diesel or petrol..?

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:51 pm

Hi all,

I have come to a cross roads in the Audi car road..

Basically i have moved house and live 20miles from work. (40mile trip a day).

This is starting to cost a fair wack in petrol & am now wondering weather to invest in a Diesel...

A no brainer i expect your thinking..

BUT.. I know very little about diesel engines and it worries me slightly that im going to spend a fortune on repaire bills, where as my little 1.8 petrol is easy enough to fix and saved me a small fortune from garage bills.

What do i do?

Cheers

Steve Smile

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:56 pm

Hi Steve, what variant is it you are driving at the moment?

Site Moderator Joined: Aug 11, 2008 Posts: 1652

tbh diesels i've had haven't been any more/less to repair/maintain than petrols. maybe i've just been lucky?

diesels are dearer to buy and diesel is dearer so you usually have to be doing a major amount of miles a year to recoup the difference between running petrol.

hth

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 1:44 pm

Hi Steve,

Stick with what you've got!

You know your car and what you've done to it; to change it for a diesel will cost you a big chunk of money anyway - and work out how much fuel you can get for the difference to change. Use real-life figures for fuel consumption:
e.g. if you do 12000 miles per year:
petrol - 30mpg = 400 gallons @ £5/gallon = £2000
diesel - 50mpg = 240 gallons @ £5/gallon = £1200

So £800 year extra for petrol. I don't think you'll manage to change your Audi for a diesel for any where near £800 - or even two years worth @ £1600.

My round trip to work is 52 miles - it costs me nearly £9/day for petrol, but other than that the car costs me very little. Part of me would love to change it for something newer / better, but the other part says I should just keep it and carry on using it until it does eventually die..... Sad

Just my two penn'orth Wink

Alan

Audi Nut Joined: Aug 04, 2009 Posts: 88 Location: Reading

I switched from a petrol to diesel and wont look back!

I got 30 mpg combined from my petrol car, but get 50+ mpg combined in my diesel.

I save £50 a year on road tax too

And my service costs used to be around £220 for petrol car per year or 12k, whereas now I am on the longlife service its £281 every 2 years or 24k.

I do approx 400 miles per week and im already saving on fuel and how often I fuel up.

Go for a diesel!!!

Very Happy

Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 5:55 pm

You'll need to do your sums. Regards servicing, a diesel shouldn't be any more expensive to maintain than a petrol model. There's the advantage that the fuel filter is in the engine compartment as opposed to under the car!

I live 25 miles from work and regularly commute on an A-class road daily. 50 miles a day, 250 miles a week, plus any additional miles at the weekend. The 2.5 TDi Avant Quattro (if I drive like Miss Daisy) will return a respectable 44mpg. Hit traffic jams and she'll burn fuel like the NASA shuttle on take-off. £40 of fuel used to return 350 miles, but as the cost of diesel has steadily increased, it's more like 325 miles. Add in my hefty road-tax due to emissions and any savings made are taken back. However saying that, it's a silky smooth V6, more grunt than one of the Williams' sisters and has saved my bacon this winter.

There are petrol variants (not Audi) that are extremely fuel-efficient, and worth considering. However if you want to stay with Audi, then any of the B5/6 1.9TDi models would be a good investment. All depends how long your planning to keep it. Add quattro into the mix and you drop 3-5 mpg for starters. There's an argument for LPG conversion too on a petrol car. Wink

Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 8:39 am

Wow.. some great comments there! Thanks..

Im in agreement with V6 from the comment
"You know your car and what you've done to it"..

Its always a gamble getting a new (old) car, i dont want to be spending all my cost savings on repaire bills.. Im one of those unlucky few who ALWAYS gets a duff one! Laughing

(the reason im quite mechanically minded, is that ive had to fix so many of my own cars!!! Laughing

)
but saying that, i think diesels are quite bullet proof as engines go..

I would have to get a turbo diesel as i owned a standard diesel before and am haunted by the lack of performance it had. (it was a crappy old dog though).

need to research some car prices i think..

Thanks everyone, i appreciated all the comments.

cheers

Steve Smile