General Diesel or Petrol for traveling

I think, the essentials of the earlier post about petrol vs diesel (when traveling) need to be extracted from there, hundreds of replies rather confuse the matter:

In a nutshell, petrolheads always prefer petrol bar any rational. Well, nothing wrong with that, imagine everything we do´d be rational, no emotions whatsoever. Pretty horrible. The disadvantages when on long journeys are range, storage, potentially price and availability.

Petrol or diesel, problem nowadays are the emissions and the engine´s setup and its devices to cope with ever more stringent requirements. The quality of fuel is not consistent throughout the world, petrol suffers from low octane, diesel from high sulphur, both from a varying degree of purity. Analogue engine management, lower pressures and much simpler exhaust tract components could cope with the different qualities of fuel across the world (up to a certain extent) - until the early/mid 90´s, when electronic engine management and catalytic converters, and DPF´s at a later stage, came into being and took over.

Modern engines are neither as petrol nor diesel too happy running on poor fuel qualities. A temporary measure for petrol engines are octane boosters, for diesel engines a GD30 mixture. Vehicles should always be equipped with water separators (Racor filters) and filled up at reputable stations only, if fuel quality is doubtful. When using jerrycans, filled up locally, fuel should be poured through a fine meshed sieve (ladies nylons) into the tank. Filters for the filler neck are available for some vehicles.

For extended periods on "poor" fuel, DPF or CC need to be taken out, replaced by a blank with the engine management recalibrated accordingly.

If your garage is telling you, it can't be done, don't be fooled. Everything can be done, guess it depends on your location, on whom to turn to best. Small ads sometimes reveal experts in engine management protocols and their coding...but only sometimes, the real experts are usually not that easy to come by...

I

frankkk said:

I think, the essentials of the earlier post about petrol vs diesel (when traveling) need to be extracted from there, hundreds of replies rather confuse the matter:

In a nutshell, petrolheads always prefer petrol bar any rational. Well, nothing wrong with that, imagine everything we do´d be rational, no emotions whatsoever. Pretty horrible. The disadvantages when on long journeys are range, storage, potentially price and availability.

Petrol or diesel, problem nowadays are the emissions and the engine´s setup and its devices to cope with ever more stringent requirements. The quality of fuel is not consistent throughout the world, petrol suffers from low octane, diesel from high sulphur, both from a varying degree of purity. Analogue engine management, lower pressures and much simpler exhaust tract components could cope with the different qualities of fuel across the world (up to a certain extent) - until the early/mid 90´s, when electronic engine management and catalytic converters, and DPF´s at a later stage, came into being and took over.

Modern engines are neither in petrol nor in diesel too happy running on poor fuel qualities. A temporary measure for petrol engines are octane boosters, for diesel engines a GD30 mixture. Vehicles should always be equipped with water separators (Racor filters) and filled up at reputable stations only, if fuel quality is doubtful. When using jerrycans, filled up locally, fuel should be poured through a fine meshed sieve (ladies nylons) into the tank. Filters for the filler neck are available for some vehicles.

For extended periods on "poor" fuel, DPF or CC need to be taken out, replaced by a blank with the engine management recalibrated accordingly.

If your garage is telling you, it can't be done, don't be fooled. Everything can be done, guess it depends on your location, on whom to turn to best. Small ads sometimes reveal experts in engine management protocols and their coding...but only sometimes, the real experts are usually not that easy to come by...

Click to expand...

I’ve yet to digest all of your post and will ponder for a while ! As for using fuel out of cans, I always carry a Mr Funnel which is by far the best way I know of to filter fuel that is of suspect quality.
I suppose a major concern for me is the Grenadier warranty. If you disable emissions equipment this may Invalidate the warranty and if it can be proven that high sulphur fuel has been used this may also invalidate the warranty in the event of a claim.

frankkk said:

I think, the essentials of the earlier post about petrol vs diesel (when traveling) need to be extracted from there, hundreds of replies rather confuse the matter:

In a nutshell, petrolheads always prefer petrol bar any rational. Well, nothing wrong with that, imagine everything we do´d be rational, no emotions whatsoever. Pretty horrible. The disadvantages when on long journeys are range, storage, potentially price and availability.

Petrol or diesel, problem nowadays are the emissions and the engine´s setup and its devices to cope with ever more stringent requirements. The quality of fuel is not consistent throughout the world, petrol suffers from low octane, diesel from high sulphur, both from a varying degree of purity. Analogue engine management, lower pressures and much simpler exhaust tract components could cope with the different qualities of fuel across the world (up to a certain extent) - until the early/mid 90´s, when electronic engine management and catalytic converters, and DPF´s at a later stage, came into being and took over.

