Diesel Car Maintenance Checklist: Top 6 Tips for Diesel Engines

• Car maintenance,
• Oct 22, 2019

 

The diesel engine is a powerful engine that delivers high performance and is mostly used in heavy vehicles such as jeeps, trucks, and even in some passenger vehicles to make them overpowered. However, they are not used in other passenger vehicles since gasoline engines are much more suited to them. Although diesel engines are faster, the cost of fuel and their overall efficiency is in a decline as compared to gasoline engines in most of the passenger vehicles due to a number of reasons (which we will not discuss here).

 

Diesel cars are much faster and/or powerful than gasoline cars but cost more too, both in terms of vehicle’s price itself and the ever-increasing fuel’s price. Their maintenance, however, costs pretty much the same as that of cars with gasoline engines. So, before we let you in on the diesel car maintenance checklist which we have compiled out of our vast resources and researches conducted, you should first know a little bit detail about the diesel engine itself.

 

Diesel Engine Working:

In order to explain how does a diesel engine works, we should first tell you the similarities between gasoline and diesel engines, so you can differentiate between the two easily. Both the diesel and gasoline engines work similarly with a few differences. Modern generation of vehicles uses a 4-stroke engine, so both gasoline and diesel engine use it. Their working is practically the same, the air inside the engine is heavily compressed and is used to ignite the fuel which then produces a controlled explosion. This explosion provides the energy required to push the pistons inside the engine which moves the car. The difference between gasoline and diesel engine comes in the part of ignition. Since both are internal combustion engines, they need to perform “combustion” (which is the same as burning or setting something on fire).

 

Gasoline engines use a spark plug which produces a small electric spark to set the fuel on the fire. In contrast to this, the diesel engine does not need spark plug because the air is compressed a lot more than in gasoline engines, so the heat is enough to set the diesel (which is more volatile than petrol) on fire. Therefore, lesser energy is wasted and diesel engines are much more efficient than gasoline engines, and also more powerful due to greater amount of energy produced.

 

Why is Diesel Engine more efficient than the Gasoline Engine?

As mentioned before, the diesel engine is more efficient than a typical gasoline engine due to a number of reasons. The leading/prime reason is that whenever the gasoline engine is now being used to its fullest, it either requires lesser air or more fuel to keep running, however, a diesel engine does not require any such thing so, at low power, low fuel is consumed. Since the energy lost is much lower, the diesel engine is more efficient.

 

Apart from this, the diesel engine’s lack of spark plug allows it to pump in more fuel and give out power at a greater magnitude than in the gasoline engine. With great power comes great responsibility, therefore, diesel engines are used in powerful vehicles like trucks, jeeps, and other high-power automobiles and are less likely to be used in general passenger vehicles.

 

Diesel Car Maintenance Checklist:

By now, hopefully, you have understood the concept of diesel engine working and are aware of almost everything you need to know about before you get into the diesel engine maintenance part. Car maintenance is a tricky subject and can vary from vehicle to vehicle, but we will try to generalize our diesel engine car maintenance tips so that it works on every vehicle. For more information, refer to your vehicle’s owner manual to learn in-depth.

Our diesel car maintenance checklist consists of the following aspects:

 

 1- Diesel Engine Oil Changes:

The first step in how to perform basic diesel engine maintenance is an oil change. Everyone is familiar with oil changes and knows how it works. However, if you do not know about it, you can check out our article here to learn more about how to perform a proper engine oil change. Engine oil is the most important oil and is used for lubrication, cooling, and for other important purposes required to keep an engine running smoothly. Without proper oil changes, this engine oil might get corrupted and would start harming your engine or not doing its job properly, so it is better to change your engine oil every two to three months or so.

 

 2- Fuel Filter Changes:

Fuel filter, as the name suggests, helps keep the fuel clean when it enters the engine so no unwanted particles enter the engine and disrupt its proper working. Therefore, they need to be changed on a regular basis and the opportune time for changing them in every 25000 kilometers or so.

 

 3- Air Filter Changes:

The air filter prevents harmful particles from entering your engine. They need to be changed or cleaned every once in a while, and since the exact interval varies from vehicle to vehicle, it is better to refer to your owner’s manual to find out when your vehicle’s air filter needed to be changed.

 

 4- Coolant Changes:

In order to prevent a diesel engine from making its coolant acidic and harming all the parts inside an engine, it is better to change the coolant before it starts hurting the vehicle. You can check out acidic levels of your coolant in order to know whether or not it needs to be changed yet.

 

 5- Cleaning the Fuel System:

When the fuel system is contaminated with the air stuck inside of it, the vehicle refuses to start. You can get rid of this problem by bleeding or cleaning the fuel system. In order to perform this, you will need to manually open the fuel supply valve and pump through a fuel pump until you get fuel without any kind of air bubbles.

 

 6- raining Water Separators:

Water separator helps keep the water out of the engine, however, sometimes, when it fails to do its job properly, the water separator starts functioning incorrectly. In order to prevent fuel loss and contamination, you will need to drain the water separators.

 

That was everything we had in our diesel car maintenance checklist and if you have more suggestions or ideas, be sure to tell us. If you want to learn more about vehicles, check out our blog and if you want to perform a car history check, VIN number check revs check, do it through QuickREVs for better output and efficient methods.