[Vwdiesel] Test Drive Dope

[Gavrik Peterson]

I recently returned from a drive to San Fransisco on which
I covered over 2000 miles.

Besides visiting my friend Dale and seeing some very wild
places in Eastern Oregon, I got some break-in miles
running non-detergent oil. The results so far look
promising. For the first 5000 miles after the rebuild I
was consitsantly getting about 1100 miles/qt. After a
little over 3000 additional miles running ND oil the
consumption appears to be roughly half of this. Actually
my measurements of oil consumption vary a lot -- but the
trend suggests this much improvement. Time will tell.

In the week before I left for SF I treated my pump with
Diesel Purge. My 1.6 NA had been getting poor mileage and
was smoking.  The Diesel purge fixed the smoke (worked
very well) and seemed to fix the mileage. But over 2000
miles and four tanks of fuel I found that the mileage was
no better then before (40 to 44 mpg). I also noticed that
when first starting in the morning the engine started hard
-- like the temperature was 0 degress C which was not the
case.

These results make me feel that my marginal understanding
of what was going on with my pump is completely off. I
figured that the smoke and mileage problems were caused by
the same thing and that the Diesel Purge fixed both. The
fact that the smoke is minimal but the mileage is still
low contradicts this idea.

When I returned to Seattle I noticed that the pump was
leaking. What is going on here? Did the Diesel Purge do
something to the seals? This might be the case because
when I used the Diesel Purge I left it in the pump for
about 40 hours (what a maniac).

Was it not the case that pump problems resulted when the
US went to the low sulfer diesel, and was not leaking
seals one of the problems?

I may hook up my back-up pump tomorrow and see what
happens.

   --  Gavrik