Burning Diesel Fuel With a Petrol Engine

No.

Old farm tractors could start up running on gasoline then switch to desiel after the engine got warm. The engine has to be really warm and the heads of the piston hot to allow for combustion of the desiel. Keep in mind these are desiel engines with gas parts.

Desiel fuel put in a cars gas tank will either not start or but if it does the desiel will blow the heads off the engine after the desiel fuel gets through the supply line to the engine. You would have to change the heads to iron or steel and use higher grade bolts and gaskets to hold the head in place. The pressure in a desiel engine is so much greater.

If the engine is designed to operate with either fuel then it can!!

For instance a good two-stroke engine should be able to operate on either fuel...

In the WW11 the tank engines were designed to work with just about any combustable stuff in their fuel tanks!! Due to needing to refuel where ever they could with what ever they found...

They used massive two-stroke engines as the power source....

Many of the engines used during the war years were very heavy duty and could be operated on just about any carbon based fuel. I remember reading/researching such an area of fuel technology 25-35 years ago. It was common practice to use a small gas producer (an enclosed stove-like affair with a wood burner under it) mounted on lorries in England during WW II. Off gases from the gas producer fed to the lorry engine. After starting up the engine on gasoline or diesel fuel, they would switch over to run on the gas produced by burning wood or coal under starved air conditions.

Basically a diesel engine need higher compression ratios as the diesel is ignited by a combination of pressure and heat and diesel injector have a different stray pattern to petrol injection.

Cylinder head pistons and big end bearing all have in diesel engines so unless the engine has been specially designed to burn both, then a petrol engine cannot burn diesel.

It was common in the past for people to put a litre of diesel in the petrol tank to use as an upper cylinder lubricant and in these days it never did any harm, but in these days of exhaust emission control and catalytic converters, that is not possible now.

Putting petrol in a diesel engine will wreck the engine and the diesel injector pump relies on diesel fir lubrication.

I agree that an engine will run on the fuels it is designed or re-designed to use. One major differences between gasoline and diesel engines is the way they initiate combustion in the cylinder. Most gasoline engines operate at lower (compared to diesel) compression ratios and the combustion is started with a spark where in a diesel a much higher compression ratio causes a temperature rise and also heat transfer from surroundings to initiate combustion. Also the fuels in the two types of engines are introduced in quite different manners (different locations in the air stream). Based on a little knowledge of this we can conclude how an engine would react with the wrong type of fuel if it had not been re-engineered.

On my old VW's , I learned a trick using diesel to clean carbon deposits out of the engine. You essentially trickle diesel down the carb (yes... carburetors I love them) and do all you can to keep it running while billowing horrible plumes of smoke. It works great, I still do it as part of the initial tuneup when I get my hands on an old car. But a standard ICE... no way you could operate it on diesel. The engines appear similar but are completely different in more ways than I feel like explaining this early in the morning.

I have seen the same done with carburated gasoline engines using just water. With a hot engine, the water would cause carbon deposits to crack loose. You have to keep the idle up to keep it from stalling. However, it did not produce great satisfying clouds of smoke.

Does anyone remember the diesel engine GM used in cars in the late 70's and/or early 80's? I think it was a 350 or small block variant. They were considered unreliable at the time possibly for the above reasons.

1985 Oldsmobile station wagon. That car was a pile of "s" that we ended up putting a gas 305 into just so I could sell it. What a horrible car it was... but the body and interior were immaculate so it was worth the work.

cadillac did. It was indeed junk- idea was fantastic and it did get 30s mpg and loved hot weather, while others were failing it was prevailing, but that was its only short heat wave summer lived glory. A/c was an icebox nonchalantly as I do recall- couldn't even tell the pump kicked on.1981 cadlliac eldorado with one of those funky fake wheels on the trunk. LOL.

These were real diesels, in the sense that they used compression ignition, and ran on diesel fuel, although the block was from a petrol engine (the small block). They were simply a rotten design, thrown together. VW did the same thing, but more effectively, with the Rabbit -- the diesel Rabbit engine was based on the petrol engine, but had many parts changed to deal with the higher pressures -- (as did the GM -- Volkswagen just did the engineering better.)

This was part of that 80's GM insanity to make whatever technology they had work in advanced ways that they weren't willing to embrace. Alter a V8 gas engine to burn diesel or turn a carburetor into a half-assed fuel injector because the patents hadn't run out for Bosch.

A gasoline engine has a lower compresstion ratio. The fuel may sort of run for awhile, but it will not run for long. Eventually the carborator or the fuel injectors will stop up. Now if you really want to do it. there is a way if it's a big block ford engine. You'll have to change the pistons, the heads and the injectors and the comupter. That's what the power stroke engine is. They used Catapiller heads on a 460 Cubic inch gas engine. The same engine is in some International Harvester trucks.

