"Peter Dohm" wrote in message
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"Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe" The Sea Hawk At Wow Way D0t C0m wrote in message
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"jan olieslagers" wrote in message
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schreef:
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...ticleId=124553

2L TDIO, All aluminum block/head, boosted, intercooled, 258 pound-feet
of torque @ 1,800 rpm. Probably a terrible engine for a car. But for
an airplane....

Haven't found the weight yet.

Not the first I hear about it. As I understand it is a modification of
their petrol boxers so the weight should be comparable.

I thought GM had killed the "gas engine converted to a diesel" market.

The typical 10,000 mile (or so) TBO didn't go over well with the public.

I've heard many times about how bad they were, but I still don't know the
actual cause or just what tended to break or wear out. The only specific
that I can personally recall was that the air intake placement made it
possible to injest water on some models. I believe that also heard that
the rings and cylinders had a shorter than normal life, anound 120K miles,
but only heard that from one user. So any further enlightenment is
welcome.

Peter

I had a '78 Oldsmobile 98 350 diesel. It was dead reliable for 145,000
miles giving me a consistent 35MPG before I gave it to a charity in exchange
for a tax break. You couldn't sell them. The only problems I ran into was
fuel gelling in very cold weather when I left it in an airport parking lot
for a week or more. I learned that if cold weather was expected it was
better to leave it home in the garage and take a shuttle to the airport.

The biggest problem was the dealers who hadn't a clue of how to maintain
them. Not one knew that it needed special diesel oil. "We just use 10-30
like everything else", I was told. I used ashless fleet diesel oils that
over the road trucks use and changed it every 2500 miles. I had to buy the
stuff by the case from a petroleum distributor since no service shop stocked
it.

The typical owner just didn't care about maintenance details and dealer
service departments were hopeless. My take is that they whole debacle was
service related which is still GM's fault since they didn't train their
dealers.

Bill D