Does anybody here feel you are better off with a gas if you only drive like 10000 or less miles a year and pull like 5 grand or so ?


I am just wondering because I just talked to a man with a PS 7.3 who bought it new in 1996 and had like 300 thousand miles on it with a lot of start and stop driving and he told me every year it needs a starter and batteries to keep it right.


I thought it was only the IDI's, by the way I love the diesels but gassers do not eat these items like this....


He was in the market for a new truck and said it would be gas...... He no longer pulls however and cannot afford the new diesels.

 

My guess is that his truck had something slightly wrong with it, or if he was only driving short distances, he didn't put a battery charger on the truck when he was done.

My mom's got an '02 with 380K miles on it so far(had like 10K when bought in '03), and it's gone through perhaps 2 starters and 3-4 alternators in that time. Probably 2-3 sets of batteries.

Now, this truck's driving patterns were different than that - for most of it's life, each trip was 60-ish miles one way, and it was a daily driver. Some heavy hauling, but not much comparatively.


Of course, I've noticed the same thing with my IDIs - I haven't gone through /nearly/ that many starters; I have ended up pulling the starter every year or two, to either clean it or replace it.
Most of the time, if it starts cranking poorly, it's either the batteries are failing or the starter has gunked up... NOT failed. Of course, my time-to-maintaince ratio may be different due to using used starters - I haven't actually bought a new starter yet. It's always been one that I either got cheap/free or came with a vehicle.
I've also reconditioned at least one starter myself by installing a new set of brushes and greasing it.
Usually, though, it's just a matter of crud from the engine getting inside the starter and it needing to be cleaned and greased.

edit:
Note that for the last couple of years, I've been commuting 10 miles to and from work each day with my IDI. 8 miles of highway, just about enough to get it fully warmed up before I shut it off.
I haven't had any issues with running the batteries down doing this; 10 miles seems to be plenty to keep things charged when starting from a mostly-charged state.

 

I wonder if the newly designed PS in 99 had a better charging system ?, I am hoping the new Power Master starter solves the issues, also there are companies making these big torque style starters out of China for 1/2 the price of a PM so I bought one for backup.....


My mechanic set me straight on rebuilt starters and he was like in most cases there is no substitute for new.... Both of mine he looked at to try and make one good one did not pass the test. The armatures were to worn to bother, he said even a little to much blueing on them they are ready for the trash.....

 

Sounds like your friend has some other problem killing starters (batteries, cables, leaking oil on them, etc.) or is just getting cheapo reman starters that they do a quick clean and new brushes and call good enough if it spins on the bench, when they may be marginal.

I have a 3 miles commute and do about 4-6 starts a day. Starter didn't look anywhere near new on the truck when I got it lasted 3 years with junk batteries and crappy cables. New 2/0 and 3/0 cables and group 31s and a Powermaster starter later when the starter gave up it's last... Time will tell how long it lasts but I expect it'll last a very long time. When it fails I'll report in here with the postmortem, which I suspect will be whenever the brushes wear out that'll be all it needs.

If your engine does not start quickly, fix that and your starter will thank you with a very long service life. Long or repeated cranking sessions will significantly shorten the lifespan and increase risk of overheating or damaging the commutator bars or windings rather than just replacing brushes and blowing out the old junk.

As for comparing to a gas truck. I daily drove my 460 truck very similarly to how I drive the IDI for 7 years before I got the IDI. It went through one starter, and that was actually a failure of the wee little 4ga cable, it burned at the end on the solenoid. Replaced solenoid and ran new 2ga cable and it started like new. My fault for not looking things over often enough before it got to a no start, but easy enough to see what's wrong and push start. It's easy to get lax on maintenance when you have a simple reliable vehicle that just plain works every time.

As for carbureted gas vs IDI diesel reliability I see little difference. Maybe slight favor in my experience to gas engines as I've had issues with return caps leaking air causing the occasional hard start. It's an inconvenience of the return system design but the engine will always start and it's a fairly quick fix to identify the wet cap and replace o-rings. Not a show stopper, tends to only happen if I've done anything up top recently and bumped a return cap. Aside from that my stuff just plain works be it gas or diesel.

I will say I own nothing EFI, tried that once and it was the most unreliable and annoying POS between the electronics not wanting to start in cold weather (needed gas or starting fluid in the intake, then was fine the rest of the day), and the driveability issues from emissions equipment that was a never ending time and money pit that never ran quite right as compared to a carbureted engine. Never again with EFI.

 

I have been DD my IDI for the past 4 years. About a 20 minute commute. I replaced the batteries, cables and did the starter twice. First time I did the starter was with an AutoZone one and I also had an air intrusion issue that I have since fixed. It started turning over slow so I got a Power Master. So far so good.

In the winter time (temps in the single digits or lower consistently) I will throw a charger on the batteries about once a month just for maintenance although it is probably not needed.

 

yOU JUST HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THESE ENGINES HAVE A FEW QUIRKY ISSUES for stop and start driving AND MOST OF IT IS THE GLOW PLUGS AND AIR INTRUSION but once you understand the few issues and know how to fix it because of how much fuel a BB gas engine eats just for starters these are generally the way to go for sure IMO.....


There is no doubt the newer diesels make more power but they have more to deal with.... Definitely for High way use pulling an IDI needs a turbo.....

 

I got my '85 in 2007. I don't even see 10K miles a year. Sometimes this truck sits for weeks on end, occasionally a month or so, before I even start it. I've only had to replace the starter once, (shortly after getting the truck, so who knows what previous abuse it's seen), and I think I'm on my third set of batteries. I do have to recharge them fairly often though; a maintainer is on my list of things to do to it.

 

I was looking on Ebay and there is a solar panel of 100 watts for 100 $.........

 

Heres my two cents for what it's worth. I put my wife in a 2000 F250 SC SB 4wd with the 6.8L V10. She commutes 4 miles one way to work, but still needed a truck strong enough to pull her 3 horse slant load horse trailer. It's been a great truck, gets around 13 mpg ( same as her old Ranger 4wd with 4.0L) This truck mainly sees in town driving, her normal driving I cannot see it being good for a diesel, short trips and lots of stop and go. Besides most women don't want to wait for a truck to warm up. Myself I prefer a diesel, given the choice. My trucks don't get driven every day, but when they do it's usually on the highway pulling a trailer. My IDI is used as a plow truck as well, the 97 PSD hibernates in the winter months; I run the snot out of it Spring through Fall.

 

Lots of my stops are 20 minutes to an hour......