to proceed (clearing the land).

You'll notice I got you to do the heavy lifting for me. :)

It's not quite clearing the land, just the dead trees so the healthy ones can bush out and some new growth might sprout. My property was very heavily select cut around 10 years ago, almost to the point of being clear cut. I have 2 very large trees, and one is half dead. The other is a massive oak tree, I can see it from my house above all the other trees, around 1200 ft away. I'd say it's around 5ft diameter trunk, maybe 6ft. Not many trees survived this area, the small "village" I'm in was known for mainly being full of lumberjacks.

Here's a photo I've seen locally before. I suspect it's a local photo but not 100% sure, it's atleast from Michigan. If you thought my dad's truck was overloaded, what about that 2hp sled?

https://i.gyazo.com/446b06c6fb6b5d89...3e8a7902ae.jpg

Here's another photo from 1900, steam power was used a little in the area. At the bottom of the lake that the dam's levi washed out there was a Steam powered "shovel", dams were built in 1923 if I remember right.

https://i.gyazo.com/34a8a2a22063b603...a1f118e3ac.jpg

Here's the steam shovel, top left of the pic you can see the washed out section of the dam, it has two spill ways.

https://i.gyazo.com/5e31d13460f6924e...d254cf1068.jpg

Here's a better view of the machine, the boom is off it and the cab rusted away long ago. The story on it was that it got stuck in the lake bed (before it was a lake) and the owners went on a hunting trip, by the time they came back, the lake filled up too much to retrieve it.

https://i.gyazo.com/d3df5ef119006ab7...4d31c79f23.jpg

Kind of off topic, but some of this stuff I think is pretty interesting =).

On the math thing, I wouldn't expect you to do the math for my situation, unless of course I asked for help xD. Want to validate the numbers? :turtle:

ps2fixer 12-18-2020 02:46 AM

I just remembered something for a long time ago. Was there much research done on mixing normal gas with diesel? I remember the concept being the gas would help the diesel burn more completely. I guess a pretty similar concept to LPG. Back when I was reading about it, the mix was done in the fuel tank. I'm recalling up to 20% mix, but not 100% sure if any solid testing was done on it or even where the source to the idea was located.

I think the same concept worked for gas engines too (maybe that's where the idea was from?), basically the gas would ignite the diesel and the diesel contains more energy to it's a bit of a power increase and I think it was ment to help bottom end torque. Clearly gas engines are quite short stroke, so I'd guess the benefit wouldn't be a whole lot except maybe in a vehicle with a manual trans.

I've been reading a bit more about water injection in diesels. Has anyone on here done this and have any kind of figures to follow in their foot steps with? I see that methanol/alcohol are options too with similar effect, or mixed with water. It might be a solid option to source windshield washer fluid and test with that since it shouldn't freeze with the temps we see here.

I'm probably jumping the gun a bit early, I still have to get the title transferred on the truck and a plate lol. The front tank seems to be around 15 gal, so I might end up driving it a bit at first to get a reasonable base line for just my driving style (as I learn the truck). Grill block will be early since it's cold here already, knew about that mod long before ecomodder, but it wasn't for areo, it was to reduce the cooling effect on the radiator to keep the engine warmer and get quicker warm ups.

oil pan 4 12-18-2020 03:38 AM

If you are talking about gasoline don't do it.
Diesel is formulated to burn upon immediate contact with hot compressed air. Gasoline is formulated to resist burning on contact with hot air for a tiny fraction of a second.

Isaac Zachary 12-18-2020 04:29 AM

My owner's manual for my 1985 non-turbo VW diesel said to put gasoline in the diesel fuel in the winter to prevent it from gelling. But nowadays they put an additive in for that at the pump. Just keep driving the vehicle regularly so you don't end up with diesel from July in January. Nor come home from Arizona in the winter without fueling up once you get home.

ps2fixer 12-18-2020 01:05 PM

Yea, the gas isn't to be put in a high %'s, it was low numbers like 5-10% max 20% or something like that. Pure gas in a diesel isn't good, just like pure diesel in a gas engine.

On diesel in gas, the first thought I get is the octane rating would drop since diesel has a low octane. I had to do the search, so here's google's suggested answer.