Modern engines are neither as petrol nor diesel too happy running on poor fuel qualities. A temporary measure for petrol engines are octane boosters, for diesel engines a GD30 mixture. Vehicles should always be equipped with water separators (Racor filters) and filled up at reputable stations only, if fuel quality is doubtful. When using jerrycans, filled up locally, fuel should be poured through a fine meshed sieve (ladies nylons) into the tank. Filters for the filler neck are available for some vehicles.

For extended periods on "poor" fuel, DPF or CC need to be taken out, replaced by a blank with the engine management recalibrated accordingly.

If your garage is telling you, it can't be done, don't be fooled. Everything can be done, guess it depends on your location, on whom to turn to best. Small ads sometimes reveal experts in engine management protocols and their coding...but only sometimes, the real experts are usually not that easy to come by...

Click to expand...

Good summary, couple of observations…

Eliminating the DPF is clearly the easier option for dedicated use in high-sulfur environments. For those just visiting, an alternative is adding manual DPF inspection and cleaning (in situ or disassembled) to the maintenance regime. This task easiest done with solvents but any acid or alkali mix that doesn‘t damage the filter will suffice.

In the UK, Avon Tuning are a good choice for remaps/deletes.

Straining through nylon etc might not be enough for high pressure fuel systems - Mr Funnel as noted above may produce better results.

The only other thing to check is whether the fuel filler has a restrictor in place (not sure as yet for the IG, I presume no), as on other EU vehicles this restrictor is incompatible with fuel nozzles used in some locations (Russia, Central Asia, not sure where else). This drove us pretty nuts thanks Land Rover.

frankkk said:

I think, the essentials of the earlier post about petrol vs diesel (when traveling) need to be extracted from there, hundreds of replies rather confuse the matter:

In a nutshell, petrolheads always prefer petrol bar any rational. Well, nothing wrong with that, imagine everything we do´d be rational, no emotions whatsoever. Pretty horrible. The disadvantages when on long journeys are range, storage, potentially price and availability.

Petrol or diesel, problem nowadays are the emissions and the engine´s setup and its devices to cope with ever more stringent requirements. The quality of fuel is not consistent throughout the world, petrol suffers from low octane, diesel from high sulphur, both from a varying degree of purity. Analogue engine management, lower pressures and much simpler exhaust tract components could cope with the different qualities of fuel across the world (up to a certain extent) - until the early/mid 90´s, when electronic engine management and catalytic converters, and DPF´s at a later stage, came into being and took over.

Modern engines are neither as petrol nor diesel too happy running on poor fuel qualities. A temporary measure for petrol engines are octane boosters, for diesel engines a GD30 mixture. Vehicles should always be equipped with water separators (Racor filters) and filled up at reputable stations only, if fuel quality is doubtful. When using jerrycans, filled up locally, fuel should be poured through a fine meshed sieve (ladies nylons) into the tank. Filters for the filler neck are available for some vehicles.

For extended periods on "poor" fuel, DPF or CC need to be taken out, replaced by a blank with the engine management recalibrated accordingly.

If your garage is telling you, it can't be done, don't be fooled. Everything can be done, guess it depends on your location, on whom to turn to best. Small ads sometimes reveal experts in engine management protocols and their coding...but only sometimes, the real experts are usually not that easy to come by...

Click to expand...

Both Petrol and Diesel have advantages and barriers for travelling, but for me the overall principle is "Keep it simple, keep it stock". The inverse of this is that the more modifications you make to a car, the more unique the car becomes, and the more unique the car becomes, the more likely you are to experience unusual problems that are difficult to fix when travelling.

It's a lot easier to get a high performance engine running on bad petrol than it is to get a modern diesel to run on high sulfur diesel. To modify a diesel, it's a mechanical and software solution (remap, interrupt any codes from the ECU, and remove or bypass the DPF/EGR system physically). To modify a modern petrol motor to run on lower octane fuel, it's often only a software map from what I understand - adjust the timing so it's not "pinging" and can hold an idle; it won't put out the full potential power but it'll run on worse fuel for sure. This is not an area I am an expert at though and I welcome correction on this score; I am aware this is fundamentally what was done with the Triumph Street Triple engine when they put it in the Tiger -- basically tuned it so it'd run on gas from the side of any road in the world.

As far as availability, prevailing wisdom used to be that since diesel is the fuel of industry, it's available everywhere. But motorcycles are the most common form of powered transportation on the planet - they are literally everywhere - and almost none of them run on diesel so petrol availability is as good or better.

