Question about old International crawler

Long before the war there were engines that were equipped to run on kerosine with a bit of water after being warmed up on gasoline. In the late '50s I worked in a small lumber mill. On days when there was no work, the Owners son and I (Owner too, sometimes) used to fool around with an old steel wheeled Massey/Harris that was built this way, but since the manifold heat system was rusted solid, all we ever ran it on was gasoline, IIRC it had two small tanks for gas and water, and a much larger one for kerosene. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller
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The electronics super at the airport when I worked there, filled up at the wrong (diesel) pump one day, fortunately he still had enough gas that the car would still run. The maintenance shop explained why his car smoked so badly and had little power but they refused to drain the tank for him - made him drive it till he had burned it through. After that he was known as smokey. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

Actually, such a system can be made to run fairly well, with the right carburetor and adjustments. The old systems being discussed were designed for the purpose. Still, it was a poor substitute. Just dumping kerosene into the gas won't work at all well, as you've discovered.

Internal combustion engines can also be made to burn most any combustible gas, fluid, or even combustible particulates like smoke. Recall also that the first Diesels were designed to burn powdered coal (they had many problems, but they did run). With many odd fuels, you have to partially burn (bake) them in a 'retort' to produce volumes of combustable gas or smoke, then feed that to the engine. In the war they used wood, coconut shells, an assortment of oils, and all sorts of other materials to run gasoline engines. Not well, but they ran. It amazing what you can do if you HAVE to.

Dan Mitchell ============

Reply to
Daniel A. Mitchell

A discussion of this effect (running a truck on burning wood in a retort) is found in "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" when the protagonist is transported halfway across china in one of those contraptions.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

The TD24 did on 1950 or so vintage. The TD25 had a gas start/full diesel engine.as did most of all the IH heavy equipment back in the old days. We had one of each in the Operating Engineers apprenticeship program I went through.

The gas start/full diesel had a bizarre head design. the simple explanation is: It had a lock-out lever that when pulled opened a chamber that included a spark plug in it. You turned on the gas, set the throttle and started it with a standard style 24v starter. After the engine got a little warmed up, you turned on the diesel fuel and when the exhaust started loading up, you threw the lever and that shut off the gas/head chamber and the engine started running normally on diesel.

Most of the old machines I ran over the years that had IH engines were of the gas start/full diesel design. Galion Graders, Austin Western Graders, an old Buc-Erie crane, some of those morphodite military machines that were combo scraper/dozer/loader things of the 1940's-50's era had'em.

Brings back the old days and makes me feel my age.

Byrd

Reply to
hmHAT

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 23:15:17 -0700, "hmHAT" wrote:

Congrats for the best explanation IMO (that I saw) in this thread. I have two of these machines, a TD24 dozer, and an Austin Western (AKA arful western) motor grader. Some additional advantages - these engines develop enough power when running on gas to pull the tractor in low-low gear. That can be a big help if the machine is blocking the road and you need to get past it to pick up more fuel. :-) They're also easy to bleed, just run on gas while slowly cracking the diesel throttle until bled. The grader starts on a regular 12V car battery even when cold. It has a mag, but the dozer, a little newer ;-) has a distributor etc. One of the reasons I got the dozer cheap was that the previous owner found it ridiculously hard to start. There must have been a hundred empty ether cans littering the ground around its parking spot. I asked him why the gas starting system had been disabled, and he said: "what gas starting system?". All it needed was points and a coil (and a transmission and heads). He was incredulous when he saw it fire up just by turning the key. Another reason he wanted rid of it was lack of maneuverability. One of his BIL types had adjusted the track clutches so that they didn't work, and the owner had been turning the machine by using the two-speed track drives alone. Turning circle was about 5 acres. Once tuned up, it pivots in its own length, but makes a reaaaaally big divot. :-)

Wayne

Reply to
wmbjk

LOL. :^)

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

Just be very careful when adjusting the power assist on those steering clutches or you will start singing soprano! Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

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