pa28pilot

So now that I'm back in a diesel (I have owned 3 diesel Rabbits in the past), I'm wondering whether anyone else has experiences like mine - one being the reason AAA (the American Automobile Association) will never see a dime of membership money from me again.

Back in the early 90s, when I was driving diesel Rabbits, the promotional literature for AAA indicated that they would bring you "fuel" as a part of their road service. As a pilot, I'm predisposed to believe that there are very few excuses for a rational individual to ever run out of fuel in a motor vehicle, but I managed to find one.

I was driving in Northern Virginia at night, when my engine went dead. My fuel gauge was reading 1/4 tank, but after troubleshooting, all of the symptoms were of fuel starvation. (It later turned out that a bad vent caused the fuel tank to run empty and collapse onto the sender, causing a false reading.)

I called AAA, and asked for someone to bring me fuel, to which they said "Oh, we can't have anyone bring you diesel, only gasoline." I said, "then send me a tow truck."

Of course, when the tow arrived, he asked "Why didn't you just have us bring you some diesel fuel?" I was really torqued. I cancelled my membership on the spot and have been happy to use Mercedes-Benz road service for almost all of my needs for the past 8 years or so.

I'm just wondering if there are other cases where diesel drivers are second-class citizens or where vendors don't do what they say they'll do if you're in a diesel vehicle?

KosherBenz

I think she was just a moron. I would like to know their policy.

gaiex

In Europe all diesel owners are first-class citizens!!!

CE750

I get it all the time in the form of...

"Why did you buy a diesel?"

or

"Was it a lot cheaper to get the diesel?"

- you should see the shock on their face when I tell them I bough a E350 and a E320 CDI with similar options and the CDI cost more!

For me the diesel engine is a superior design in every respect except sound level, and even the the E350 is not much quieter when you're on the freeway.

whoover

I bought a 300SD in 1982. The wife of the president of the small company where I worked gave me all kinds of grief over how I was trying to give her cancer. She actually made my life miserable for a while.

But she was a certified nut case. She wound up shooting her husband, putting him in a wheelchair for life, and killing herself.

kajtek1

I don't think discrimination is the right description for the issue.
IMHO "propaganda" is better word. Regardless, whoever steers this government - it is steering citizens away from affordable transportation.
The best sample for me was VW diesel from 1980's. I used to drive Rabbit pickups, but the only diesel engine available in USA was 44 HP. The power was annoying as I had to turn AC off for better acceleration, but 35 mpg vehicles had lot of admires even as of today, what is like 35 years later.
What I am getting to is that those cars were available with turbo-charged 75 HP version, but the better version never made it to USA, although I have seen Mexico could enjoy it.
Bare in mind that in those years all diesel cars have been exempt from smogs in all states, so the lack of choices could not be pollution- related.

geniushanbiao

I honestly feel similar to you and it's an attitude passed on from the top to civilians. They try their best to bash diesels saying they are polluting and blablabla and nut in to make up the "emission scandal" just trying to make sure majority of people don't use diesel for daily drive. The reason is simple in this country diesel and gasoline are both from crude oil and they have to sell both. To their ideal, diesel is allocated mainly to those bigger trucks and gasoline is allocated mostly to daily drivers. They don't want to see more people using diesel for daily drive otherwise they will have remaining gasoline while we fight for diesel with the truck companies.

kajtek1

Years ago I heard the story that rafinery can manufacture any amount of diesel or gasoline from the crude they want.
Later the story changed that they can make x to y % of diesel or v ot z % of gasoline.
No matter how exactly it works, they seem to have pretty big flexibility what fuel to manufacture from the crude.
Europe is converting gasoline engines to propane and they don't worry about too much gasoline.
Than why small gasoline engines are not allowed in this country? Evidently people having upper power want the fuel to flow in high amounts.
"Buy 7 mpg Hummer and 3 mpg boat>>> you deserve it". Is't that what 1 of Presidents said?

geniushanbiao

This is an interesting story. Traditionally refinery factories only do distillation to crude oil to separate. However starting from around WWII, people started to investigate into chemically reduce large hydrocarbon molecules (like asphalt) to small ones to produce gasoline and diesel. The Germans even investigated on doing such on coal due to their extreme lack of resources. However nobody has made such reaction economical enough into mass production so even today we are still relying on distillation to get gas and diesel, as well as others, from crude oil.

Long story short, if you do chemical reductions, then you can produce any amount of gas and/or diesel. However if you rely on distillation, there's only certain amount of gas and diesel present in the crude oil so there's a limit on the proportion you can do, but you can tune the distillation parameters to give some variations on it.
Europe has developed biodiesels so they are producing much more diesel than gas, plus since biodiesel is considered a recycled/regenerated energy source the tax rate on it is much lower. US is influenced by those oil tycoons and they like people to use as much oil as possible that's a different story. Even natural gas has a short history in US compared to any other countries.

The biodiesel thing was looooong planned. I remember in late 1990s when the oil price crisis happened there were a lot of discussions about renewable energy and the power source for future cars. Looked to me that European scientists were in favor of biodiesel while US scientists like hydrogen and fuel cell better.

peter2772000

I dunno about the US, but here in Canukistan, I've never experienced any sort of attitude towards diesels. Modern diesels don't belch black smoke the way they did in the old days.

listerone

I know that that sad,delusional Swedish girl (Greta) disapproves of my diesel (as do others) but I don't give a rat's hindquarters what they think.It's a beast on the Interstate (where it spends most of its time) and I love everything about it.

geniushanbiao

Next time she says that, you can educate her that this is not right. Modern diesel engines are actually cleaner than gas engine, or at least comparable. Look at the euro5 and euro6 standards. Diesel engines are limited to only half of the CO emission than gasoline engines, with only slightly higher NOx. Also due to the higher efficiency, diesel engines give out less CO2 than gas engines as well. DPF is also reducing particulates by more than 90%.

https://theconversation.com/fact-che...rol-cars-76241

Those stereotypes against diesels are mainly due to the impression of those old cuttlefish diesel vehicles. I saw a lot of those buses when I was young as well. But nowadays diesel engines are more and more clean. Not to mention those cuttlefish were mainly due to poor maintenance.

Beer Can

I had a similar experience with AAA, but I figured I pretty much deserved it for being dopey enough to run dry.