Gasser vs. Diesel

[ISX]

Heres what I get if I compare my dads 5.7 chevy to mine. I have never had to change anything other than wear items either. I changed the clutch since I turned it up, other than that, nothing.

When pulling our trailer, it costs him 108% more to go 400 miles (distance for the trip we take a lot) which of course is 8% over twice as much.

[smokeythedodge]

Heres what I get if I compare my dads 5.7 chevy to mine. I have never had to change anything other than wear items either. I changed the clutch since I turned it up, other than that, nothing.

When pulling our trailer, it costs him 108% more to go 400 miles (distance for the trip we take a lot) which of course is 8% over twice as much.

newer 5.3 vortec gets a lot better mileage than 12, like 19 average with that variable displacement / active fuel management thing they do. You really get 23? My hunk 01 got like 17 maybe before I retired it to the barn for safe keeping.

[ISX]

newer 5.3 vortec gets a lot better mileage than 12, like 19 average with that variable displacement / active fuel management thing they do. You really get 23? My hunk 01 got like 17 maybe before I retired it to the barn for safe keeping.

I thought all the stars had to be aligned and it had to be a full moon for it to do that fuel management stuff. Don't you have to be on the highway and driving it nicely for it to start dropping cylinders? So you drive 55mph to keep the power low enough that it can drop cylinders so you can get 19, which at that speed I get 27.

In the city I assume it drops like a rock with that 5.3, whereas I still can't drop below 21, never have since I owned the truck (unless pulling trailer).

Now hook a trailer up to that 5.3 or 6.0... The trailer I tow gets a dmax 12.5 and my dads truck gets more like 5-7 with it. I figure a 5.3 or 6.0 would be lucky to get 10. I get 17.

I know having to replace a VP and get a airdog 150 and all of that other stuff just to keep it reliable will offset the savings but having a ppump I haven't had to touch anything like that. But even with changing out stuff with the 24V, I still think you would come out on top if you used the truck for it's intended purpose.. I will be drastic here and compare it to having a semi truck and pulling a trailer maybe 5 times a year and going to walmart every week all the rest of the time and then expecting to come out ahead of a toyota camry. It isn't going to happen and if you bought the truck for a one time a year hauler and full time grocery getter then you are just asking for an emptier wallet.

A lot of people buy a car for their daily routine and drive the truck once every few weeks. Flagmanruss has a prius, flman has a diesel jeep liberty, W&F has a diesel jetta.. They get those so they can save the truck for the real load and since all of those get incredible mileage they end up paying for the whole car in savings over driving your truck.

Now I get great mileage unloaded so I don't really need a car but lets face it, they can beat the crap out of it and still get over 30mpg whereas I have to be nice to it. I can beat the crap out of mine and get around 21 but getting anything over 23 requires some effort.

As for maintenance, if the gasser and the diesel ended up costing the same amount every year on fuel, you still have to change the oil, and diesels take enough oil for 2.5 gasser changes. A guy I used to work with pointed this out to me over and over. BUT, I use amsoil for 25k and I can beat the cost of his oil changes by doing that. Now Dorkweed has it even cheaper, he uses toilet paper filters (literally) and keeps the oil so clean that he never even has to change it.

So there you have it. My reasoning and logic behind owning my truck

[Prowelder]

Also I would like to see a gasser hit 500k+ miles while towing a trailer and still have the same power as it did with 100k on the clock. Proportionally no gasser is going to have the same power and life as the Cummins and get the same milage. How many 400-500 hp gassers do you know that can get 16-18+ MPG with 35" mud tires on them??

[guesswho512]

Also I would like to see a gasser hit 500k+ miles while towing a trailer and still have the same power as it did with 100k on the clock. Proportionally no gasser is going to have the same power and life as the Cummins and get the same milage. How many 400-500 hp gassers do you know that can get 16-18+ MPG with 35" mud tires on them??

i had a co-worker that had an 03 F-250 with the V10. he had a K&N air box, vorla exhaust, and a chip. he was making ~500hp......and getting 12-14 empty(no ladders or trailer and some AT type tire). :lmao:this was in 2005 or 2006. the boss man drove a F250 powerstroke and it had a quadzilla. when we got the contract on install REDBOX at mc donald's, we used that initially to pull the gooseneck that pulled the redboxes and a bobcat. 2nd day into it, the F250 blew all the seals in the auto transmission. from then on, we use a coworkers chevy 1ton(gasser)

[white01]

you forgot to add in the only things you had to replace...you had to replace the gas in the tank very often cuz they dont do good on mpg..

