[Vwdiesel] Gas vs diesel hybrid

[Terry Briggs]

I had a 1981 Pontiac gran prix with the 350 diesel in it, I drove that 
about 80 miles round trip to work every day. The only complaint I had 
about it was the transmission, they used a turbo 250 tranny, which was 
very light duty. Towing my boat I spun the tranny at around 40k miles, 
and again at 60 with a used replacement, put in a tranny I got off a 
olds 350 rocket and never had another problem until around 150k when I 
started having ip problems. I averaged around 30 to 35 mpg with it, 
which as I look back on it, was pretty impressive for the day. Ended up 
putting a gas engine in it becasue I couldn't find another ip, sold the 
block to a race shop that used them to make race engines and they just 
loved the 350 diesel block, they would convert it back to gas, which 
just took different heads I think.
On Jul 12, 2006, at 4:22 AM, William J Toensing wrote:

> I could & hope I am wrong, but I think gas engine hybrids are better 
> than diesels under the normal conditions most cars are exposed to, 
> namely short start & stop driving, based on my experience around 25 
> years ago. My first diesel was a 1979 Rabbit, which was bought new, 
> but went to my X wife in a divorce. It had around 30,000 miles on it 
> when this happened. My second diesel was a 1983 Nissan Sentra diesel 
> which had about 51,000 miles on it when I sold it & at that time I 
> suspected the head gasket was leaking as evidenced by a black scum in 
> heater expansion tank, running warmer than normal, & periodically 
> having to add water to the cooling system. My next diesel was a 1985 
> Mazda 626. At 50,000 miles the head gasket blew leaving clouds of 
> black smoke behind. Mazda paid for the repairs under the Calif. 
> emissions warranty, then 10 years or 100,000 miles. At 70,000 miles, 
> the head gasket  blew again, this time, causing overheating. Because I 
> was using synthetic oil, the engine did not se
> I have had a long term interest in diesels ever since I saw my first 
> Mercedes Benz diesel back in the early '60s. When GM came out with the 
> converted gas to diesel Olds 350, the engine that gave diesel a bad 
> name in the USA, I would ask owners of these GM diesels what their 
> experience was. I found a pattern that when the engine was used for 
> mostly local driving with occasional trips, the head gaskets would 
> blow  at around 20,000 miles. The weakness, I understand, was due to 
> only 4 head bolts per cylinder. That frequent heating & cooling along 
> with the high diesel compression, would cause the head bolts to 
> stretch, causing eventual head gasket failure. However, I found a few 
> Olds GM 350 diesel owners that were claiming 250,000 to 300,000 miles 
> on these engines with no problems. However, the response I got from 
> those owners was they would drive these cars from 75 to 300 mile trips 
> for most part rather than trips of 10 miles or less.
> Since a hybrid engine frequently cycles off & on, I wonder, based on 
> the above, how well a diesel engine would do in this environment?
> _______________________________________________
> Vwdiesel mailing list
> Vwdiesel at vwfans.com
> http://www.audifans.com/mailman/listinfo/vwdiesel
>
>
Third Wheel engineering
Custom Design and Fabrication
2576 King Circle
Corning, New York 14830
Vbriggs at stny.rr.com