2009 LMM regen frequency = every 357 miles

[Mark Rinker]

You got it. Local dealership pulled the stats during a routine checkup. My suspicions were confirmed, that its regenning about once per tankful, for the first 25K of service. ~105 gallons of extra #2 at $3.10/gallon = $325 worth of fuel consumed by regens.

When I was there, a guy with a new 2011 K2500HD was getting his first urea refill - at 6000 miles. Shop bill was $50.


Rough extrapolation is DPF and (dealership installed) urea could cost a whopping ~$2200 during first 100K of operation.

[madmatt]

Mark is this LMM one of the trucks you tow with frequently??

[richp]

Hi,

Well I have something, although it might not be very catchy -- questions nobody seems to care about.

Over the life of a truck, how much extra fuel will be consumed by regeneration, in relation to the alleged savings in pollution output?

With regard to the 2011 machines, what is the extra cost to the consumer for not just the urea, but the additional hardware on the engine, and how does that compare with any asserted savings in pollution output for that engine?

How much farther can this go before owning a diesel is no longer cost-effective for anyone (unlike Mark) who does not tow constantly?

When the market to guys like me -- who could conceivably get away with towing with a gasser -- dries up, what will manufacturers do when light truck diesel sales dwindle?

When will this stupidity stop? The government has screwed up both the automotive market and that of the food industry with its ethanol subsidies (which AlGore recently acknowledged was a mistake to advocate) -- lowering fuel economy, increasing corn prices, etc. They advocate and subsidize (with our tax dollars) electric vehicles that can't go very far, go even less distance when you have to use a heater in the winter or air conditioner in the summer, and rely on electricity supplied by a grid that can't expand efficiently due to other Federal regulations. This continual Federal pressure to squeeze the last few percentages of pollution out of the cleanest vehicle fleet in the world is ridiculous.
(Tirade off.)

FWIW.

[hapaschold]

mark,

how was information stored ? number of regens and duration ?

i ll have to ask when i take my 09 in early next week..

or maybe i wont given the last few months of crap i ve been going thru.

[madmatt]

I've asked those very questions before myself. I've been told it cost around $6k to outfit each truck with the urea related equipment.

[Mark Rinker]

Mark is this LMM one of the trucks you tow with frequently??

Yes...its my ONLY truck remaining, so its my tow vehicle, plow truck, etc...

[Mark Rinker]

Over the life of a truck, how much extra fuel will be consumed by regeneration, in relation to the alleged savings in pollution output?

I would guess MUCH more. I don't see how ~300-500 gallons of extra fuel burned by each DPF equipped Duramax on the road in the first 150K miles can be environmentally friendly. Now add Fords, Dodges, etc...

With regard to the 2011 machines, what is the extra cost to the consumer for not just the urea, but the additional hardware on the engine, and how does that compare with any asserted savings in pollution output for that engine?

Don't know...

How much farther can this go before owning a diesel is no longer cost-effective for anyone (unlike Mark) who does not tow constantly?

Its not that effective for me, either...ask my wife...or my accountant.

When the market to guys like me -- who could conceivably get away with towing with a gasser -- dries up, what will manufacturers do when light truck diesel sales dwindle?

Hopefully march on the EPA headquarters with torches. Cali CARB offices, next...

When will this stupidity stop?

Soon we can all pray, but I don't see how, or when.


The government has screwed up both the automotive market and that of the food industry with its ethanol subsidies (which AlGore recently acknowledged was a mistake to advocate) -- lowering fuel economy, increasing corn prices, etc. They advocate and subsidize (with our tax dollars) electric vehicles that can't go very far, go even less distance when you have to use a heater in the winter or air conditioner in the summer, and rely on electricity supplied by a grid that can't expand efficiently due to other Federal regulations. This continual Federal pressure to squeeze the last few percentages of pollution out of the cleanest vehicle fleet in the world is ridiculous.
(Tirade off.)

It is ridiculous. I would love to see a documentary on the Duramax, from 2001 - 2011, chronicling the engineering pressures to meet EPA regs, the effect on $$$, the effect on the environment.

Madness.



FWIW.

Alot.



(My thoughts are in bold italics, above...)

[JohnC]

It's even worse than that. Regeneration converts inert carbon trapped in the DPF into CO2, the very thing every tree hugger is complaining is causing global warming. In the process it uses extra fuel, which produces more CO2 and no benefit.

