Duster Diesel or Duster Petrol?

After receiving many comments on the subject, I managed to get my hands on a 1.3 Tce 130 HP Duster that had 4WD for an entire weekend. So it was time for diesel Duster vs petrol Duster.

It wasn’t the first time for me driving the new engine developed by Renaul toghether with Mercedes.

First time I drove that engine was back in June 2019 when I had a Renault Kadjar for a weekend. The most important aspect for me was to take the both cars on some snow hills and see how they perform. I must say that there is a difference between the power of the cars.

The white one has 130 HP and the gris comete has 115 HP. The curious thing is that the petrol engine has less torque (240 Nm) than the diesel engine (260 Nm).

More detailed article here.

Round 1

We set of to climb a hill with medium difficulty and from the first 2 tries, the petrol duster seemed to go on easier than the diesel. On both cars the tire pressure was lowered to 1.8 bar. The white had Debica Frigo 2 and the gri comete had Cooper Discoverer AT3 4S.

Round 2

On the second try the petrol has gone all the way up to the top of the hill without any problems. The other one, instead, it need it one extra run to reach the hill. It was harder to keep a stright line while climbing and that made the car loos grip and momentum very fast.

The plan was to reach the highest point on this hill but there was a part very difficult with left side inclination and long distance on climbing. I wasn’t sure whether we try it or not because of the risk and I decided to give it a shot. But first with my Duster, the diesel.:D. As I was thinking, the terrain was very wet and the car lost its grip very fast and almost became uncontrolable and it was very close to hit a little tree.

That actually helped with the turning of the car, as you will see in the video. We tried one time with the petrol Duster too but the driver didn’t force the car so much and it didn’t reach the point like its predecesor.

Round 3

From there we moved to another location I knew (also used in the A4 Allroad video) and we tried another hill, longer this time, but with better terrain than the previous and both cars did very well.

Round 4

Considering the fact that we had plenty of room to go up the new found hill, we decided to put the cars side by side and do a drag race. Of course, the white Duster really took off and went up much faster than the diesel.

Round 5

So we switched the drivers and the sides to see if the outcome will be the same or not. Guess what, nothing changed, maybe this time the diesel Duster went up easier, but had no chance next to the petrol 130 HP Duster.

What made this difference so big?

First of all, the tires. The dedicated winter tires performed better than the AT tires, plus they were newer and thick on the baloon. Another difference was in the rims. The diesel had steel rims, much havier than the alloy wheels on the petrol Duster. Plus the petrol model is 70 Kg lighter than the diesel one. The fuel level was almost the same, not much difference there.

As for the fuel consumption, the diesel was by far the winner, with an average of 6 L/100 Km compared to the 7.7 L/100 Km shown by the dashboard on the petrol Duster. The cars were driven and tested on the same roads and by me at the steering wheel, with one style of driving for both.

Conclusions:

1. In this offroad session the petrol Duster did great. Far more better than I expected. I wish I would have the winter dedicated tires installed on the diesel model.
2. The new 1.3 L engine promises alot and it is very good on the road. I encourage you to test it not just on a Duster but on other Renault models as well.
3. The new Duster model (petrol one) comes with an improved locking mode for the fuel tank. I really hate the way I have to unlock the fuel tank door.
4. Besides that improvement, I didn’t noticed any difference on the interior or at the exterior for these two models.

Here is the link to the drag video between the cars above. Enjoy it!:

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