Is Diesel worth it in a small car?

R.O.R

Kazbah wrote: »

I think the Fiestas should be in the showrooms on 1 Nov.

Are they not in the showrooms yet? There have been a good few on the back of Crosbies trucks when they've delivered other stuff to us - at least for the past 3 weeks.

E92

It's been in showrooms down here in Cork for the past week or so, and it really does look as good as the press photos would have you believe.

Kazbah

Really C.A.B. and Kellehers of Macroom told me 1 Nov

E92

Kazbah wrote: »

Really C.A.B. and Kellehers of Macroom told me 1 Nov

Here's one in Cork already, and here is another.

Kazbah

E92 wrote: »

The 1.25 has 81 bhp to the 1.4 TDCi's 67 bhp.

That sounds like the Diesel will be significantly less powerful than the petol?

E92

Kazbah wrote: »

That sounds like the Diesel will be significantly less powerful than the petol?

Yup, though you will get the grand back on the diesel, and more come resale time, and enjoy 67.2 mpg rather than 49.5 mpg while you're at it.

Neither is fast; the 1.25 takes 13.3 seconds to hit 100 km/h(thank God we're not being offered the 1.25 with only 59 bhp as that takes 16.9, yes 16.9 seconds to hit 100 km/h) while the 1.4 TDCi take 14.9 seconds to hit 100 km/h.

Diesels drive very differently to petrols, at low revs they are much stronger than petrols, but have faith in petrols and give them plentty of revs and you'll find that petrol is quicker and therefore better than diesel. Petrol is also smoother, quieter, more refined, better sounding and cleaner for your lungs too.

OTOH diesel has the torque at low revs, is better on CO2, road tax, a lot better on depreciation and mpg.

What this car clearly needs is a larger engine, but Ford are only offering a 1.6 petrol in 3 door only, and the 1.4 petrol is auto only, so it's going to be a case of a great car spolied by a limited engine line up for me I'm afraid. The 1.4 hits 100 km/h in 12.2 seconds with a manual 'box.

The 1.6 TDCi hits 100 km/h in 11.9 seconds, not earth shattering, but a lot better than what the above can do.

Zube

Kazbah wrote: »

That sounds like the Diesel will be significantly less powerful than the petol?

The diesel will have more low-down torque, though. Comparing the old model specs on carzone, the 1.25 had 55 kW (that's 75 bhp) at 6000 rpm, but only 110 Nm of torque, up at 4000 rpm.

The 1.4 diesel had only 50 kW (68 bhp) at 4000, but 160 Nm of torque at only 2000 rpm.

To translate those numbers into real driving, you will have to rev the bejapers out of the 1.25 to get near the stated performance, and I mean drive around in first and second gear with the engine yelling at you. The diesel will more than keep up with the petrol if you change gears before going deaf.

Lumen

Zube wrote: »

To translate those numbers into real driving, you will have to rev the bejapers out of the 1.25 to get near the stated performance, and I mean drive around in first and second gear with the engine yelling at you. The diesel will more than keep up with the petrol if you change gears before going deaf.

A revved engine only sounds unpleasant when the revs are held. Moving through the rev range is a generally pleasant sound, more so with petrol than diesel.

My petrol Swift only has about 70bhp, but that's plenty for the car. Driving is about much more than numbers.

Zube

Lumen wrote: »

A revved engine only sounds unpleasant when the revs are held. Moving through the rev range is a generally pleasant sound, more so with petrol than diesel.

I have nothing against revving petrol engines myself, but how many ladies in Fiestas are going to keep the revs between 4 and 6000 revs? How many are going to shift up before they even reach max torque at 4000?

Driven the way most people drive cars like these, the petrol will be slower than the diesel.

Kazbah

Zube wrote: »

Driven the way most people drive cars like these, the petrol will be slower than the diesel.

Wow the rest of it was double dutch to me but that's an interesting fact.

I guess I am a typical driver. My rev counter is usually between 2 & 3 and using 4th gear most of the time in suburban (50 - 60 kmph speed) zones - I do about 100 miles per week in this situation. Most of my driving in on primary routes around 100kmph obviously in 5th gear - I do about 300 miles per week in this situation.


Does anyone have any idea is there a plan to introduce the Econetic later in 2009 or after? It's available in the UK perhaps I could look at buying it in the North. I think you don't have to pay VAT on a new car in the North if you pay VRT here. With the new CO2 related VRT it should work out ok.

E92

Lumen wrote: »

A revved engine only sounds unpleasant when the revs are held.

Not only that, but it's not very good for an engine to be revving needlessly high like that too.

Putting the engine under load and hearing the engine go up through the revs like that produces a very pleasing sound. You do need to work the gearbox more in a petrol; in a diesel you can leave it in gear and just plonk your right foot down and diesel torque will do the overtaking for you, in a petrol you will have to drop a gear, or maybe even 2 and then petrol power will do exactly the same thing, only quicker than a diesel for you.

You can change up at only 2000-2500 rpm in a petrol and in most circumstances they'll still deliver decent performance; it's when overtaking or need a rapid boost in acceleration that you need to hold on to the gear you're in and change up at say 5000 rpm, which is the great thing about petrol, if you're say stuck behind a tractor at 50 km/h on a road with a 100 km/h speed limit and need to overtake in a petrol you can put it into 2nd gear, push the loud pedal all the way to the floor, and you won't need to make a gearchange again until you've hit prehaps 85-95(or maybe more) depending on the car and by that stage you'll have overtaken the slow moving vehicle and you can slot straight into 5th.