Quote:

Diesel fuel has an octane rating of 25-40. Mixing 2% diesel fuel into gasoline will lower the overall octane rating by 1 point. Getting 10% diesel contamination lowers octane by 5 points, which is enough to create problems in most engines.
It's effect is a little worse than I expected (assuming google is correct). I guess the it depends, and what car/engine you have and fuel matters a lot. In my area "reg gas" is 87 octane, most "common" gas engines can run on 85 octane (California's reg gas and probably other locations). My T100 and Lexus manuals state min 87 octane, recommended is 91 octane, but they are 9:1 and higher compression.

It's a bit of a different topic, but diesels are the engine that can run on several fuels. From my understanding, fryer oil that wasn't used for animal meats can be well filtered and directly put in older diesels (mechanical injection pump style ones) as long as the fuel is heated to I think it was 180f before hand. That means it has to burn diesel on startup, and for shut down it has to have diesel ran through to clear the system. The car of choice was an 80's VW with the 1.6L diesel non-turbo. If I remember right, the mpg was better with the fryer oil and the exhaust smelled like french fries xD.

It could be interesting to tap into that idea, but at a mix instead of direct. Even at 5-10% if the fuel is free and the only cost is time + filtering a batch, it could lower fuel costs by that much. Probably a lot more work than what I'd get benefit from, but it's an interesting concept I wanted to try a long time ago. Of course, would have to bench top test the fuels first, and ideally have a small single cylinder diesel engine to test it in, or something like a VW engine with the mechanical injection pump.

I've been into so many different branches of tech, alt fuels, etc. There's a lot of neat ideas out there. I know for gas engines it's possible to burn wood as a fuel, but the areo is pretty bad, adds a lot of weight, and the engine looses something like 60% of it's power. People say the issue it burns slow in the engine, so it seems like a longer stroke engine would be more ideal, like a diesel, but I suspect the wood gas has a poor cetane number. Not really planning to take things quite that far even though I've thought about it for home heating. Wood chips are pretty common in this area, I can get truckloads for free from atleast two locations (city and a golf course). A down draft gasifier I think would be the best way to consume it as a fuel, pipe it into say the wood stove, and burn it in a burner like a propane furnace has. It would require a fan to create the movement of air. I think making a drip oil burner would be a lot easier and I know a guy that was trying to make biodiesel that got free oil locally but it had animal fats in it, so he had problems with the fuel and gave up on the idea pretty fast. He has a small fleet of diesels for a septic business.

Alt fuels can be pretty interesting. Really wood stoves are just about an alt fuel, it's just somewhat popular in this state. The trade off is manual work and tending to a fire vs paying the extra and basically forgetting about it till you get low on fuel. A side benefit, my wood stove doesn't require electricity to function, so in a winter storm and no power, I still have heat.

I'm pretty sure the ultimate dooms day vehicle would be an older diesel with a mechanical injection pump (one with no electronics). I suspect the 85 VW diesel is that way. I'm not a dooms day prepper, but some of the concepts and such are interesting. Seems like they'd look into shipping containers and grounding them, the floor is wood so not sure if that kills the effect or not.


I'm skirting around some pretty close to snake oil topics, better stop while I'm ahead xD.

Isaac Zachary 12-18-2020 01:28 PM

I've known a few who have done the veggie oil diesel, one in particular.

A word about octane
Before talking about that I just want to mention that while diesels can run on several kinds of fuel the reason gasoline doesn't work is because of it's high octane. Gasoline needs to be hotter to ignite. So what happens is the injector fills the combustion chamber full of hot fuel, then BOOM! It all detonates at once and bye, bye engine. Diesels work by injecting fuel that starts to burn almost immediately. That way it burns as it's being injected. This controls the burn. Gasoline engines control the burn by a spark that starts the flame at one point and lets the flame travel to the ends of the combustion chamber. But if the engine is too hot, CR too high, too much boost, too much advance, too low of octane, etc., then even a small amount of gasoline that hasn't been burned yet can spontaneously detonate and potentially cause serious damage.

The reason LP and better yet CNG work is because they have such a high octane you could use them with a diesel like CR and spark ignition. Only you don't need a spark if you're injecting diesel fuel anyway since the diesel ignites immediately and starts the combustion process. You also add very little LP or CNG to reduce the potential of damaging the engine from detonation.

Bio diesel
A couple things to think about.

One is, yes, straight filtered veggie oil can work if heated up enough.

Second, if you process the veggie oil and "crack" it to take the glycerin out it becomes much more liquid and will work at temperatures down to about freezing. But that also introduces methanol which can eat certain rubbers and metals.