[Wild and Free]

You need to figure it out similar to what ISX has posted. I hate it when people think that mpg is the only part of the equation. You need to figure it out as total cost per mile. Those who drive a diesel for a dailly driver over the life will see higher cost per mile as long as the price of diesel stays above gas more than just a few cents if they do not use it to tow or haul ect but if you reverse the scenario the diesel will have a really noticable lower cost per mile if the same scenario is followed versus a gasser.

[ISX]

Did some more calculating. I just did everything stock for what new trucks are doing stock. I know all the estimates are rough but close enough.

So unloaded with gasser getting an unheard of 19mpg (I will play your game though lol) and diesels getting 20mpg (probably what the average diesel world gets during the same circumstances as a gasser getting 19mpg) this is what I get.

A gasser would have to drop down to 16.431 to equalize with costs of a diesel at 20mpg.

Towing we see the tables turned, even with 10mpg gasser and 12mpg diesel, which if a diesel is getting 12 pulling something then a gasser would surely be around 8 but I will play it off as 10.

Thing is, to get this 19mpg we have to have fuel management cylinder deactivation stuff, to get that we have to have a brand new truck... 1st gen cummins' get 20-25mpg and we can get a good one for ~$4-5000, which is much cheaper than a new $30,000+ truck.

Here is something to really make you jump. Back then a comparable power gasser got 12mpg when the 1st gen was getting 20 and the fuel cost tables were reversed. Not sure what oil and all that was but I will make fuel costs what I imagine they were in 1990.

[JOHNFAK]

Did some more calculating. I just did everything stock for what new trucks are doing stock. I know all the estimates are rough but close enough.

YOUR A FREAK !!!! good stuff Yeah - if I had it all over again I woould have seriously looked at a 12V. Cheaper to buy , and less parts that fail - so it seems with ISX and some guys on CF. Can't beat 20 +MPG all day long and 300k miles. I do like the looks of the 3rd Gen onwards tho. How long would a tranny on a new GASSER last pulling 12000 lbs - same ?? I guess they are built basically the same right.

[LiveOak]

For the typical urban "Harry Home Owner", a gas pickup is the best route to go. MUCH more cheaper and less hassle. A simple comparison would be to hook up any gas powered pickup to the trailer weighing in over 8,000 lbs. The Cummins diesel and manual transmission will perform far superior to any gas pickup truck, not to mention run its transmission far longer without repairs. The reason I bought my Dodge Cummins pickup was because of the piece of JUNK Chevrolet K2500 Suburban equipped with the heavy duty option 4L80E, 4.10 gears, and endless mods attempting to prevent the transmission from over heating and puking oil while towing my Sea Ray cabin cruiser. The Dodge pickup never even knew it was behind it when being towed. No over heating transmission, 18 mpg while towing the Sea Ray, and a vehicle FAR more suited to towing and using around my farm and forestry operation. I will NEVER own another Chevrolet or GM truck. Nothing personal but from my personal experience, both the Ford and GM trucks are JUNK. The idea of a V-8 diesel is JUNK in my opinion. Yes, they make gobs of HP but are JUNK for towing and low rpm torque. This is one of MANY reasons John Deere and International Harvester almost exclusively used an inline 6 or 4 or their tractors. The Allison transmissions on the GM pickups are JUNK in my opinion. My neighbor just spent $12,000 replacing his on his Duramax pickup not long ago. Unless there has been a change I am unaware of, GM doesn't even offer a manual shift transmission for their Duramax pickups. GM still owes me about $5,000 for the loss in incurred in trading in that piece of sheit Suburban K2500.

[smokeythedodge]

For the typical urban "Harry Home Owner", a gas pickup is the best route to go. MUCH more cheaper and less hassle.

A simple comparison would be to hook up any gas powered pickup to the trailer weighing in over 8,000 lbs. The Cummins diesel and manual transmission will perform far superior to any gas pickup truck, not to mention run its transmission far longer without repairs.

The reason I bought my Dodge Cummins pickup was because of the piece of JUNK Chevrolet K2500 Suburban equipped with the heavy duty option 4L80E, 4.10 gears, and endless mods attempting to prevent the transmission from over heating and puking oil while towing my Sea Ray cabin cruiser. The Dodge pickup never even knew it was behind it when being towed. No over heating transmission, 18 mpg while towing the Sea Ray, and a vehicle FAR more suited to towing and using around my farm and forestry operation.