Regardless of fuel type though, quality of fuel is absolutely critical - water in fuel is especially troublesome. There are chemicals (alcohol-based) that we get here in Canada that can be added to fuel to encapsulate and remove water, but an in-line filter is also a good idea. As is a filter to use when filling up -- on one trip the fuel we had access to was particularly dodgy looking so we actually filtered it twice -- once from the pump into the jerry can, and once from the jerry can into the tank. That may have been overkill but to spin a phrase, "what's good for Grey Goose (double filtered vodka) is good for the Gander" which in this case was a jeep JK!

The other thing to keep in mind for travel is that time before you leave on the trip - in some jurisdictions, vehicles require emissions testing every few years. A modified diesel will not pass emissions challenges, but a factory-tuned-for-low-octane petrol motor will.

globalgregors said:

Good summary, couple of observations…

Eliminating the DPF is clearly the easier option for dedicated use in high-sulfur environments. For those just visiting, an alternative is adding manual DPF inspection and cleaning (in situ or disassembled) to the maintenance regime. This task easiest done with solvents but any acid or alkali mix that doesn‘t damage the filter will suffice.

In the UK, Avon Tuning are a good choice for remaps/deletes.

Straining through nylon etc might not be enough for high pressure fuel systems - Mr Funnel as noted above may produce better results.

The only other thing to check is whether the fuel filler has a restrictor in place (not sure as yet for the IG, I presume no), as on other EU vehicles this restrictor is incompatible with fuel nozzles used in some locations (Russia, Central Asia, not sure where else). This drove us pretty nuts thanks Land Rover.

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I'd love to learn more about that manual DPF process if you have resources you can share - for travelers, that would be a very handy skill to have.

ChasingOurTrunks said:

I'd love to learn more about that manual DPF process if you have resources you can share - for travelers, that would be a very handy skill to have.

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Some info here… with the interesting note from BMW that the “method is only permitted once”

ChasingOurTrunks said:

I'd love to learn more about that manual DPF process if you have resources you can share - for travelers, that would be a very handy skill to have.

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It is possible that Ineos will release an authorized cleaning procedure so I would check with your local service manager if this is not provided in the vehicle documentation/CAD-IT solution.

Illustrative in-situ cleaning procedure
DPF Home Clean (requires removal of DPF)

Although it’s not mentioned in the home clean video, I reckon recording back pressure via OBD scanning tool before and after the clean would make sense in all situations.
This will then give you a KPI of fouling in the future and inform an assessment of whether a clean is required based purely on OBD data (rather than waiting for a symptom or fault code). In the DS the OBD reports pressure pre and post filter as well as the delta. Or rather it used to.

Thanks @Zacman110 and @globalgregors -- that's super interesting to know about. That cleaner product did a great job on the DPF cleaning and while it does look like it needs some specialized tools, it doesn't look too terribly complicated to the point where you couldn't do that in the shade of a tree if you needed to though I'd want to be sure I can do it in a way that keeps the environment around me clean. On balance, a delete of that system is probably preferable but it's nice to know there are other options.

ChasingOurTrunks said:

Thanks @Zacman110 and @globalgregors -- that's super interesting to know about. That cleaner product did a great job on the DPF cleaning and while it does look like it needs some specialized tools, it doesn't look too terribly complicated to the point where you couldn't do that in the shade of a tree if you needed to though I'd want to be sure I can do it in a way that keeps the environment around me clean. On balance, a delete of that system is probably preferable but it's nice to know there are other options.

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Yes, spot on. The only specialist tool seen there is a professional-grade Diagnostic interface, one can bodge along with a basic scan tool. I was using a code reader which provided the data points in question. Check out this link to see the difference in price and function between these various related tools.

globalgregors said:

Yes, spot on. The only specialist tool seen there is a professional-grade Diagnostic interface, one can bodge along with a basic scan tool. I was using a code reader which provided the data points in question. Check out this link to see the difference in price and function between these various related tools.

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Yes I use a Bluetooth OBDII dongle and an iPhone app - the depth of data is impressive; I’ve even fine tuned a sensor that needed to be rotated just-so for the right voltage (throttle position sensor on my bike) with this version. One doesn’t need to spend ten grand on the scan tools these days making roadside repairs even easier.

Petrol will be phased out in the near future... the haters will make it so. However, will Diesel be around for a while as TRUCKS will be using it for ages to come??? I don't know the answer. Towing with "Turbo Petrol" will burn fuel hard - I would love to see what some test results show on the Gren with Petrol under load... Diesel not so much.

