Ram 1500 EcoDiesel

[hattaresguy]

Holly [censored] that's insane! That truck is a liability they are almost always going to be overloaded!

You put four 200 pound guys in an empty truck and its maxed out!

The tow rating is silly, the tongue weight will max that truck right out

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
...and even before that, you could buy a half ton Chevy with the 5.7 liter Olds diesel, but let's not talk about that one.

GM 350 diesel defenders are out there now. Maybe they don't remember how bad they were.

When I worked at Western Auto, there was exactly one defender. Just one. He had a Toronado diesel. Injector pump required service about once a year but he did not have head gasket or crank problems. Said the fuel economy made the occasional no start/no run injector pump problem a worthwhile annoyance. Everyone else seemed to have catastrophic failures.

 

[Ramblejam]

Originally Posted By: RangerGress
It would not be my choice of combinations.


You haven't responded yet as to what configuration you ordered.

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: hattaresguy
Holly [censored] that's insane! That truck is a liability they are almost always going to be overloaded!

You put four 200 pound guys in an empty truck and its maxed out!

The tow rating is silly, the tongue weight will max that truck right out


Let's make it worse:

The Nissan Frontier 2.5 gas 4cyl has a payload capacity of 971 lbs. Everyone else on the planet gets a CRD 2.5 diesel with a payload capacity of something like 1500lbs.

The Mazda BT50 and Ford Ranger that the rest of the world gets has a 2000lb payload capacity and a 3.2 diesel.

 

[ls1mike]

Originally Posted By: Spazdog
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
...and even before that, you could buy a half ton Chevy with the 5.7 liter Olds diesel, but let's not talk about that one.

GM 350 diesel defenders are out there now. Maybe they don't remember how bad they were.

When I worked at Western Auto, there was exactly one defender. Just one. He had a Toronado diesel. Injector pump required service about once a year but he did not have head gasket or crank problems. Said the fuel economy made the occasional no start/no run injector pump problem a worthwhile annoyance. Everyone else seemed to have catastrophic failures.


It was poop.

Back to payload, and you all know this, but I always like to put it out there so anyone reading this knows it too.

Power, torque, anyway you want to slice it, does not determine payload alone. Frame, brakes, axles and suspension have a lot to do with it too. My old 89 GMC SRW 1 ton was a dog 215 hp and I want to say something like 325ft/lbs of torque. It had a pretty good payload and was rated to tow 10,000 lbs. It did it, guys towed even more with it. Not sure how happy it was but it was always pretty stable.

If it were power alone. I would be towing my dang trailer with the Trans Am.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: RangerGress


Your welcome.

Says here 2750 ftlbs of torque. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_AGT1500


No, that's at the output shaft of the gearbox, because those numbers would mean a power peak of
Quote:
The problem here I think is that we're conditioned to admire hp. The math is unescable tho. One needs torque to accelerate or pull a load. Because HP is proportional to Torque X RPM, all you need to get high hp is high rpm. Therefore when HP is high, you have to look at the engine's redline to see how much grunt the engine's going to have.


No, wrong!! Again, this is junior-high-school physics: one horsepower equals one horsepower!

Quote:
The race car is a perfect example. If you and I have 300ftlbs at redline, but my redline is 4000rpm and yours is 8000rpm, then I have to shift well before you do. But since I still have 300ftlbs when I upshift, this isn't a big disadvantage, it just means more shifting. But in terms of power the fact that you can hold 300ftlbs to twice my rpms means you have twice the hp. That sounds like a big deal but in reality it boils down to me shifting 2x as often.


No, it boils down to you being WAY behind in a second or two! Horsepower tells you how much you can move at a certain speed. Torque just tells you how much you have to gear down to pull it!

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: ls1mike
Originally Posted By: Spazdog
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
...and even before that, you could buy a half ton Chevy with the 5.7 liter Olds diesel, but let's not talk about that one.

GM 350 diesel defenders are out there now. Maybe they don't remember how bad they were.

When I worked at Western Auto, there was exactly one defender. Just one. He had a Toronado diesel. Injector pump required service about once a year but he did not have head gasket or crank problems. Said the fuel economy made the occasional no start/no run injector pump problem a worthwhile annoyance. Everyone else seemed to have catastrophic failures.


It was poop.

Back to payload, and you all know this, but I always like to put it out there so anyone reading this knows it too.

Power, torque, anyway you want to slice it, does not determine payload alone. Frame, brakes, axles and suspension have a lot to do with it too. My old 89 GMC SRW 1 ton was a dog 215 hp and I want to say something like 325ft/lbs of torque. It had a pretty good payload and was rated to tow 10,000 lbs. It did it, guys towed even more with it. Not sure how happy it was but it was always pretty stable.