In a diesel you could start in third, but you'd run out of stream fairly quickly, so you'd have to go to fourth, and once you've overtaken you'd go into fifth.

A lot of the reason people think diesels are quicker is because they're afriad to rev their cars beyond say 3,000 or 4,000 rpm. if you can overcome that mental block and take an engine up to the 6,000+ rpm rev limiter that's typical in petrols you'll find that they're well able to get a shift on and taking it up there on those rare occasions is not going to harm the engine in any way.

Zube

Kazbah wrote: »

Wow the rest of it was double dutch to me but that's an interesting fact.

Hmm, well, to simplify:

My rev counter is usually between 2 & 3 and using 4th gear most of the time

To get the best performance out of the 1.25, you'd keep it between 4 and 6 when accellerating. That is: rev it 'til you get near 6, then a gear-change up will drop you back near 4, and rev it up again.

By contrast, the diesel's best performance is right where you normally drive: 2 to 4 on the rev counter, and at those revs it's putting out more power than the petrol is.

Ferris

Kazbah wrote: »

I do about 300 miles per week in this situation.

Well then you should work out what the difference is per annum in tax. fuel, servicing and insurance costs and pick the cheaper.

Forget about resale as used cars are now hard to shift no matter what you buy - the only thing you can do there is give your car some nice optional extras to make it a bit easier to sell.

Also remember that diesels usually require more servicing than petrols and arguably have more that can go wrong with them.

Lumen

On the subject of revs...

I once helped a friend to gain confidence between driving tests.

We went out in her petrol Golf (1.4 probably) and she drove first. She was perfectly competent, but the needle barely crept much over 2000 RPM. I took a turn and revved it smoothly to the redline through the gears, but kept the pace sensible. She was amazed that the car would do that without very bad things happening (engine blowing up, crashing etc). She passed confidently shortly afterwards, for which I take all credit obviously.

I honestly think all new drivers should do a track day before being allowed out on the roads, to experience the limits of their cars.

Zube

Ferris wrote: »

Also remember that diesels usually require more servicing than petrols

Modern diesels? I don't think so.

Kazbah

Lumen wrote: »

I took a turn and revved it smoothly to the redline through the gears, but kept the pace sensible. She was amazed that the car would do that without very bad things happening (engine blowing up, crashing etc).

Do you not change gear until you're end in red so? Have to say I thought that was bad for cars too!

SV

Kazbah wrote: »

Do you not change gear until you're end in red so? Have to say I thought that was bad for cars too!

It's bad for the car if it's not warmed up.


Otherwise...perfectly fine.

Lumen

Kazbah wrote: »

Do you not change gear until you're end in red so? Have to say I thought that was bad for cars too!

Engines like revs. There are few things you can do to extend the life and maintain the performance of an engine, but avoiding revs is not one of them.

That said, obviously I don't always change up at the redline (and almost never hit the limiter), but it does see action fairly frequently.

Lumen

ClioV6 wrote: »

It's bad for the car if it's not warmed up.

AFAIK sustained load is worse for a cold engine than revs. So keeping the revs down and using full throttle to compensate is a bad idea.

Modern mass-produced engines are very robust.

maidhc

Lumen wrote: »

but avoiding revs is not one of them.

Why not?

Engine turns quicker
More heat
More acceleration and deceleration of the pistons
Generally more strain as the engine is being asked to do more work...

...of course its life will be shorted compared to an equivalent engine driven more sympathetically.

And that is without reference to the additional stresses on the drivetrain, and hugely increased fuel consumption.

I redline my cars when I need to, but when going to the shop or work on monday morning i certainly don't.

Lumen

maidhc wrote: »

I redline my cars when I need to, but when going to the shop or work on monday morning i certainly don't.

Well to be honest, I consider engines to be consumables. I've never broken one yet, despite years of trying, and have never noticed a degradation in performance throughout an ownership period.

The most tired engine I've had was in a diesel 5 series which had been driven gently by a pensioner for the last few years. It couldn't pull the skin off a cup of cocoa.

Kazbah

Lumen wrote: »

The most tired engine I've had was in a diesel 5 series which had been driven gently by a pensioner for the last few years. It couldn't pull the skin off a cup of cocoa.

So the old line One Careful Lady Owner with an average 4000 miles per year is not always the best buy then

E92

Kazbah wrote: »

So the old line One Careful Lady Owner with an average 4000 miles per year is not always the best buy then

Yup.

They're always the ones to avoid.

Flooring a fully warmed up engine won't do it any harm, if anything it forces the engine to burn off the fuel properly and it actually reduces all non CO2 related emissions.

Not for nothing do you drive the stones off a diesel before the NCT, because carbon build ups from people driving too gently and at low revs get burned off and thus the emissions go down after a good thrashing.

The best thing you can do for your engine is drive it on Motorways/Dual Carriageways at the speed limit or even above, there's virtually no wear and tear done to the engine

Flooring a petrol car at low revs is very bad for it too; petrol engines deliver their power at higher revs so trying to force the engine to do something it physically can't is just wasting fuel and wearing out the engine. It's much better for the engine to change up much later than normal when going up hills for example, and you'll have a lot more power too.

Kazbah

This makes sense because my car was feeling a bit sluggish. I was doing very low mileage around the city. Since I started driving 60+ miles a day mostly on dualcarraigeways I notice it seems to run better. I am driving it harder now because of the traffic I meet. It feels better that must be at least partly attributed to the new kind of driving.