Third is once you get a contract to take away a restaurant's used oil for free, you have to take all of it. My buddy ends up getting way too much and can't hardly use it all, even driving a pretty long drive (+60 miles) every day in his Dodge Ram.

ps2fixer 12-18-2020 03:02 PM

Yea, pure gas is no good in a diesel. The gas would ignite off before the piston hit near the top as a very bad pre-detonation/spark knock. A gas engine can't get anywhere near 17:1 because of those problems, I think the highest is around 13:1 and that's with very high octane fuel.

Also, diesel doesn't fire off with a spark very easily but it can run in a spark ignition engine as a mix. I looked for a video of a gas car being filled with diesel, but a PF video came up so I knew it would be interesting. Besides some cold start issues, a 50/50 mix of diesel and gas runs in a lawnmower, way more than I'd suggest. Also keep in mind, push mowers generally are pretty low compression, so have a low octane requirement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXLWLXz0iY4

I don't know what the mix was, but my dad's friend had his son fill his diesel up and he put gas in, instead of diesel. Truck did run, but very poorly. For fun I looked for a video of the opposite effect, gas in a diesel. They don't say what the mix was in either case, just the tank was low on fuel and they added 5L in of the wrong fuel which I suspect is over 50% of the wrong fuel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL9-i9tcESU

This is more inline with the story I was told. My dad's friend moved to GA from MI using the same truck. It was an F250 or F350, 7.3L diesel, can't remember the year, I was like 14 at the time, probably mid 90's (it was a newer truck at the time).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXwFpPhug8Y

The contract issue is interesting, the guy that I talked about lived way up north and he got 2x 55gal barrels filled with used fryer grease from a restaurant that serves beef and other meats deep fried. His wife was the manager there, but she left before they got the oil, but maybe she had some connections yet with the workers. I'm not one to sign a contract unless I read it, so if it's a mandated I must take the oil, I'd want to find out how much oil they need removed per year.

I do understand the cracking a bit, basically taking a complex molecule and breaking it down into a simpler one. I watch a lot of science based youtube channels and such so I hear and see the context of that term somewhat often.

Here's a channel that does a lot of things against "common sense", like who fills a container with propane and "burn" oxygen, but if you understand the process of burning, it's quite safe if done right. Below is the video, way off topic but still burning related so slightly engine related. I've had training on a gas that combusts with oxyegen with no spark or heat source. If I remember the figures right, if it's 90% or more pure, it will not react, and below 30% it won't. The gas I'm talking about is the man made gas called silane... byproduct of the fire is sand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jmX-TUQkx4

Here's a quick silane video. The plant I worked at made it as a secondary main product. They stored silane under high pressure to have it in tanks as a liquid (takes up much less space). However, trucking it, they have to transport as a compressed gas due to the high risk of the material. I was told a figure that each semi tank full is worth well over $1m and it's not even in liquid form. I was responsible for fixing their computers, printers, and very basic networking (patch cables, computer to wall box, etc).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXCBnznxxIk

For propane, I've read a little on them, and the ideal compression ratio is somewhere around 13:1 and is about 104 octane (race fuels can go over that but extremely expensive). Diesels are higher compression than ideal (atleast for spark ignition). I've heard of people running propane in their diesels, but I never asked the question if it's pure propane, or if it's mixed. I suspect a diesel could run on pure propane though, just not sure if the ignition point is too early or not via compression. It's an interesting alt fuel to look into as well. Bulk LP is cheap, even if there's a degrade in power the price difference is nearly 50% cheaper than diesel, should be cleaner burning, no fuel gel problems (extreme cold), etc.

This all makes me want to get a cheap (and old) VW diesel to experiment with. I have been wanting to get a generator for the house as a backup power source (one with electric start and such), I figured converting a gas engine to LP would be a smart move since I plan to have a pretty large tank on hand so in the event of an extended power outage, I could have reliable power for quite some time. With a battery bank, I could effectively P&G the system to extend the fuel usage. I've had power outages a lot this year and last year, probably 7 full outages in the last year where the power actually went off completely. For power flickers that can make a computer die, I've had countless of those events, it was so bad nearly daily my internet would drop out. I put everything on a large UPS and now my internet and computers have been nearly fault free. There's a lot of power related work being done because of the dam washing out so I guess it's kind of expected to have unreliable power. If batteries were cheaper, I'd be off grid with solar power + wind, but the costs are too high for my area currently to be a solid investment. It's getting close though.


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