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Engine Specific Info and Questions => IDI Engine => Topic started by: Riverfurm on July 22, 2007, 04:53:07 am
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Is there any diffrence between on or off road diesel besid the dye color (on-green off-red) and the tax? Here in the US all on road diesel has to be ultra low sulphur, is off road ultra low sulphur too?
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i don't think they've made the switch on off road diesel yet, but i really don't know. i've run off road diesel quite bit before, but only in my "tractors" which happen to look similar to jettas and rabbits,
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Yes, my "tractor" was on empty the other day, and I put a gallon in it from the dyed diesel can at home.
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from what Ive been told the only 2 differences are the color and the fine you will get if you get caught with dyed fuel on the road.
One nice thing in the states is very few cars are diesel so the cops usually think your car is getting ready to throw a rod and dont check the tank. :D
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i've run off road diesel quite bit before, but only in my "tractors" which happen to look similar to jettas and rabbits,
LOL!!! :lol: :lol:
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from what Ive been told the only 2 differences are the color and the fine you will get if you get caught with dyed fuel on the road.
One nice thing in the states is very few cars are diesel so the cops usually think your car is getting ready to throw a rod and dont check the tank. :D
When the last time anyone you know got stopped and had their fuel checked????
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from what Ive been told the only 2 differences are the color and the fine you will get if you get caught with dyed fuel on the road.
One nice thing in the states is very few cars are diesel so the cops usually think your car is getting ready to throw a rod and dont check the tank. :D
When the last time anyone you know got stopped and had their fuel checked????
exactly. i don't even know of people that drive the "big three" trucks that have ever been checked haha. most of the gas stations don't care, i think its pretty obvious when you pull up with two 5 gallon containers in a rabbit/jetta thats clanking like a black smith on coke. as long as you don't put it straight in the tank in front of them they don't care. my friend used to work at a gas station and some guy that used an old ambulance for camping used to always come and fill up like 50 2 gallon containers on with heating oil, the one time my friend wasn't watching him and he started filling up his ambulance straight in the tank and then the owner of the station caught him haha that was pretty amusing.
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i have heard of the state highway patrol dipping tanks of farm trucks at our farm science review show.
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Maybe I should put some IFTA (The fuel tax sticker you see on the big rigs) sticke on the side of my Golf diesel to show I paid the fuel tax.
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is it even possible to dip the tank? i remember trying to siphon some diesel out of my jetta... didn't work because the hose got stuck at this screen.. maybe if the 'dipper' is skinny enough to get past the screen...
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My brother managed to syphon some diesel from my car for his go cart
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a diesel go cart or a go cart that doesnt go any more?[/quote]
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My brother managed to syphon some diesel from my car for his go cart
Do tell more. Pics are good too.
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from what Ive been told the only 2 differences are the color and the fine you will get if you get caught with dyed fuel on the road.
One nice thing in the states is very few cars are diesel so the cops usually think your car is getting ready to throw a rod and dont check the tank. :D
When the last time anyone you know got stopped and had their fuel checked????
Few weeks back. DOT cop pulled over my friend in his Duramax. Just being a dick. Made him drain some from the filter.
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The off-road diesel that my friends have gotten so far is no. 2 diesel and not the low sulphur variety.
One of my friends is a veterinarian and has 6-8 trucks on the road for his business. Each of his trucks gets stopped and tested once a month by average. More if they go to the livestock sales. Typically DMV is there testing every diesel truck at the sales yard.
None of them can remember having a diesel car stopped and tested.
VelocityConservation
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My other truck is a '95 Dodge ram with a cummins. I have been stopped twice in WY, once in CO and once in MT and they made me drain diesel from the filter. It has a flatbed on it , maybe they think it is a commercial vehicle cuz they ask why I haven't gotten DOT numbers on it.My '81 caddy has never been checked .
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Called my fuel supplier. He said everything is ultra low sulphur, on and off road. So Giles might be getting a few off road pumps to overhaul.
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I heard from a old Mercedes guy that of road diesel (or Red-Fuel) has a higher cetane rating then on road diesel.
Now his knowledge is old so it might not have any baring now, considering the low sulfur stuff that's out there now. I don't know when he was going this really.
He just said his Merc ran better and had more power with off road diesel. Do you guys think this has any truth to it?
Or is he just a crazy old tax dodging fool?
-E
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Probably the placebo effect.
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Thats what I thought, I just really wanted to believe him.