I will NEVER own another Chevrolet or GM truck. Nothing personal but from my personal experience, both the Ford and GM trucks are JUNK. The idea of a V-8 diesel is JUNK in my opinion. Yes, they make gobs of HP but are JUNK for towing and low rpm torque. This is one of MANY reasons John Deere and International Harvester almost exclusively used an inline 6 or 4 or their tractors.

The Allison transmissions on the GM pickups are JUNK in my opinion. My neighbor just spent $12,000 replacing his on his Duramax pickup not long ago. Unless there has been a change I am unaware of, GM doesn't even offer a manual shift transmission for their Duramax pickups.

GM still owes me about $5,000 for the loss in incurred in trading in that piece of sheit Suburban K2500.

What kind of forestry operation you got? Sounds cool. I got a bunch of trees, 200 acres of them.

View from outside my front porch....

I can't figure a way to make any money off of them though.....

I got a 05 duramax, my allison tranny is just fine, in fact the only good part of that whole truck. Eaton g80 rear took a dump, 2 sets of injectors and melted pistons I had to replace...

And don't say I don't tow heavy, I pull this a lot, loaded with hay or my tractor and baler.

[ISX]

Hmm, sorry about making this a separate thread. It is a really neat subject though. I started noticing something so I made a chart to show it.

It shows that you start to level off on cents per mile as you get up into the high numbers. 20mpg is basically the magic number and after that you are not really gaining much on cost. Like if I go 1000 miles at $2.80/gallon, it is only a $18.67 difference between 25 and 30mpg. It is a $28 difference between 20 and 25. So it would add up over time but in the short term it doesn't make too much of a difference. You can skip eating out and make up the difference The issue arises with towing mileage, when you are lingering in the teens and single digits. That same 1000 mile trip would cost $26 more just going from 12 to 11..

That is the main reason for a diesel, every mile counts when you are towing and getting towards the single digit mpg.

The only thing that is not exponential about it is range. Which getting more MPG means getting a lot more miles out of a tank, no matter what the mpg might be, it goes up at the same rate.

[JOHNFAK]

So if we take a consenus of 12 MPG towing (DIESEL) and 17 MPG (mix driving towing/highway) which seems to me to be about typical hows THAT compare over various mileages comapred to a new GASSER.

[ISX]

What do you want to use for new gasser mileages?

[JOHNFAK]

Dunnono idea on what a gasser gets mixed driving and towing heavy. But curious to see what that saves over 1,3,10 years ....................... MPG/fuel only ................. and then probably say diesel=gas on repairs/maintenance just mixed driving Then which would have more $$ in repairs (tranny, injection etc) towing. And adjust accordingly.

[ISX]

I think it's safe to say a gasser can and always has been able to beat a diesel on parts cost. Before all this computerized stuff came out, there wasn't much that went bad. There were hardly any sensors at all on the truck to even go bad. But at the same time, the gassers didn't have much to go bad either. But if something major happened on either thing, the gasser would have been cheaper to fix. I would say the ratio between cost of diesel parts and gasser parts is still the same today. Gassers have injectors now too so their cost of maintenance went up because of that. They also added a ton of sensors. Just like the fuel management system, it is complex so there is more to go wrong, but the same holds true as diesels are becoming more and more complex to meet emissions. You can keep gassers and diesels going without ever having to do anything major. You just have to accommodate for their needs. CR trucks need better fuel filters. VP44 trucks need better lift pumps. If you figure out what the truck needs to keep it reliable, it will be just as reliable as anything else. I will work on a fancy MPG chart that you were wanting later on.

[smokeythedodge]

Dunno

no idea on what a gasser gets mixed driving and towing heavy.

But curious to see what that saves over 1,3,10 years ....................... MPG/fuel only ................. and then probably say

diesel=gas on repairs/maintenance just mixed driving

Then which would have more $$ in repairs (tranny, injection etc) towing. And adjust accordingly.

Little half ton my roommate has gets 18 mpg mixed. (on the right, silver truck) But it is a 2 wheel drive 5.3 L v8. He got a deal on it too! Dealer demo, leather seats, gave 18k for it with 5,000 miles. Currently he has 155k miles on it and has zero problems. Gravel roads out here are pretty bad though and the truck has the usual front end wreckage (ball joints, tie rod ends, etc) and rattles like crazy.

[ISX]

Maybe this will give you the info you wanted John.

I just did this at 100,000 a year and 9 years (cajflynn) and on the 12mpg for diesel and 8mpg for gasser, he has saved $60,000.

[Mopar1973Man]

Geez...ISX could you do that with Idaho fuel prices and repost... Diesel here is $3.419 and unleaded is $3.019 currently...

[ISX]