Diesel mixed with gas????

Really?  I had a farmer tell me once he mixes his gas for his old (D17, WD45, John Deere A) tractors with 1 part diesel to 10 parts gas. says it counters the ethonol in the gas and they run better, especially the JD A? 

diesel burns slower than gas, thus giving the effect of higher octane. I have heard of it being done, but that was many years ago. 

Hmmm,,,what ratio would it have to be to render a gas vehicle inoperable, not damaged, just inoperable? I have some theft problems at my place.

Edited by JoeO(CMO) - 07 Jun 2011 at 9:01pm

I can tell you all he is doing is dilluting his oil and lowering the octane. Been there and done that. Since the BP station in the next town over has more clearly marked the diesel pumps, I haven't had to drain gas from diesel pickup fuel tanks in quite a while. Since the oil recycler doesn't want anything but oil in the waste oil tank, I ran the mixture in my 98 Chevy. The highest "blend" was 25% diesel, 75% gas. The 75-25 made the engine ping and dilluted the oil. It doesn't help.

JoeO(CMO) wrote: Hmmm,,,what ratio would it have to be to render a gas vehicle inoperable, not damaged, just inoperable? I have some theft problems at my place.

Put just enough gas in some diesel to make it smell like gas. It doesn't do damage, just won't run.

10 or 20% diesel fuel added to gas will make your car detonate under load and smell like diesel out the exhaust.

Don't do it!!!

Way back when diesel or #2 heating oil was 1/2 price of gas had a guy that came into station and bought 15 gal of gas and 5 gal of #2 in his car, old Buick straight eight. Filled up once a week with this.

Edited by Coke-in-MN - 08 Jun 2011 at 10:15am

Yeah, it was mostly folks just passing through. The CA and Oliver 60 didn't ping any that I could tell, but about all they do is give rides. They did start a little harder and smoke some though. The lawn mower hated it.

A friend of mine mistakenly topped up the tank on his Dodge truck with gas instead of diesel. There was enough diesel that he drove home ok but when it wouldn't start the next day he realised his mistake. I helped him drain the tank and prime his fuel system with fresh diesel to get it started again. I took the mixed fuel home and tried some mixed with about 1/2 tank of gas in my 86 GMC Jimmy and it didn't like it. I suspect the main problem was due to the the computer and fuel injection system getting incorrect information from the O2 sensor. I did use the rest of the mixed fuel up by thinning it more with gas and using it in the lawn tractor and lawn mower.

In hot weather adding diesel to older engines was a way to prevent vapor lock on some of them. Remember one trip I made in old 6 cyl GMC converted school bus where it vapor locked out in middle of SD in hot weather .. Next fuel stop added diesel and ran fine.

years ago, back in my youth, in the late sixties, early seventies we did this in reverse on the old diesels, if we where going to pull the tractor we would mix a little ( and i do mean a small amount) high octane gas in with the diesel, and watch the flames come out the top of the stack, it made a differance in power but i would not dream of doing that these days

Todd: 2-4-D and Diesel fuel makes a good ragweed killer. and they don't grow back. also good for ground bees, woodchucks, skunks, annoying neighbors dogs, ahemm....chipmunks, annoying neighbors gas tanks *cough cough*

I've got a '42 Kohler genset that has a 140ci Waukesha flathead, ignited by magneto...  I can start it, get it warm, and switch it over to diesel... and it'll run nicely with a slight mixture adjustment.  Best not to shut the engine down while running on it... I switch back to gasoline, so it'll start nicely when cranked up next time.

Is it better?  is it good for it?  well...  you certainly won't get higher performance without some major retuning... but if you have large quantities of it available at a very low cost, finding a way of using it only reasonable.

That's what they did through the early-mid '30's anyway.  They used a small tank of a more volatile distillation byproduct called 'gasoline', and once running and warm, switched over to 'distillate'... or 'tractor fuel'.

Of course, it DID find it's way past the rings and filled the crankcase a bit, so there was two drain petcocks on the side of the oilpain... open the upper one, drain off the stuff on the top... after all, the heavy stuff fell to the bottom... light stuff stayed on top...

And whatever drained off, well, it went back in the tank... or if it was wintertime... into the radiator... 'cause it wouldn't freeze...

But it works better on lower compression engines that are well warmed, with plenty of ignition power.

Because the burn rate and heat energy of a volume of a fuel type is different from another, when a combustion method is optimized for one type of fuel, it will not be most efficient for another.  Multifuel operation requires that either an engine be able to be optimized on-the-fly... or that it's design be set up very conservatively, so that it will function  successfully under a wide range of conditions.

Modern engines are so optimized for efficiency on a given type of fuel, that expecting them to run satsifactorily on another, is asking alot.  Furthermore, modern road engines are equipped with emmission control systems that have no leniency (both in operation, and under EPA regulation) to tolerate fuel mixes without major drawbacks.  Modern engines also don't tolerate oil dilution and contamination products very well... they're squeezing every bit of energy out of fuel, and doing it in a very lightweight, compact package... and really only work 'hard' under intermittant duty conditions... totally opposite from a 50+ year old tractor... so what is gained in performance, was lost in flexibility...




Edited by DaveKamp - 11 Jun 2011 at 11:06pm

The 6.7 seems to be a winner mechanically so far. Drawbacks are the DPF and Urea adding to the cost per mile though. If you like the V10, hang on to it. They don't make them any more.