gas mileage isn't bad on the highway in any car. I just took my sl55 on a trip of 275 miles and it used only about 65% of the tank all free way. With diesel already over $4 where I live a diesel car doesn't sound economical. I also have an E420 as my daily and it gets very good gas mileage

 

In San Antonio to get around you usually have to jump on the freeway unless your downtown or on the outskirts. Freeway Driving is what i'd normally be doing when i'm in there. Here in Palm Springs all we have is the 10 freeway but it's not worth it to drive all across town to get to it and be on it for like 7 minutes and be where you want. We have Hwy 111 but the taffic there sucks soooooooo bad. Otherwise everything else is city, which probably explains my horrid mileage. I guess what i'm getting at is that since freeway driving is what i'm normally going to do in SA then I'd imagine i'd be better off with Diesel, getting 27 MPG with a Diesel rather than 20 MPG with the 300E. Also i'd take the 22mpg with the Diesel over the 16 I get in city with my 300E... I have to check the prices of Diesel in San Antonio though. I remember when I was there in December I saw 2.99 for 91 at chevron.

 

I wonder if you would get better mileage with bio-diesel..

 

Alright in Central San Antonio, Diesel is 3.89 at a Valero there. THAT'S VERY DO-ABLE (word?) FOR ME!!! lol What a difference compared to California's 4.35 for Diesel! I love Texas

 

Oh, we use natural gas and electric also. What I was referring to is people burning oil or other fossil fuels.

DMC, you don't get better mileage with biodiesel... also in older cars, you often have to upgrade your fuel lines/etc because the materials often used in older cars will corrode if you use biodiesel. Not a huge expense and probably not that much of a hassle either.

But biodiesel (at least here in seattle, and we have a large local refinery) is probably 10% more expensive than regular diesel.

So the people who do it here are generally doing it for environmental reasons, not for cost savings. And with rising food prices (i.e. more expensive aggriculture), I have doubts that it will get better anytime soon.

There have also been doubts recently that biodiesel really IS better for the environment... therefore there may be no reason to do it at all except to get us off of foreign reliance on oil. I've read that although Biodiesel exhaust puts off less carbon monoxide, it lets off a higher concentration of more dangerous chemicals. Not sure about the science or anything, but that's what I read about 6 months ago...

I almost went to work for one of the largest biodiesel companies in the states here in Seattle... They were gonna go public and had all kinds of hype... but as the economy has started to turn, as doubt has been cast on the environmental impacts, as food prices have gone up, and as people have wondered whether it's ethical to use food for fuel (rather than feed people with it), they have withdrawn their plan to go public and have laid a bunch of people off... actually my current company just hired the guy who filled the position I interviewed for... kind of ironic!

I digress.

But one last point. Veggie oil and Biodiesel are typically two different things (in terms of symantics). Veggie oil is often used to refer to leftover cooking oil, etc... you know, the stories you hear about guys who go to mcdonald's and use their deep frier waste to fuel their cars... THOSE kinds of fuels will really gunk up your fuel filter and be high maintenance.

Biodiesel goes through a strict refining process. If it's as high of quality as the company I discussed above, it will actually burn more cleanly than regular diesel (i.e. less deposits in your engine).

Can you tell I'm bored at work today!?! lol

 

Yeah I would never convert a Diesel with bio-fuel. Using a restraunts, I can see where the damage could be done. I would stick will good ol plain Diesel. Shame it has to be foreign though Would rather be patriotic and support America! and it's all good, i'm here in a computer lab pretending to be doing research while waiting for my final class of the day to start. :]

 

I went through this thought process before buying my most recent 124.

A 95 300d with 100k would command at least 1000 more than in Seattle, and gassers can be had from motivated sellers far more easily. The gap between 2 otherwise identical cars is greater, imo, around here. That leaves the break even point too far off for my tastes.

 

I believe the diesel is worth it due to the fact that KBB fuel figures are not always accurate, I know of someone with a 300TD that was getting in the mid to upper 30's which is better than my high of 23 in my TE. But the real bonus with a diesel is finding a good supplier of Bio-diesel. If you have a supply from a good producer your diesel will run quieter and cleaner than on Dino-diesel, I have a number of friends right now who buy their biodiesel from a local producer who sells it on average of 10cents cheaper than dino. The biofuel will actually act as a solvent and clean out crud from your fuel system so you will have to change fuel filters after a while but once clean, then you are worry free.

I plan to buy a biodiesel producing kit and use clean veggie oil to make the fuel at home, this can run about $0.70 to $1.00 a gallon to make, that beats any price I have seen at a pump in years.