Check the labels (or the CAS #) on gasoline additives that are designed to be added to the gasoline and clean (acting as a non-evaporating solvent while the engine is running) the engine, fuel injector ports, valves etc. I believe you will find that this additive is diesel fuel. It doesn't "burn" like gasoline, ethanol, etc does in gasoline engines.

Don't do it. The Old equipment i.e. International HD-series crawlers were a diesel engine with compression release to start and warm on Petrol. The Diesel required the engagement of the injection pump and compression release. These engines were notorious for cracked cylinder heads. The 6.2 and 7.3 Powerstroke engines are based on the IH 404 gas engine block with substantial changes. I have an 1943 John Deere "A" that was designed to start on Gasoline and then run on Kerosene when warm. Power is reduced on kerosene. At the time #1 kerosene was much cheaper and more common than gasoline.

The petrol engine in your car motorcycle or lawnmower will not operate on diesel fuel. Viscosity, air fuel ratios, volatility, and octane rating are all wrong. Diesel fuel is very hard to ignite with a spark, and old wartime distillate engines had multiple spark plugs, which nevertheless fouled often.

Diesel engines are much more tolerant of multiple fuels, although they are unhappy with petrol, because it is not sufficiently oily to keep the injection pump running smoothly.

In theory, can't you add oil to gas to run in a diesel engine in worst case scenario?

That would be your worst case scenario.

Don't try it in other words I take it

Yep.

Why bother with it -- in California diesel fuel is the same price (close) as regular unleaded. What could the possible benefit be? Just curious about the benefit.

Why bother, even if they both cost the same per gallon? Diesel has 40% more energy by volume than gasoline (petrol) (better mileage, etc.)

Diesel has 40% more energy by volume ---

Thank You, Didn't know that, maybe NASCAR racers should use the higher energy fuel. --- more energy and better mileage would = fewer pit stops, diesel is sure to be a race winner.

It's more like 12%.

Sorry - I should have put "Diesel has 40% more energy by volume" in quotes -- I was responding to #21 as I thought 40% was somewhat high. Actually, I was trying to be humorous and not really too critical.

check out last years audi lemans car... diesel baby.. all the way :) i actually *think* they won the 24 hour endurance race too :)

Yes that is right -- a diesel engine designed to run on diesel fuel. A great job they did too.

yes indeed! sorry if it seemed i was saying they ran a gas engine on diesel... i just liked the fact that they braved the racing scene with a diesel.. way too cool :)

I fail to see the problem here. Dig a pit, dump diesel fuel in it, set it on fire, and throw the petrol engine into the pit. I imagine they will burn quite well together.

If you average figures from various sources, and take into account the various formulations, you come up with figures close to those used for the XPrize competition: 116,000 btu/gal for gas, 129,000 btu/gal for diesel. That's about an 11 percent difference.

Yes. Few seconds, maybe minutes before it blows out.

The so-called "octane" number of Diesel fuel is zero ! In other words, offers zero protection against detonation.

In petrol engines (also known as Otto-cycle engines) the fuel is mixed with air (carburator or "inlet port" fuel injection) before it gets into the cylinder, hence it has to resist detonation up to the ignition point (spark plug fires).

In Diesel engines ( Diesel-cycle) the fuel is injected at high pressure directly into the cylinder by the end of the compression, i.e. when the spark plug would fire in a petrol engine. Hence no need for the fuel to resist detonation.

No. No fuel detonates when pumped at high pressure because it has no air to combust and the compression of liquids does not rise the the liquid temperature (unlike air).

Yes. In cold weather spraying a bit of petrol in a Diesel engine inlet will help the start (the air-petrol pre-mix will detonate in the high compression Diesel). But there is a risk in doing that.

i can tell you from personal experience that it WILL kill your engine!

way back when.......i was young and had little money, i mixed 2/3 petrol and 1/3 diesel to run my car.....worked good for a couple of weeks. then all h*** broke loose.

cracked head, broken crankshaft, all 4 rods bent horribly out of shape.

in short, don't try it!! you will be walking in short order!

No it cant ! Since diesel engine works on the principle of compression ignition and the adiabatic compression results in spontaneous combustion of the air-fuel mixture and is mostly dependent on the `Cetane` value of the fuel. Where as the petrol engine requires extraneous source of ignition like a spark, which is provided by a plug(as in older engines ) or by electroinic means. The ignition quality depends here on the Octane value of the fuel for proper propagation of fuel burn - up. Thanks. Radirs.

Been there done that. Back in the mid 70's when in the US Navy, I sent an Equipment operator (Driver) to the motor pool to fuel up the section jeep. Being used to driving big trucks etc. He filled up the jeep with Diesel... It coughed, sputtered, smoked, missed, bucked and did everything else nasty you can dream up but, it ran. It took several tanks of the proper fuel to get back to "normal". I don't recomend it unless you want to fight with your car for months.