[richp]

Hi,

This whole situation reminds me of that great line from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, where Butch says, "I've got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals."

Why is it that a bunch of old farts like us can so clearly identify the flaws in these policies, and yet all those supposedly smart folks in Washington can't?

Hang in there folks, the next few years are really going to be interesting....

[Mark Rinker]

From my perspective, the squeeking wheel gets greased ($$$)...the marginalized or less represented have a harder time getting policy change in their favor.

Also the whole topic of junk science and policy...

Personally, I think this is the new USA - love it or leave it. My plan is to cooperate voluntarily less and less - i.e. the DPF comes off. As for urea - well, there should be a workaround available for that, soon enough.

:p

[richp]

Hi,

I guess I'm trending along the lines of dropping my DPF once I'm out of warranty.

Anyone know authoritatively what the legal implications of for doing that? Will EPA pollution cops track me down like a dirty dog?

[Kennedy]

I haven't heard of any major issues yet so long as those who have testing return it for testing.

I did hear of an interesting issue with Commercial vehicles in NY. Supposedly they check and won't let you onto certain job sites (possibly state or Federal projects) without all devices intact and they supposedly check. May be NYC specific I am not sure. Pure hearsay.

My best advice is to keep the equipment and make your alterations easily returned to stock.

[Spoolmak]

Interesting discussion!!!

I've been gearing up to replace my 04 Duramax with a 2011 K3500 Duramax crew cab,long box and I'm beginning to reconsider.
Cost of diesel here today is $1.10.9 per liter, or $5.03 per Canadian gallon, or $4.19 for the smaller US gallon. Regular gas is $1.00 per liter. In 04 when I bought the truck, diesel was half that, and gas was 25 cents a liter more expensive. How times have changed!

Up here, the Duramax and Allison option add $12,000 to the truck. MSR's are in the $65,000 to $73,000 range. I can get a well optioned gasser for $48,000 MSR minus discounts and dealer incentives. I had trouble understanding this difference until I read Mark's post re the expense of adding the Urea and regen equipment.

I love the torque - but being retired - money doesn't grow on trees. Not sure what I'll do. Luckily, the '04 is running really well! It may just stay in the family.

Tor

[richp]

Hi Mark,

I was re-reading your original post. It seems to say that the 2011 trucks have both DPF and urea injection -- or at least your sentence about total cost sort of reads that way.

I didn't realize both systems were on the new trucks -- I thought the urea did away with the need for the DPF. If both are on the new ones, things are even worse than I realized....

[Mark Rinker]

Bwahahaha, Rich. ;) Think like a bureaucrat, Rich...nothing ever expires or goes away. All inefficiencies are cumulative.

http://www.thedieselpage.com/duramax/LMLDuramaxc.htm

[richp]

Hi Mark,

Dumb me -- you're right, I know how the government works. I guess I missed that when I read the article originally.

What catches my eye in re-reading it, is the pollutant reduction already achieved between 1990 and 2010 -- before this latest travesty.

- Particulate matter emissions are down from 0.55 to .001

- NOx emissions are down from 5.5 to 0.2

We are now being asked/forced to spend thousands in initial outlay, and more thousands in operating costs, to chase the last miniscule percentage of reduction.

[Mark Rinker]

I think its all part of a plan...a plot, if you will...to transform all of our vehicles into air scrubbers. Soon, we'll be driving to work, and improving our air quality.

If the stock market crashes and you lock yourself in the garage with the car running, you'll wake up in the morning feeling energized and refreshed...

[SDakDmax]

I admit I can get confused, but I'm not sure I understand the math on the urea. $50 for 6000 miles, that would be 16.6 changes in 100,000 miles. that would make $833 for 100,000 miles, not sure what it costs to do yourself I would think less. Am I missing something here? Merry Christmas to all............

[Mark Rinker]

I admit I can get confused, but I'm not sure I understand the math on the urea. $50 for 6000 miles, that would be 16.6 changes in 100,000 miles. that would make $833 for 100,000 miles, not sure what it costs to do yourself I would think less. Am I missing something here? Merry Christmas to all............


Add cost of additional fuel consumed for regens. Results will vary on vehicle use. I guessed at some average consumption, well below my heavily loaded towing average...

I suspect that low cost urea sources will appear on the market, and anyone willing to buy 50gallons at a time will be doing these refills in their garage for $10 pretty soon.

