Thread: Petrol v diesel economy

Originally Posted by No.3

Yeah - it's bloody eye opening when you get the mechanic mate to do the plugs on the mother's little '07 Tiida. Ahhh, bro - that pile of parts includes an intake manifold. Yep, gotta get that off to get to the plugs...

Now - don't get me wrong, the Tiida plugs are cheap by comparison to some of the modern petrols at $45 a piece and only four of them - but even that is three hours of labour just to change 4 spark plugs (including a couple of seized fasteners and other fartarounds). It's a bit of a joke really, Tiida spark plugs are dearer than some diesel engine glow plugs.

The older diesels like the patrols are good in some respects, including not being particularly fussy about fuel (as long as it's compression ignition compatible it's good to go). Biggest issue with them are they are getting hard for some parts, or you are forced to use some aftermarket bit that doesn't really meet the grade for lifespan. I went through three sets of mounts in one of my Safari's, first set were the original factory and lasted 16 years, second set lasted just over the warranty period and the third set were 10 months so I got a refund on them under warranty (rubber parts were separating off the steel sections). I ended up building a set of solid steel and red urethane mounts - they were still going last time I checked after 11 years. Probably need to get a bloody cert if you did that today...

Hope you replace with platinum, nothing like snapping a stud off in an alloy head!

Originally Posted by Maca49

Hope you replace with platinum, nothing like snapping a stud off in an alloy head!

I think that Platinum Iridium Newfangled Unobtanium were the only choice we had if I recall correctly. Everything cheaper were out of stock, and by cheaper I mean only a couple of bucks...