Thanks,
-E
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i have heard of the state highway patrol dipping tanks of farm trucks at our farm science review show.
Wouldn't a farm truck like a normal diesel pickup be considered a off-road use vehicle because it is being used for heavy duty.
I was hauling alot I would rather use the red high sulfur diesel.
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My other truck is a '95 Dodge ram with a cummins. I have been stopped twice in WY, once in CO and once in MT and they made me drain diesel from the filter. It has a flatbed on it , maybe they think it is a commercial vehicle cuz they ask why I haven't gotten DOT numbers on it.My '81 caddy has never been checked .
should have two fuel filters then... one 'stealth' and one in plain view :lol:
in my jetta you can't dip the tank.. there's some kind of screen blocking it. i tried syphoning my tank once... wrecked car with practically a full tank of fuel :evil:
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The off-road diesel that my friends have gotten so far is no. 2 diesel and not the low sulphur variety.
<SNIP> Each of his trucks gets stopped and tested once a month <SNIP>
None of them can remember having a diesel car stopped and tested.
Number 2 Diesel doesn't refer to Low Sulphur or Ultra Low Sulphur designations. There is No. 2 LSD and No. 2 ULSD both, so the fuel grade doesn't convey any info about the sulphur content. The Canadian and US deadlines for phase-in were about the same for on-road (October of '07) but most refiners and stations were ahead of schedule. In Canada at least, the refiners have all said "Why make multiple grades of sulphur content?" and they make both on-road and off-road to the same spec (ULSD) rather than have multiple grades of fuel. I can't speak to the processes used by the American refiners, but I know we do a good bit of refining for you guys up here as well, suggesting that at the very least, MOST off-road diesel is already ULSD in the U.S. as well, even though the government isn't mandating it until as late as 2010.
So if you're buying off-road in hopes of saving your pump, you may be misguided. If you're doing it to avoid paying road tax at the pump (because of course you are planning to remit it later like a good citizen :) ) Then you should be just fine.
Nobody really bothers to test diesel cars so far... but then, a lot of people still don't realize that you can get diesel cars here. I could see myself getting dipped / checked back home, but that's because I grew up on a farm.
in my jetta you can't dip the tank.. there's some kind of screen blocking it. i tried syphoning my tank once... wrecked car with practically a full tank of fuel :evil:
Can you see any semi-transparent fuel lines? 8)
Called my fuel supplier. He said everything is ultra low sulphur, on and off road. So Giles might be getting a few off road pumps to overhaul.
Yep - as far as I know, North American refiners and distributors have just switched to one standard, rather than have to double their fuel storage facilities, refining processes, etc. Cheaper and faster to have one kind of fuel rather than two, and that allows them to do less precise forecasting, because they don't have to account separately for on-road and off-road fuels. Actually, for that matter it would also raise the quality of off-road fuel available, because they don't have to sit on old off-road fuel for months and months if it doesn't sell, since the central distributors are just blending the dye onsite rather than the refiners making totally separate fuels.
I heard from a old Mercedes guy that of road diesel (or Red-Fuel) has a higher cetane rating then on road diesel.
<SNIP>
Or is he just a crazy old tax dodging fool?
-E
Crazy old tax dodging fool. Off-road diesel is THE SAME as on-road diesel, broadly speaking. The only difference is the red dye that is added - otherwise, it is just on-road diesel, refined at the same place from the same source. If anything, off-road diesel will typically have poorer characteristics because it is cycled / replaced less frequently and usually stored privately for fleet or commercial purposes.
He may have meant "It smokes more, which means it must be running better" as this is a pretty commonly-held misconception. So much so that new tractors with electronically-controlled injection systems now have smoke built in because the old farmers kept coming back saying "It doesn't smoke anymore, it hasn't got enough power". The engineers scratched their heads for a long time before they realized that modding the injection maps to yield some smoke resolved the end-user "power" complaints, although dyno results remained identical. 8)
i have heard of the state highway patrol dipping tanks of farm trucks at our farm science review show.
Wouldn't a farm truck like a normal diesel pickup be considered a off-road use vehicle because it is being used for heavy duty.
I was hauling alot I would rather use the red high sulfur diesel.
Nope. A certain portion of it can be considered agricultural, and depending on where you are, you CAN get away with using off-road fuel, but there are legal requirements as to how much you need to be pulling, what percentage of the time, and how close you need to be to the farm and stuff. As a general rule, if you're on the highway, you need to be running on-road fuel, but legal requirements vary from place to place.
