Putting in a 2017 eco diesel

[Anthonystempak]

Thaughts on this eco diesel conversion? I love my extracab 4x4 but l can't live with the abysmal 5.2 fuel mileage and l don't think this tuner will do much but maybe?says 2-6mpgain

 

[CamperMike]

Don't bother with the tuner or diesel. The tuner won't do a darn thing. People with the diesel have considered swap to hemi but find it not possible due to engine mounted being different in a thread on this site. There are also some issues with the motor that are very costly to fix with the diesel if you get a bad one. Just keep feeding the one you have gas.

 

[Jeepwalker]

You'd practically need a 4th gen doner truck to get all the things you need (wiring, ECM, engine/fuel parts, etc). The frames are different on 4th gen diesels. The cross member is further back and someone indicated mounts are different. That doesn't mean you couldn't fab new mounts or move your truck's cross member back..with the right amount of fabrication skills. But even if a guy did, you'd have to figure out how to integrate the electronics or bypass some. Therein starts the headaches. I think a guy would be way better off putting the money into an early 00's Ford that's been 'bulletproofed', or even 08-12 Ford diesel F250. They're plentiful & fairly cheap around here.

My Jetta diesel gets 40+ mpg all day every day. That's the **combined** ..city/highway, between fill-ups hand-calculated. Always has. Why not just get one of those? I know a guy who's gets closer to 50mpg average. He's got a manual trans.. drives more hwy miles. Drive your truck when you really need it.

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[Jeepwalker]

OTOH, my rough calculations are, if you could do it in as little as $5,000, which would be the low end, let's say you're a great fabricator and did it all on your own, you don't count your time, just parts ....your payback could be as little as a year, if you drive a lot of miles. You could have weeks of labor into it too, and countless troubleshooting hours.

There's got to be a good number of Eco Diesel 4th gen's down in Tx... Might be time to look for a new (used) 4th gen. Couple downfalls on the Eco Diesel's: 1) Fuel costs a lot more per gal, 2) Not all shops work on diesel's, 3) There's DEF costs. 4) They're louder, noisier, vibrate more and smell up the garage (if they aren't running in tune). Other than that, they're cool.

 

[Jeepwalker]

I saw a decent used 2nd gen Ram (rust-free) with Cummins, at a local swap meet last weekend for $10,500. About 160k miles. It needed a new box (old one was beat up) and paint. They're out there. Those live practically forever. Simple for shops to work on. Can't say that about the eco diesel. There've been some problems with the early ones.

 

[Anthonystempak]

2017 is a good eco diesel but the thing is l wanted to keep my old style 4x4 shifter. I mean my fucken truck won't even ****** idle. The factory turbos are always junk and the ecos is good for like 320hp l think it was the 1st thing to get besides the fastenough hotune 1.5 seconds is major

 

[Anthonystempak]

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[Jeepwalker]

HERE'S an Eco-Diesel ..to give you an example of what a 4th gen might cost. Not a give-away price, but they've come down a lot, and this one looks great. With some carefull shopping and if you don't need 4x4, you could probably find one even a little cheaper. At that price, why bother with a conversion that will probably cost $5k+ and take you months to get worked out?

Once more trucks go electric and they start taxing gasoline vehicles as polluters (that's probably the future situation), the Diesel's *might* be exempt and be rather coveted (hold their value well). Therefore, it might be a idea to get in on the ground floor and get one now while they're cheap.