Diesel engines easily run 400.000km especially Mercedes cars but petrol will give up way sooner
In: Engineering
Former diesel mechanic turned instructor turned field trainer. There are a lot of reasons that diesel engines tend to have better reliability.
1) diesel fuel acts as an upper cylinder lubricant. This allows the cylinder walls to last much much longer than a gasoline engine.
2) most diesel engines are built with much stronger components. There are two reasons for this. One, the higher cylinder pressures and two, reliability is more important.
3) use case. This is the big one. Diesel engines (especially large ones for semi trucks) spend much less time doing city driving, and considerably more time cruising at highway speeds. Acceleration, and starting the engine, are the two largest periods of wear on an engine. Driving back and forth to the grocery store for 3,000 miles produces much more wear than a 3,000 mile cross country trip. Additionally, the end user has much different priorities. Increasing the cost of a car by a large amount so it can run 750,000 miles before the engine needs an overhaul isn’t really something the average consumer would pay for, as most people don’t keep cars that long. A diesel engine in a semi is much much much more expensive, because down time isn’t just an annoyance. Any time that truck isn’t moving, the operator is losing money in a very measurable way.
There is more to it, like driver training, but really these are the biggest reasons. Apologies if anything was incoherent, I just got in from washing my wife’s car and mine.
Latest Answers