[ot] Should I buy a diesel Rabbit?

 At bit OT, but I have a chance to buy an 80's something VW diesel Rabbit
for Cdn$500. It's someone I know well who wouldn't fraud me (well, not
knowingly, anyway).

The gas prices are motivating me to consider it, although he tells me
diesel is even higher! (?)

Any opinions appreciated

TIA, Sean_Q_
ps. I might have to get a trailer hitch for the Rabbit and tow
the Harley around, stopping every now and then to get out and sit
on it, making potato-potato noises. Or play some recorded v-twin motor
sounds. This might be more economical than actually riding it.

 
Guy I know runs recycled restaurant bio-diesel.
His truck always has delicious smell of egg rolls.

Apparantly both the refining costs and tax are higher
fod diesel in the U.S. at least.

Higher refining costs surprise me. I'd always thought
diesel was easier to make than high octane gasoline.
I thought this was one of the original motivations for
development of the jet in Germany during WWII. Possibly
depends on the type of crude you're set up to refine ?

 


Although the Germans *did* have some diesel-engine powered aircraft (largely
seaplanes) in WW2, the design motivation in those cases was range, as the
diesels burned less gallons per hour and the seaplanes were long-endurance
aircraft. (It also meant that they could refuel from submarines, as they
used the same fuel.)

The German jets on the other hand were designed strictly for performance
rather than because their fuel might have been easier to synthesize. Since a
turbine engine swallows more fuel per hour than even high performance piston
engines, it's thirst would have likely outweighed any other consideration.

 P. Roehling wrote:

Some authors, eg., Len Deighton in his non-fiction wwii history which
seemed to me more objective than most other histories, claim that the
German fuel hurt luftwaffe fighter performance compared to the yank fuel
the brits had for theirs.  The word I've heard to describe German fuel
then was 'synthetic', could be wrong but that gibes with the
otherwise-sophisticated reputation of the wwii German chemical industry
of those days.

 


Towards the end of the war the Germans had practically run out of petroleum
resources, and indeed had to synthesize most of their fuels. (What they used
as the basis for their fuels, and exactly how they did it, are probably
being looked into very seriously at this very moment by a whole bunch of
people...)

Since the oil was essentially gone and Allied bombing raids had already put
a serious crimp in the German chemical industry, fuel was used only where
there was no possible substitute available. This led to such anachronisms as
the then ultra-modern V2 rocket -the world's first ballistic missile-
sometimes being delivered from the factory on trailers pulled by horses!