From: Beth C. (bcarrell@neo.rr.com)
Date: Fri Jul 18 2003 - 08:15:24 PDT
I forwarded this to the Gamagoat mailing list and thought the response may
interest some on this list. This is to the diesel fuel article recently
posted.
>Saw an interesting article posted on an MV website, thought you folks may
be
>interested, I don't know the author, however it seems to make sense.
I think the guy that wrote this is a professional "author" not someone
familiar with diesels. Here's a few examples:
>....The diesel use a
>phenomenon known as "heat of compression" which is no more than air at
>ambient temperature suddenly compressed to about 4,000 psi.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, that I'd like to see, it's not even possible to compress air
at 1 atm to 4000 psi in one shot. Normal compression pressures for diesels
run around 500 psi.
>The primary reason that diesel engines are first choice among contingency
>planners is the large quantities of diesel fuel may be safely stored for
>very long periods with little special treatment or care.
Perhaps for large engines but my experiance with smaller diesels is that
they are very picky about the freshness of the fuel.
>The federal government has recently required that oil refineries dye #2
>heating fuel oil red, off-road #2 diesel fuel blue-green, and highway use
>diesel is left undyed,
Around here fuel oil and off-road diesel is red, never seen the blue green
stuff around here, ever. Off road gas is blue green, av-gas is blue but
never seen diesel blue or green.
> Excessive gasoline
>will not harm the engine: it just will not run on gasoline.
I guess that's true, it won't harm the engine itself but the injection pump
is another issue.
> A diesel engine will overheat rapidly under heavy load,
>and due to its operating characteristics, will overheat more rapidly at l
>throttle than at wide open throttle.
I've been driving diesel pickups and such for 21 years, never seen this. In
fact I put a piece of cardboard in front of the radiator in the winter and
one year I forgot to take it out. One hot summer day I noticed that the
temp gage was about 12 oclock when it normally sits at 11 oclock but still
along way from the orange band.
> We highly discourage the
>use of starting fluids: the use of starting fluid often causes the engine
to
>attempt to turn backwards, causing severe engine damage.
Huh???? the damage is from spinning backwards? I guess this guys never heard
an engine started on to much ether and the resulting loud knocking noise,
sounds like there's marbles running thru the engine. In fact if you put to
much ether in you will "ether lock" the engine and you won't get it to roll
over, it will come up to compression and the ether will fire (before TDC,
sounds more like a muffled farting sound) and the engine will just stop for
a moment then continue cranking.
Ether can be highly effective but is only needed in very VERY small
quantities. I was out of town, parked at motel, the truck was a good 100'
away and it got cold and snowed overnight and my flame primer died. It
wouldn't start. So I sprayed one quick squirt of ether, I mean the absolute
quickest tap of the valve, and from 5 feet away, directed at the air intake.
Then got in the truck and turned the key, started in less than 2 seconds,
slight knock noise for a second or two was all.
But then your mileage may vary.
later,
je
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