I don't know about you, but I would spend equal or more money to buy biodiesel grown by farmers in my state and produced by the "little guy" rather than play into the entire petro-economic cluster-f-ck that controls the world and creates lame excuses for our government to invade oil rich countries which in-turn breeds terrorism. Not a tough call in my book.

 

You have a very good point. Pfft if you can make it for like 1.00 per gallon AND it's better for your engine than that's a why not. I guess the only problem for some would be finding a provider? but in that case you can just go to the store or a wholesale place and just by the veggie oil? The only thing I wouldn't do is use that oil from fast food places ect.. as I can see where that would mess up your engine but using clean oil..... Sounds good. Would it still smell like French Fries with clean oil? lol

 

Has anyone seen that episode of Rob and Big? Where they converted Big's pinto into a veggie car?

Can you really just throw grease right into the tank and have it be safe? I thought you had to buy the pumps and everything to make it work..

 

yeah, I think there's more to it than just taking the grease from a fast food place and dumping it in your tank.

just a quick google search:

http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html

 

I have a 95 and get 32 a mile and it needs new filters. I paid around 6 for my car and have no maint. cost except oil every 7500 miles with synthetic. I just found a bio guy who sells it for the same as reg. He has been running it for 3 years in the same car and swears by it. The diesel engine was designed to run on bio-diesel. Bio diesel does decrease fuel milage down to 30 miles on the highway but 2 miles not bad for how cheep that computes to.

 

Yeah, that's definitely where my calculations could be off- they don't take into account the savings the diesel has for maintenance cost over the gasser.

But I'm afraid that an 4 or 5 MPG doesn't really sway my calculations all that much.

 

I know I'm a broken record, but if you do the same kind of comparison, but with a 2005 Jetta GLS and a 2005 Jetta GLS TDI, the mileage difference is significant:

TDI: 46 MPG Highway, 38 City
Gasser: 31 MPG Highway, 24 City

But, assuming the same mileage, etc, the TDI blue books for $6,600 more in Seattle. That boils down to a 22 year break-even point. Wow, totally not even close to worth it. Aside from the reasons discussed (environmental, political), I cannot believe people are stupid enough to pay that much more for the diesel.

 

Accountants always spoil the party Some people would look at the time and money you put into your CE and call you crazy too.(not me) I think what it shows is that the US market is hungry for more diesels but the supply is just not there. The environmental and political issues are worth 6k to some people. I fall into that camp somewhat, but for me it is the fact that push comes to shove, I could make my own fuel... that is pretty sweet. Any way I can tell the govt to take their taxes and crappy foreign policy and shove it I will.

 

Totally. As much as I'll tell you on the one hand that we should make only rational decisions based on the numbers, on the other hand, I have spent completely unreasonable amounts of money maintaining my CE.

So I get the emotional aspect of it...

Although even when I look back at the amounts of money I have spent maintaining my car vs. the cost of buying a much newer (or new) car (with far less character) and getting hit with high depreciation and car payments, I still come out ahead over the last 5 years.

lol, so maybe the numbers do support my decision?? lol

 

FYI, here is a clip from fifth gear... you CAN run your car on straight oil, but it is NOT recommended, since it is too thick and is full of crud in it's raw state.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5IjzsgDll8

 

The diesel depreciates less then the gasser and you can get your return on using the biodiesel.I have owned two diesels now my first being a 92 jetta diesel.I will say operational cost are far less then gas.I owned the same year acura integra before the jetta and put more in fuel and maintance in three years then the jetta I had for over five years.Yes fuel cost has gone up but with research you can find biodiesel as cheep as reg. gas.You can brew biodiesel for less then 75 cents a gallon if you get the oil free.A little work and save yourself 40 a week in fuel also you run bio and Mobile One and the oil looks the same coming out as it did going in.

 

Depreciation depends on the current market and the location. I recently bought a W211 and was quite interested in a diesel until I did a bit more research.

Diesel prices are expected to continue to climb at a faster rate than gasoline in the US - and there is no end in sight. The issue has nothing to do with the cost of refining the fuel - it has everything to do with how our refinery infrastructure is setup to produce fuel. In the US our refineries are only capable of producing a minority of their production as diesel. They cannot shift this production percentage due to the refinery process - which is different in the US than elsewhere. Additionally, without building additional refinery capacity, even if they were to expend the extremely large capital investments to make such a conversion, it would do so at the expense of gasoline production capacity - which at this time is more problematic overall. This is not an issue in europe, for example, as so much of their consumer demand is already diesel their refinement processes are designed around different architecture and therefore a higher diesel yield by percentage.

Bottom line is that the market predicts diesel to continue to become more and more expensive as compared to gasoline.

 

Anybody want to work with me to raise capital and start our very own diesel refinery?!? :P

 

http://www.fuelmeister.com/

go for it pete