As mentioned above, red number 2 diesel isn't (by definition, at least) any higher in sulphur than clear / blue / yellow / standard number 2 diesel. Home heating oil will be, but it's just bad stuff for vehicular use generally speaking.
Here's a link to another Diesel No. 2 thread from earlier with some good info on diesel fuel standards and characteristics in North America in particular:
http://vwdiesel.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=12117
{Edited To Combine Two Posts Rather than Double-Posting}
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Hmm, wonder if I can deduct the tax paid on my off-road driving from my return? :P
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i'm sure there would be a way to rig up a stealth system... have to hide the real lines vs the fake ones though... and make sure that they're nice and dark to avoid detection :lol:
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The cool thing about living in a backroad hick type environment in ohio is that we are WAY behind in emissions testing and such. There was a guy who he and his family have owned an excavating company for 40 plus years and they have never been checked for running off road until this year. Everything the guy had was full of the red dye. Cement trucks, dump trucks, straight trucks, and even his personal pickup. But even with all the fines he still made his money back over such a long time. But the only way he got caught was by taking it way out of our county and then all the stuff got checked.
The other thing is there is a place in town that sells bulk fuel. My cousin buys home heating oil from there and just started to use off road diesel there as well. The one day the guy said to take key number one and go to pump one for off road and fill it up. My cousin went out got half way there and said that is the same key I just got home heating oil from. Went back in and asked the guy and he said they were one and the same. They came from the same pump and tank in the ground.... the kicker is they have 2 different prices for the same product....but we are a bunch of hicks around here so maybe we just do things different.
If I ever would run off road in my car I know that it would seem to smoke a little less than the on road version for some reason. Also it would seem to get a little better fuel economy and run a little hotter temps too. I am just "guessing" but it could even smell a bit like eggs comming from the tail pipe. Just a "theory" though.
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i have heard of the state highway patrol dipping tanks of farm trucks at our farm science review show.
Wouldn't a farm truck like a normal diesel pickup be considered a off-road use vehicle because it is being used for heavy duty.
I was hauling alot I would rather use the red high sulfur diesel.
i think if you have a registration sticker u can get in trouble for running the wrong fuel.
and really i'm not a lawyer but im curious about the legality of the police checking the fuel, they should need permission from the owner/operator of the vehicle to search the interior with out probable cause, so why would they be able to check your fuel tank with out probable cause. honestly even if i wasn't running any and i was asked to drain some fuel i'd tell them to go fist. because this liquid gold stuff is expensive.
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i have heard of the state highway patrol dipping tanks of farm trucks at our farm science review show.
Wouldn't a farm truck like a normal diesel pickup be considered a off-road use vehicle because it is being used for heavy duty.
I was hauling alot I would rather use the red high sulfur diesel.
i think if you have a registration sticker u can get in trouble for running the wrong fuel.
and really i'm not a lawyer but im curious about the legality of the police checking the fuel, they should need permission from the owner/operator of the vehicle to search the interior with out probable cause, so why would they be able to check your fuel tank with out probable cause. honestly even if i wasn't running any and i was asked to drain some fuel i'd tell them to go fist. because this liquid gold stuff is expensive.
or just light up a big fat cigar while you're draining and watch them get scared :lol: you guys watch the episode on myth busters? the diesel flamed out pretty quick and was only able to light with a propane torch! it didn't even follow the stream of diesel... poor gassers!!! 8)
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u could always play dumb and act like u dunno how to get fuel out, only in. most new vehicles have a baffle in them to prevent people from syphening fuel out of them. so i dont see how they check have the time anyway.
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My local CFN station has 500ppm posted on the OffRoad pump, it made my tractor run better too. We will see if my tractor gets better mileage :)
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i haven't put any of the heating oil in my tractor for a while once i see what mileage i get on this tank i'll have to try some off road in my tractor
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In the fine over taxed state of California all Diesel is the same with different dyes added. The off road is not taxedd for highway use and the fine can be as much as $10,000 if caught cheating. How they catch you depends on how much you talk and the other contractors talk. Way too many talkers out there for me to risk it. WVO or Biodiesel is a better risk.
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I was in wisconsin last year and all I could get was ULSD. After a while I noticed my fuel gauge never showed full even with a full tank. The whole trip back to Alaska the gauge got worse every fill up. When I got home I filled my tank with pre 2007 diesel and the gauge went right to the top. So for some reason the float wasn't floating good enough.