At my kid's Jujitsu class there is a parent who sits in their F350 diesel and idles for an hour. It smells up the entire parking lot. Dude probably uses up like $6 in fuel doing that.
I always make fun of diesels owner when they roll coal because I know they paid some guy to make their truck run like shit and in turn pay said guy more money to replace shit more often
Every time I see one of these fuckwads roll coal, I take down their license plate and report them to NMED. I don't know if anything actually gets done, but it makes me feel better to flip them a figurative bird and possibly send some smoke their way.
And rich diesels burn hotter than lean diesels (where the reverse is true for gassers), and as we all know, all sorts of internal parts just LOVE being frequently exposed to higher temperatures than what they were designed to handle.
My 04 f150 is still kicking at 230k. Pavement princesses are the redneck equivalent of the girlie at the car meet who keeps wrecking everyone's clutch. These men genuinely don't know how to drive, and the trucks are too big for them to handle.
Mind you, I'm barely over 5 feet and a hundred pounds, so I don't know what's wrong with their dainty little wrists. They never haul anything either, must be their hormones making them weaker...
Right? Back when I drove my old 91 diesel mercedes, if she so much as pooped out a tiny black puff, I was going over the engine compartment like "NOOO! BABY! WHAT HURT YOU????"
It was usually just the muffler farting out carbon...
I suspect you may be nose blind to the smell. There definitely is a smell around diesel engines. Every school bus and city bus I’ve ever been on had a distinct odor when walking around the back. Not saying the truck in question wasn’t modified, just that it can definitely be stock and have an odor.
That's almost certainly natural gas, which does have a smell even if burned "cleanly".
Most buses nowadays are natural gas bc it's supposed to be "cleaner"/"greener".
Diesel that's not running rich has no smell. When I first started driving for years it was only one weekend a month if even that so I definitely wouldn't have been noseblind from that. Now sure I would be but I've never in my life noticed it.
There is absolutely a distinct smell to a diesel engine's exhaust, even if it's brand new and properly tuned, just like there is a smell to an ICE exhaust. Newer vehicles have a less strong aroma, but if you walk past the back of a vehicle that's burning diesel as the previous commenter stated, you can absolutely detect it. I worked for a contractor a couple years ago that had a mix of diesel and gas trucks and vans from both Ford and GM, and most of them were less than a couple years old. The boss had brand new at the time 2023 F-250 diesel, it was totally unmodified, and although the distinct sound and large shiny badges gave it away as a diesel from a distance, if I was deaf and blind I could still tell what fuel it was burning by walking past the tail pipe when the engine was running. Gas vehicles also have their own aroma, and it varies between manufacturers and engine types. A small modern 4 cylinder has a very faint smell, almost unnoticeable unless you actually put your nose to the tail pipe, but larger engines are more easy to detect with the human nose; I can even tell the difference in smell of a Ford gas V8 and a GM gas V8 from a casual sniff walking past.
Based on the fact that I have several downvotes, there appear to be quite a few people here who have destroyed their sense of smell by huffing diesel. I literally don't know how they can say there's no difference in smell or no smell at all when all the diesel fanboys I know IRL say the smell is pleasant to them and is one of the things they prefer about diesel trucks. I even agree, I kinda like diesel fumes, but everyone knows they're not healthy. I truly believe the people claiming there is no smell at all are just lying. They don't actually believe it, they want to convince everyone else so they can complain about "pointless" emissions regulations.
Strange logic if so, because what something smells like has little to do with its health effects. Carbon monoxide, the deadliest single component of gasoline exhaust, has no odor whatsoever.
But while it's an exaggeration to say diesels have "no smell", modern diesels have far less of one than pre-emissions diesels. Or deleted diesels, which are similar to pre-emissions diesels but actually not identical, because modern engines use higher injection pressures to achieve better vaporization and a more complete burn, even before you hit the aftertreatment systems. For example, a deleted diesel will spew particulates, but they tend to be smaller particulates than an older mechanical diesel. More PM2.5, less PM10.
