Running a diesel on Kerosene

[JohnnoK]

11 hours ago, geoffbeaumont said:

Not vehicle related, but I remember a good few years ago someone was caught stealing avgas from Aberdeen airport to run his central heating on. He was caught due to part of his house not being there any more...

Serves him right, AVGAS is 100 octane and belongs in a motorcycle or high performance car...🤔

[Snagger]

Yeah, I can see the problem there!  Powerful stuff, Avgas, the 100 stuff anyway.  It’ll burn the valves out of a car engine in fairly short order, but it’d be fun while it lasts!

[JohnnoK]

46 minutes ago, Snagger said:

 It’ll burn the valves out of a car engine in fairly short order, but it’d be fun while it lasts!

AVGAS 100LL is still leaded (LL is Low Lead) so your engine will like that feature, the issue comes in with low compression engines that will gain nothing from the higher octane fuel and the fact that the required adjustments to timing and mixture are beyond the normal scope of automotive ECUs and the vast majority of tuners.

From Wiki...

Quote

Avgas (aviation gasoline, also known as aviation spirit in the UK) is an aviation fuel used in aircraft with spark-ignited internal combustion engines. Avgas is distinguished from conventional gasoline (petrol) used in motor vehicles, which is termed mogas (motor gasoline) in an aviation context. Unlike motor gasoline, which has been formulated since the 1970s to allow the use of platinum-content catalytic converters for pollution reduction, the most commonly used grades of avgas still contain tetraethyllead (TEL), a toxic substance used to prevent engine knocking (detonation). There are ongoing experiments aimed at eventually reducing or eliminating the use of TEL in aviation gasoline.

 

[Snagger]

It’s the cylinder temperatures that melts the valves (and piston crowns, if they don’t have oil jets), not the lack of lead.  I haven’t seen it done, but I knew a couple of flying club staff who’d tried it with (then) old cars twenty five years or so ago, and they did about 50 miles of very spirited driving before the engines were slag!

[JohnnoK]

Interesting, I ran my 1275 ex-race engined Mini on it for a while and my P6 Rover with no ill effects. Both were high(er) compression, though, the P6 is 10,5 and the Mini was probably closer to 11.

They were probably running too lean to get such high temperatures.

[Snagger]

Could be.  They were knackered old humdrum cars of the time, already expiring, so the engines were very old tech and high mileage.

[Blanco]

On 4/15/2021 at 9:09 PM, pat_pending said:

Holy thread revival Batman. lockdown boredom strikes again!

Just had a chuckle reading this thread I don't think I saw it first time round........... I remember going to Earls Court for the Motor show about 1976, ... on the Jeep stand , I remember the salesman telling us the engine (an I6 I think) would run on almost anything and listed parafin and kerosene among them, we didn't order one .... but I think my Dad  was a bit tempted 

[Troll Hunter]

Back in the late 60's I had the only sports car in my life, a Lotus Elite Type 14 Super 95.  It had a Coventry Climax high compression fire pump engine, twin SU carbs and from memory a compression ratio of 10.5:1, and at that time in UK you could get 100 octane virtually everywhere, and even 101 octane at some locations.  Being single and then "rich" I used to buy the highest octane available.  I don't recall any engine problems over the two or so years, 20,000+ miles, that I enjoyed it.  I eventually sold it because of problems with the inboard rear brakes.  As my daily driver I could not accept it being off the road.  So, AVGAS, bring it on IF you have an engine designed for it.

Mike

[Carloz]

Years ago it was discovered that personell from AFB Leeuwarden (Netherlands) used jetfuel (kerosene) in their private diesel engined cars. 😂

I don't know they did run on 100% kero, maybe 50/50 or so..

[smallfry]

Rover p6 V8, and the Rover P5B (Rover V8) Both ran on 5 star when they were current.

[EBCALITZ]

On 6/19/2010 at 8:09 PM, Yostumpy said:

a few years ago I was working on a site, with a 360 excavator,( french one I think, name something like pacman) and it had an air cooled deisel, might have been a deutz or even a VM as it had seperate cylinder heads. Anyway there was a tank of heating oil that had to be moved at some point and the contents were no longer required, so obvious answer. BUT after a few hours the engine started to play up, missing, low on power, so the mob mechanic came outand the filters were full of a thick jelly like substance. cleaned em out and carried on. Used the whole tank over about 2 months, and the mecanic came out about 6-7 times. It never did run properly again, always sounded rough, and spluttered even on red long afterwards. so beware!

Been running an bmw x6 and a bmw  330 d  nissan 2,5 turbo for 3 years on kerosene no problems problems,  i add 2 % atf and ,5 % 2 stroke 

[Carloz]

On 4/20/2021 at 1:59 PM, Snagger said:

Yeah, I can see the problem there!  Powerful stuff, Avgas, the 100 stuff anyway.  It’ll burn the valves out of a car engine in fairly short order, but it’d be fun while it lasts!

Not really more powerful. Just higher octane (which is safer for pistons and valves) and has still lead (for anti knock perpose) which both are no problem for a car engine. Only the lead will destroy a catalytic converter, if present of course...

There is also 102 Octane car fuel available right at the petrol station. And: LPG has octane number of 108-110 which we know is no problem to fire for a standard car ignition system.

A low octane number will be sooner a problem than a high one.

[Timboxxcc]

Hi having read all the replies I thought I would share my experience. I put heating fuel in my fiat fiorino and it ran fine no problems but only did one tank then mixed with Deisel. Prior to that I’ve run all my vehicles on filtered used cooking oil but that dried up so started collecting used engine oil which I filtered and used for over 2 years on one golf 1.9 tdi. Thought it would last a week but was still driving 2 years later absolutely no problems. Only time I encountered problems was if someone gave me oil that had been drained from a head gasket job and that was a real pain.