Using an Euro5 Diesel car for an worldtrip?

The discussion what is better for an Worldtrip is endless. An Petrol car can handle bad fuel much better than modern diesel cars. For many years also mercedes use only their petrol based cars on their Mercedes Experience Tours in Africa and South America.

But today they use also their Common-Rail diesel cars on their Mercedes Experience Tours 



Source: http://www.unep.org/transport/pcfv/

What happens? I think the experience of worldtravellers, the escort cars on the paris dakar has showed, that it is possible to use newer cars. And what it need to use these cars abroad.

It is a fact that modern diesel with Euro5 exhaust emission standard and an managed diesel particulate filter "DPF" can`t handle bad fuel, or the using of the engine in regions 2500m above sea level.

At the following i will show you samples where the people get stranded, but too what you have to do, that you can using modern diesel on worldtrips - without hassle.

There are many well documented samples, where the travellers had breakdowns because of this:

An VW Crafter with Euro5 had many trouble and some expensive repair bills in south america:
http://b-u-globetrotter.de/Crafter.htm

The pensioner caravan through mongolia (many different brands):
 Rentnerkarawane durch die Mongolei

Another VW based story from 2014 from south america:
http://peterundsandra.blog.de/2014/01/16/16-januar-17601441/

Here an Euro5 G-Class PUR Mercedes story, they start an africa roundtrip and had just reach eqypt as they had to remove the Euro5 stuff and to do an downgrade to Euro3 without DPF:
wegaufzeit

Mercedes Sprinter 316 CDI mit Euro5 had too trouble in South America:
http://www.sb-beutel.de/Argentinien-Kolumbien

These sample shows us, that you CAN NOT use an modern Euro5 car in South America, Asia or Africa.

When you study that samples in details you will see that it is possible to avoid these breakdowns. Mercedes has special parameters and upgrades for some of their diesel based cars, all other (also other brands) have to do an downgrade to Euro3/4 and to take out the DPF.

With the older Euro4 Standard the diesel particulate filter "DPF" was not managed, therefore you can use these without much preparation, you can replace the DPF with an pipe.

These samples of travellers shows us too, that you had to do additional filtering of the fuel, to avoid that water or dirt can reach the Injectors, because that will cause too breakdowns and expensive repair bills.



Fuel filtration and water separation helps the injectors

In most of these samples the people had ask the seller and manufacture of the cars before that trip, if they can use the car on their worldtrip without special preparation.

They had say "no problem".. Also if you contact Mercedes, VW and others directly, you will will hear "no problem". Here you can show them, that there is a problem. 

You have to find someone who has experience with that, what is not easy. Maybe you contact one of these travellers who had use your brand and contact them - they will have these contacts of professionals who was able to help them.

Overlanding on Budget

What options one has, if the budget is very tight? Of course you can put in a tent and a small stove in any vehicle - and start traveling. If you feel comfortable with that - start like that! Nothing is better than a setup where you can change the car without to thinking about!

But there are also vehicles arround who have a good mgp rate, have four-wheel - and are more capable than most would suspect. Who offer a good ride comfort also on bad tracks.

One of the biggest cost of traveling with the vehicle is the fuel consumption. Here, of course  a diesel would be able to change some of the consumption statistics, right?

In the Blog of  Kristian Saile i found wonderful pictures, let me search deeper for people who did overlanding with that kind of cars.. At the Subaru Outback community i found more expo builds and people who travel this way.

For shure here are also guys who start to mod their cars. Some armor, Frontbar, Winch, gear reduction and so on. But i think you leave the idea of using a small budget behind pretty fast this way.