keong8260 wrote:A bit out of topic...
Bro Stratman2, what do you think of the current Euro-2 compliance RON95 petrol and Euro2 Diesel fuel. Does it make our car more "powerful" because of cleaner fuel compare to the previous MS123 standard fuel?
Personally, my pickup truck is commonrial diesel, the new Euro2 Diesel did actually made the engine sound "quieter". Performance wise, I feel still the same.
Good question!
Actually bro Keong, we are still behind time. We've been using "Euro-less" high sulphur diesel for decades until just recently. Other modern countries are using at least Euro-4 compliant, ultra low sulphur diesel. They are much cleaner and a lot less polluting and are suitable for engines used in those countries. Euro-5 is already in use today, with Euro-6 compliant diesel by the year 2014. (See how far back we are?)
Turbodiesel cars are actually very powerful if matched with the right diesel grade it was intended for. Your pickup's turbodiesel engine is actually tuned to accommodate our
lau yah, low grade diesel sold here.
High performance turbodiesels will give problems if fed with much lower grade diesel. For example, Mercedes Benz stopped selling turbodiesel cars here because of the old diesel grade. I've seen quite a number of Mercedes E270 CDIs being towed away to workshops. It's not the car - it's the diesel that's the culprit!
Our previous diesel was had a very high sulphur content and clogs up the fuel injectors and/or fuel filter easily. Federal Auto Holdings Berhad, never introduced diesel powered Volvo cars here at all. Perhaps Volvo diesel engines required better diesel (or performed worse in terms of power or reliability) than Mercedes diesels in the 1970s.
You may remember the many W123 model, Mercedes 200D, 240D and 300D cars that ply our roads back in the early 80s. Those cars had low-tech diesel engines with very poor acceleration (we're talking about over 18 secs to reach 100km/h) but could easily get 50 miles to the gallon. Diesel was also very much cheaper then. I have never seen a petrol engined Mercedes taxi here - the cost of running one would be obviously unprofitable.
Diesel engines don't use spark plugs, don't need spark plug coils or distributors and because of their very high 22:1 cylinder compression ratio, diesel engines need to have thicker cylinder walls. Due to this, diesel engines are robust and have longer life spans compared to petrol engines.
It takes a lot of crude oil to produce petrol/gasoline at the oil refinery and much less for diesel, that's why traditionally diesel is cheaper. But ultra-low emission diesel requires more costly further processing and additives, therefore high grade Euro-4 diesel will cost about the same as petrol.
Because the bulk of mass road transportation involves diesel engined trucks and buses, having Euro-4 diesel will result in higher fuel costs. Maybe that's why our government took a long time to get rid of the Euro-less diesel until now, to keep the cost of transportation within our financial means.
With the added costs of producing ultra-low sulphur diesel, diesel car users in the U.K. pay a bit more than premium petrol at the pump! However, diesel by nature is more efficient that petrol in generating power and that's why a diesel engined car has a longer range than a petrol version, assuming they both have the same engine cubic capacity and the same fuel tank capacity. Therefore it's still more economical to run a turbodiesel car in the long term.
Contrary to popular belief, diesel fumes are actually cleaner than petrol fumes if you compare the hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide emissions from a petrol engine. Diesel is also difficult to burn and that's why vehicles that catch fire in road accidents are often petrol engined ones than diesel.
Our petrol is also upgraded to Euro-2 compliant petrol at the same time, with the switch from RON97 to RON95. That's why Euro-2 grade RON97 now costs RM2 per liter (the old RON97 had no Euro rating at all and was RM1.80/l, just like the new Euro-2 RON95).
Like petrol, diesel has its own set of grades called the Cetane Number (not RON) - from 42 to 55. Once the CN gets past 55, there's no performance or emission improvement. I don't think you'll get more power from a Euro 5 diesel out of your commonrail pickup, but your engine would run smoother and slightly more quieter with even less emissions. That's all the benefit you'll get from Euro 2 diesel (or Euro 5 for that matter).
To get the most power out of a turbodiesel, the engine itself has to be designed by the manufacturer specifically for Euro 5 diesel. For example, early this year, Volvo introduced a 2.4 liter, 5-cylinder S80 turbodiesel that gives an awesome output of 205 bhp and 420 NM of torque, which can out-sprint a Mazda RX8 sports car at the traffic lights or at the toll plazas.
Too bad the Volvo S80 D5 won't be reaching our shores until we have Euro 5 compliant diesel....which at the rate we're going will be what...in the year 2020?
BTW, not all fuels sold here by the various oil companies are created equal. See this interesting link by Paul Tan:
http://paultan.org/2007/02/25/analyzing ... or-petrol/ Hope this helps.
