I have always been interested in Diesel pickup trucks, although I have never owned or driven one before. My Dad drives a white 2001 GMC 2500 Heavy Duty Duramax Diesel SL standard cab pickup truck with the towing package. It has the 6.6 litre LB7 V8 engine. It is a fun truck. He likes to call it the "no-frills truck." It just has the grey cloth interior with manual crank windows. The only "frills" it has are air conditioning and a stock Delco AM/FM radio with cassette. It originally belonged to his current wife's father, and when he died back in 2012 at the age of 93, they ended up with it, along with his white 2008 Pontiac Solstice sports car. My Dad drives the GMC & his wife drives the Pontiac. I have rode in both vehicles a lot of times, but I have never driven either one of them.
My paternal grandparents also owned the predecessor to the Duramax, a Chevrolet C/K Silverado with the Detroit Diesel 6.2 litre V8 engine. I do not remember what year they had, but I think it was from the mid 1980s. They lived in a mobile home park for seniors in Yuma, Arizona & they used the truck to tow the trailer.
Growing up, I always thought Diesels were interesting just because they were less common than gasoline engines. I thought I would get one when I was older, but it has not happened yet.
12 years ago, I first heard about Diesels which could be converted to run on vegetable oil. I watched a TV show hosted by the late Huell Howser where he interviewed a mechanic who converted his old Mercedes-Benz 300SD to run on used vegetable oil that he got for free from a local Chinese restaurant. He said that any Diesel engine was capable of this conversion, and it piqued my interest even more. I decided that I wanted to do this myself when I got a new Diesel car or truck, although I did not think it would ever happen. Later, I went online & did some research, and I found out that running a Diesel vehicle on vegetable oil is supposedly illegal; maybe it is actually true because I never hear anything about it any more, and some of the companies which did this conversion work have gone out of business.
19 Sep 2016, 8:58 pm
