Going to the flying field

Indeed. 'Diesel' is any compression ignition engine full stop.

Ok, you got MY attention, as an ex diesel mechanic I have to admit that I've never seen one, and have NO idea how this would work. do you have any names of examples of this type engine?

I have been searching, and keep coming up empty

bob

IIRC, we were discussing it either here, or on RCU, when someone mentioned a tractor that used a carbureted diesel. It was confirmed by another gentleman, or two.

That's the best I can do, but they convinced me. So while I wouldn't make book on it, I'd lay down a fiver on a hunch that it might be true. Surprised me too.

Ed Cregger

The only one I can think of was the hermaphrodite engine International Harvester used to use. they were "interesting" to say the least, and pretty fragile in the head area there was a lever which opened the valves to an auxiliary combustion chamber for each cylinder and allowed the engine to inhale through a carburetor and fire from a spark plug. the speed was fixed at a fast idle, and this would allow you to start the engine and warm it up when you were ready, you advanced the throttle to begin injecting diesel fuel, and moved the start lever back to the run position which closed the valves to the auxiliary chambers, cut the ignition off, and stopped the gasoline portion of the engine

all this is from memory, and I haven't looked at one for years, but these engines were used on equipment ranging from small farm tractors up to and including the TD-24 crawler tractors.

I know of several tractors that used everything from kerosene to real low grade gasoline, but all of them were spark ignition, and most had compression ratios even lower than gasoline engines.

bob

As everyone knows, my memory is toasted, but weren't the original diesel engines supposed to run on gun powder? Like I said, my memory is toast.

Ed Cregger

Interesting indeed. We tend to forget how good we have it now until someone like Bob reminds us of how it use to be. And not all that long ago either!

Thanks Bob, you reminded me of that one - my father used to work for IH over here and I have a recollection of him talking about this, but didn't take much notice - I didn't have an airframe big enough to use one:-)))

Malcolm

toasted is good, soft and mushy is a problem ;-)

Actually you just made me look proposed fuels included coal dust according to wikipedia. now THAT would be tough to build injectors for ;-)

Thanks for the kind words, It's nice to know that I am useful for something other than a bad example ;-)

bob

Seems this thread has gone somewhat astray with diesel conversations...HOWEVER, I just found out that a company on the west coast is converting a large motorcyclesto diesel to sell...I can try to find more information if anyone is really intersted. Frank Schwartz