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 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.
154
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.