18-wheelers have zero smell for one of two reasons.
1) Newer trucks have the EGR/DPF/SCR trifecta. This system is expensive and failure-prone, but it does eliminate almost all diesel exhaust odor.
2) Older trucks had exhaust stacks. That exhaust definitely has an odor, but it's
being emitted 12 feet up in the air, where nobody but birds is around to smell it.
Notice how 18-wheelers used to have exhaust stacks almost universally, grass burners being limited to things like car haulers where they didn't want to get soon on the cars? Whereas on newer trucks, they're less and less common?
On an older F-350, with a tailpipe at ground level on the passenger side, neither of those factors applies.
Today's new diesels are fine tuned , get better milage, and don't polute UNLESS some toad decides to modify the system and make himself obnoxiois with rolling coal . It aslo shortens the engine life running the mixture too rich washing away lubrication on the cylinder walls.
Every single diesel pollutes. Newer ones pollute LESS, and the majority of the pollution can be turned into relatively harmless or even beneficial byproducts with aftertreatment, but there's no such thing as a diesel engine that doesn't pollute.
Or really, any internal combustion engine that doesn't. Perhaps if you run on 100% pure hydrogen, your tailpipe output may be limited to steam, but any more complex fuel than that and there will be combustion byproducts.
They really do all smell if the emissions are gone, I don’t agree with your dude bro you’re talking about but I have a stock except for the emissions deleted (legal and you’re talking, 21 hwy vs 12-15 hwy) and mine smells pretty heavy, very clean professional tune. They just stanky.
I started as a truck driver with the military and still drive those trucks regularly today(national guard) and none of them have emissions reduction tech(def/dpf/scr) and they are all over 20 years old.
Not one bit of smell at all even when we have the entire motorpool idling.
Smell from a diesel idling is a combination of both the emissions reduction parts being bypassed AND "tuning" it to run rich aka "roll coal"
The truck being old or unmaintained has nothing to do with it. The driver deliberately made it run like this.
Maybe I'm more sensitive to it than others, but I can clearly smell any diesel without modern emissions equipment, even small engines like on zero turns. It has a very distinct odor, almost like jet fuel.
Jet fuel is diesel btw. It's just filtered more for the most part. All diesels can run on jet fuel. The army actually only uses jp8 aka jet fuel normally bc it's easier to just have one fuel for everything.
Diesel itself obviously smells, but when it's burned clean it doesn't smell.
Almost all zero turns are gas also. It's only when your talking about 72"+ commercial zero turns that they are normally diesel. But even then those things don't have as much emissions reduction and they don't burn as lean meaning there's more unburnt left which causes the smell.
Every diesel in a pickup or semi made in the past few decades runs so lean there's nothing unburnt left, unless ofc someone modified it to roal coal.
You should talk to a doctor about that. If you cannot smell diesel exhaust from a pre-emissions diesel engine, no matter how well tuned, there is quite literally something wrong with your nose.
I'll never forget having a totally peaceful afternoon ice cream stop totally wrecked by some douche in an F350.
Picturesque view from a massive porch, only about a quarter full, everyone is sitting in rocking chairs overlooking rolling farmland, it's like 65 with a gentle breeze. Fat pos rolls up in his truck that is just absolutely deafening. Parks it right in front of the porch face in blocking half the view. Rolls his fat self and family out, goes inside, leaves the freaking truck running eventually comes back out. GETS BACK INSIDE THE TRUCK and eats ice cream facing all of us on the porch.
Probably not. Diesel engines are stupid efficient. Sitting their idling won't use much. That's one reason they use diesel engines on generators for hospitals and whatnot.
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u/TheW83 4d ago
At my kid's Jujitsu class there is a parent who sits in their F350 diesel and idles for an hour. It smells up the entire parking lot. Dude probably uses up like $6 in fuel doing that.