[cowboywildbill]

We traded our 07 classic LBZ for a 2011 LML.same type 3500 CC DRW's. We get better milage towing and empty on our LML than we did with our LBZ including regens. I have only had 3 regens in 2200 miles. So the DEF is a plus in my book. Don't panic guy's, bottom line I'm getting 1.5 mpg towing and 3 mpg better empty on this new truck. And our LBZ only had the Cat and EGR. And this new truck blows our LBZ away with power while towing. And I thought our LBZ pulled great and it did. So go figure?

[DickWells]

Last I heard, this Fall, from a neighbor who runs an OTR trucking company, and has an 010 tractor with (I think) a Cat in it, is, that he's spending several hundred bucks a month on urea, alone. Hates his 09 Ford diesel pickup, for the mileage he's getting, VS the power output, too. Sort of harks back to 73~, when we had the mfgs scrambling to meet emmisions, while halving, or worse, the mileage. How much less polution do you get, overall, when you make less smoke, but burn tripple the fuel?

[cowboywildbill]

I was talking to an Owner Operator that has a late model Peterbuilt double sleeper conventional tractor that he drives, I can't recall if he said he was running a Cat in that one or not. But he uses about $ 40 to $ 60 a month in urea. He was happy with it, he claims it get's decent milage and basically offsets the price of fuel. Cost about the same per mile as his non DPF trucks. He did say that one of his trucks has a Cat with twin turbo's in it and he has nothing but trouble with the turbo's and EGR system in that one. He said he will never buy another powerplant with twin tubo's.
And you have to be careful where you park your rig because they will steal the Catalytic convertors off of them in a heartbeat. And I have a friend that had a brand new F450 Ford last year with the 6.4 in it. He said it only averaged 9 mpg empty and 5.2 to 7.5 while towing. He traded it in 7 months. He bought a new 2010 DMAX He just about doubled his average mpg and said it pulled better/stronger also. But he took a bath on the trade in$$$.
But he's poorer but happy now. I do think it is dumb to burn more fuel to clean emmisions? Kinda like an oxy moron. Imagine what these new trucks could do power and mpg wise if they didn't have a cat or regen or urea and no egr system in them. And this is interesting, I don't know if it's true, but I heard someone say that Al Gore owns or has major holdings in a urea manufacturing company. Go figure!

[cowboywildbill]

I misquoted . He said it works out to about the same cost per mile, maybe a little cheaper to operate the DPF with DEF system as it does to operate his other trucks with just the DPF. He prefered the non DEF DPF trucks, but that is a thing of the past.

[Spoolmak]

A post above quoted $50 to have a dealer fill the urea tank, and someone wondered how much one could save by buying it after market and filling up the urea tank yourself.

Well, for you Canadians, I have news!!!! I checked on the cost of the DEF fluid at a local Canadian Tire store. It is $9.99 per US gallon. So, doing it yourself, the fluid refill for six US gallons will cost you $59.94 plus the sales taxes (in BC 12%) for a total of $67.13.

Sounds like the $50 from the dealer is a deal. I just wonder what will happen to the price of the fluid as time passes by. You ever see a decrease in price of a fluid we need for our vehicles???

If you can, please let me know.

Tor

[cowboywildbill]

Typicaly from what I've heard a usual refill at 5,000 miles takes about 4 to 5 US gallons.
So depending on how empty it is
I guess it would be a good deal. It would be a great deal if you stretch your oil change out to 6,500 miles and then had them fill it.

[2tough2park]

[QUOTE=Mark Rinker;276328]I think its all part of a plan...a plot, if you will...to transform all of our vehicles into air scrubbers. Soon, we'll be driving to work, and improving our air quality.

That's been considered already believe it or not. A few years ago, a chemical company developed a coating that converts ozone to oxygen just by airflow over the coating. Volvo stepped forward and tested the coating on auto radiators figuring it'd be the perfect part to coat since there is not only sufficient airflow but guarenteed airflow. The coating was non toxic and added no cost to the part or car overall. The result? Idea was abandoned. The resulting ozone to oxygen recovery was considered miniscule and XX number of cars would not convert enough ozone to match the current production of ozone. Odd there was no mention in that old article on the impact of phasing in the coating to ALL radiators on water cooled engines.
Seems that since the end user didn't have to pay for it, it wasn't a good idea.