Mezeker wrote:thanks for the input black start.
sorry about that. It was uncalled for on my behalf and I do apologise.
I, like you, was once a noob. Everybody was once a noob when it came to this "car scene". I only recently actually got into this thing (about 5 years) and while I'm no mechanic, I have educated myself on many topics relating to automobiles. You won't believe the things that I have learn just subscribing to online magazines, searching through tuner and by using the holy "
GOOGLE". The best advice I can give you is to start to do a little reading and education yourself. It will benefit you in the long run and nobody will be able to mislead you that easily. You dad may have heard some of that from some "mango tree" mechanic and took it as truth, but I must say it is not so.
All right to address the topic at hand. There are two types of engines, Spark Ignition (SI) and Compression Ignition (CI). The SI engines are the gasoline engines as they use a spark (from spark plug) to ignite the air/fuel mixture. The CI engines doesn't use spark but rather compression in the cylinder to ignite the air/fuel mixture. These are the diesel engines. Naturally, diesel engines would therefore have a higher compression ratio so that it may ignite the air/fuel mixture.
A relatively higher compression ratio would lead to a higher operation temperature. This is one of the the reasons that diesel engines run at a higher operating temperature than a gasoline.
Now your dad is technically right about the turbo. Look at the schematic below
The turbo is attached to the exhaust manifold. In a nutshell, the exhaust gases pass through the turbine housing (on the right) and spins the turbine wheel. The turbine wheel is attached to the shaft of the turbo with is also attached to the compressor wheel inside the compressor housing. When the exhaust gasses cause the turbine wheel to spin, the compressor wheel spins as well. This causes a suction of air into the compressor housing and this pressurised air exits at the compressor outlet. From here, in a diesel, the compressed air may or may not pass through an intercooler (depending on how the system was designed) before directly going to the engine. The intercooler basically is a heat exchanger (kind of like a radiator for air) that cools the compressed air from the turbo. High intake air temperatures can lead to detonation occurring and hence the need for an intercooler in some systems. Now the intake air temperature in a turbo'd vehicle will still be a bit higher (due to heat transfer and being compressed) and as such it is expected that the operation temperature would be a bit higher than normal as well. This is another reason a diesel turbo engine would be "hotter".
The oil may have a high temperature but it doesn't really boil. There are oils that were designed specifically to operate in these conditions. These would be the oils specified by the manufacturer in the manual or one at a higher rating as said by Havoc.
Once you buy the van, just use the recommended rating oil, or equivalent or better and follow the maintenance manual all the way and you will not have a problem.
Again, i do apologise for my previous comment,
Black Start