Zacman110 said:

Some info here… with the interesting note from BMW that the “method is only permitted once”

Click to expand...

Isn't this method a "last resort" because the DPF has become full, triggered a regen which has been unsuccessful/incomplete, DPF continues to fill as (for whatever reasons, unavoidable or not) the vehicle has continued to operate in a driving profile where the parameters for automatic DPF regeneration have not been met, until overloaded.

Isn't this where the amber DPF warning light then turns red and the only possible remedy is to attempt the manual clean?

Given that there is a service function “Diesel particulate filter regeneration” that can be performed while stationary, then why wouldn't you stop on an amber warning and complete the task?

You just need access to this service function, whether via an OBDII reader or "secret" menus via the touchscreen.

DCPU said:

Isn't this method a "last resort" because the DPF has become full, triggered a regen which has been unsuccessful/incomplete, DPF continues to fill as (for whatever reasons, unavoidable or not) the vehicle has continued to operate in a driving profile where the parameters for automatic DPF regeneration have not been met, until overloaded.

Isn't this where the amber DPF warning light then turns red and the only possible remedy is to attempt the manual clean?

Given that there is a service function “Diesel particulate filter regeneration” that can be performed while stationary, then why wouldn't you stop on an amber warning and complete the task?

You just need access to this service function, whether via an OBDII reader or "secret" menus via the touchscreen.

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The symptom we encountered using high-sulphur diesel was not a failure to trigger the regen cycle, but rather problems associated with sulphurous deposits that did not appear to burn as the usual ash would. These deposits caked the filter over time and would break off in coarse crumbles which occasionally ingested into the downstream pressure monitoring tube, producing an incorrect (high) reading which produced a fault/pushed the vehicle into limp mode.

Similar crusty deposits can be seen at the exhaust tips of vehicles running high-sulphur diesel. I think @Logsplitter provided a photo earlier(?).

Hence I’m not certain that the in-situ ‘chemical’ flush would work - it would need to both effectively dissolve the deposits mentioned and at a sufficient rate, noting one can’t substitute an overly caustic/acidic solution for fear of damaging filter elements. I’m presently assuming that dissassembly, inspection and manual cleaning might be prudent until one is confident of the service regimen.

globalgregors said:

The symptom we encountered using high-sulphur diesel was not a failure to trigger the regen cycle, but rather problems associated with sulphurous deposits that did not appear to burn as the usual ash would. These deposits caked the filter over time and would break off in coarse crumbles which occasionally ingested into the downstream pressure monitoring tube, producing an incorrect (high) reading which produced a fault/pushed the vehicle into limp mode.

Similar crusty deposits can be seen at the exhaust tips of vehicles running high-sulphur diesel. I think @Logsplitter provided a photo earlier(?).

Hence I’m not certain that the in-situ ‘chemical’ flush would work - it would need to both effectively dissolve the deposits mentioned and at a sufficient rate, noting one can’t substitute an overly caustic/acidic solution for fear of damaging filter elements. I’m presently assuming that dissassembly, inspection and manual cleaning might be prudent until one is confident of the service regimen.

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I should mention that the temporary fix in this scenario is simply to remove the pressure sensor tube/clear any blockages/reset the error code.
This’ll get one going again but obviously leaves the root cause unaddressed.

So I spoke to someone at from ineos at the drive day yestereday. He said don't worry about the diesel durability. He was convinced it was sorted.

DesertGecko said:

So I spoke to someone at from ineos at the drive day yestereday. He said don't worry about the diesel durability. He was convinced it was sorted.

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I am not sure anyone can say with absolute certainty that everything is “sorted” but there are a good few things that give confidence, it’s a quite well known and well respected motor that to date doesn’t show a significant history of failures. It has a built in oil air separator (catch can +) so less likely to clog intakes. The DPF doesn’t seem to have widespread issues and lots of them in X5s are used in urban stop start environments with short trips etc.

One of my reasons for preferring diesel is that, in Australia at least, if you pull up at the bowser you are presented with up to FOUR options for petrol (E10, 91RON, 95RON, 98RON) but only ONE diesel option. I do not like having too many choices, it leads me to overthink things.

I just look for the 91 symbol

Tazzieman said:

I just look for the 91 symbol

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I understand the grenadier will be 95 min. So no more of that!

Solmanic said:

One of my reasons for preferring diesel is that, in Australia at least, if you pull up at the bowser you are presented with up to FOUR options for petrol (E10, 91RON, 95RON, 98RON) but only ONE diesel option. I do not like having too many choices, it leads me to overthink things.

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Out west there is usually some form of petrol or Opal. Diesel is definitely the staple though.