If it were power alone. I would be towing my dang trailer with the Trans Am.

Oh, I've driven plenty of M1008 CUCV 1.25ton (five quarter ton

) LWB Chevrolets. 130 hp! You could go freeway speed with 3 troops in the cab and about 8 in the back with a canvas cover....just make [darn] certain that you don't choose a short entrance ramp. It's going to take awhile to get to 55mph.

You could load up a trailer with well over a ton and tow it off road with little or no problem. It should have been able to tow more than that on-road.

 

[JTK]

Fifty something grand for a 1/2 ton Dodge? er.. *RAM*? Wow. That's insane.

 

[RangerGress]

Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
Originally Posted By: RangerGress
It would not be my choice of combinations.


You haven't responded yet as to what configuration you ordered.


Big Horn crewcab, shortbed, 2WD. 1625lbs payload with V8. Add 150lbs of payload for EcoDiesel (you only see this when you "build" a truck on the site), so 1775lbs total paylod according to the Marketing Dept. Call it a reasonable expectation of the truck weighing 1500lbs < GVWR.

Once the negotiation finishes I'm expecting about $35k, so about $6k under my MSRP. The MSRP prices on the site are always high. Most everyone's getting about $4k under MSRP but the dealer is a racing buddy.

 

[RangerGress]

Re. 1hp equals 1hp. We're probably going to have to agree to disagree.

Of course 1hp = 1hp. My point is that the ability of your engine to spin faster isn't all that useful. And with RPM part of the hp equation, that really is what it's about for high rpm engines.

So sure, 1hp = 1 hp. But if you can't see the significance of rpm in hp = torque X RPM/, then we're never going to agree.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: KrisZ

So no matter how you look at, it the less torquey engine will do less work because it will either keep up with the bigger engine but pull less load, or pull the same amount of load but at a slower speed.


Horsepower is work over time. If both engines have 500HP they will both be able to do the same amount of work. The difference is the one is going to have to spin to the moon to do it.

Remember, torque to the wheels directly relates to gear ratio. The engine with less torque will require a lot more gear. Note however that it will be able to spin those gears a heck of a lot faster. That's why the time component of the horsepower calculation needs to be emphasized.

Note A_Harman covered this in these two posts:

Originally Posted By: A_Harman

It wouldn't be such a big deal to design a compound reduction gearbox to boost the 337 ft*lb of torque in the high speed engine to the 1500 ft*lb of torque put out by the low speed engine. But I agree that you wouldn't want to do that. The reason 8000 rpm racing engines are not used in big rigs is economics. They would burn way too much fuel and require too many rebuilds compared to the big diesel. And a truck driver would much prefer doing a 10-hour day driving an engine running 1800 rpm instead of 8000.


And in his response to you:

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Originally Posted By: KrisZ
Work= Force*Distance, there is no power in the equation. So if you are not moving you are not doing any work, no matter how fast the engine is able to apply the said force.


Power IS the equation. Power is the measurement of the rate at which work is performed.

You said that if you're not moving, you aren't doing any work, no matter how fast the engine is able to apply the force. If the engine is turning, work IS being performed. Now, your VEHICLE may not be moving, but that doesn't mean that work isn't being performed. The crankshaft is spinning...work is being done. That work may be absorbed by a slipping clutch or torque converter, which means that it's being converted into heat. But work is being done.


And in my response to A_Harman's question:

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: A_Harman


I added a few little qualifiers in your post to clarify the issue.


Yes, you are 100% correct, power is work being performed for a given amount of time, thank you for your edit

Quote:
Word problem:
An engine is producing 400 Horsepower. How much work does it do in 10 seconds?



2,200,000 lb-ft.

1HP = 550 lb-ft/s

400HP = 220,000 lb-ft/s, so over a 10 second period, we end up with 2.2 million lb-ft.


We see why. 220,000 lb-ft/s is 220,000 lb-ft/s no matter whether the input engine makes 1,500lb-ft of torque or 330. The end result is the same amount of torque a second being applied, which is why we end up with 400HP.

 

[OVERKILL]

This is also why a car like the S2000, with its whopping 160lb-ft of torque (and 237HP) and 2,864 lb curb weight will run bottom 14's (some in the high 13's) at somewhere between 97 and 100Mph.

Which compares handily to a stock Fox Mustang LX notch, with the "rated" 225HP and 300lb-ft of torque that weighs around 2,800lbs.

Both are able to accelerate the same mass to the same speed in the same amount of time because they both make about the same amount of horsepower, despite one making almost twice the torque as the other.

 

[Ramblejam]

Originally Posted By: RangerGress
Big Horn crewcab, shortbed, 2WD. 1625lbs payload with V8. Add 150lbs of payload for EcoDiesel (you only see this when you "build" a truck on the site), so 1775lbs total paylod according to the Marketing Dept. Call it a reasonable expectation of the truck weighing 1500lbs < GVWR.

 

[RangerGress]

Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
Originally Posted By: RangerGress
Big Horn crewcab, shortbed, 2WD. 1625lbs payload with V8. Add 150lbs of payload for EcoDiesel (you only see this when you "build" a truck on the site), so 1775lbs total paylod according to the Marketing Dept. Call it a reasonable expectation of the truck weighing 1500lbs < GVWR.

Ah so, look at that. The tow guide contradicts the build guide. Wtg, I'd not figured out how to get my engine to appear in the tow guide. Well done, thanks for finding that. It makes my payload #'s high by almost 350lbs, bummer. Not a crisis, but it pretty much skinned all the fat off of my solution.

My scheme to put in airbags inside the rear spring coils just got more justification. Maybe from now on race tires go in the trailer instead of in the back of the truck.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
This is also why a car like the S2000, with its whopping 160lb-ft of torque (and 237HP) and 2,864 lb curb weight will run bottom 14's (some in the high 13's) at somewhere between 97 and 100Mph.

Which compares handily to a stock Fox Mustang LX notch, with the "rated" 225HP and 300lb-ft of torque that weighs around 2,800lbs.

Both are able to accelerate the same mass to the same speed in the same amount of time because they both make about the same amount of horsepower, despite one making almost twice the torque as the other.


Spot on. One horsepower equals one horsepower...it really IS that simple!

 

[supton]

Originally Posted By: RangerGress
Ecoboost sucks as a tow vehicle. Under a decent load the mpg drops below 10.

In the post above I neglected to mention diesel prices. Lots of talk in this thread of a big delta between gas and diesel prices, but the delta is exaggerated. Diesel prices vary far more than gas prices so you have to shop a little harder. I see a 40cents/gallon delta within 10mi of our house all the time. When I was towing with my 2006 F-150 I had to buy midgrade because the tow "tune" that was intended to spare the transmission by reducing downshifting, required midgrade octane. By checking diesel prices on the Internet I was always able to find diesel for 7-8% more then midgrade gas.

So once/month I tow 12-14hrs round trip to an event. With the F-150 I got 7mpg, and with the Ecodiesel it's looking like 2.5x that. 2.5x the gas mileage with 7-8% more expensive fuel. That's not chump change.


I'd be worried to find out that cheap diesel fuel is hardly cheap in the long run.

 

[jeepman3071]

Originally Posted By: supton


I'd be worried to find out that cheap diesel fuel is hardly cheap in the long run.


I'd be worried that the emission system repairs on a newer diesel engine would cost me more than the difference between fuel costs. At this point in time, diesel has jumped the shark.

 

[MNgopher]

On the arguement that the delta between diesel and gasoline is exaggerated, I respectfully disagree. The comment made was you just have to shop a little harder. You could say the same for gasoline - I know I price shop gas prices using tools like the gasbuddy site.

As it stands today, the low gas prices here are around 3.32 and the lowest diesel price in the Twin Cities is 3.81 - a 15% price differential. Right off the top, I need to make 15% better fuel mileage on the diesel just to break even and neglecting the higher purchase price.

Nationally, the averages bear similar news: The national average gas price is 3.44, while the average diesel price is 4.02 (as of 2/24/14). Still a 17% spread on average.

In the right duty cycle, perhaps this ecodiesel will make economic sense. I submit that this is likely not the way most 1/2 truck users use their truck however.

 

[IndyIan]

So what's the historical average price difference between gas and diesel? I think between 0 and 10%?
By the EPA ratings the EcoDiesel gets ~33% better mileage than most of the gas trucks with similar capabilities and probably even better relative mileage when you are towing.
So if you are a contractor who does alot of miles and many of those towing an enclosed trailer, you might save $2-3k per year of fuel at normal diesel prices.

 

[supton]

I still don't trust cheap diesel. It comes from when I bought my diesel, and realized that I had about $3k in fuel injectors. The newer systems are even more expensive. It won't take any misfueling these days to wipe out a system; how long will the new systems last with low lubricity fuel? I don't know, and I could be going off FUD: but it's still enough to keep me away.