On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:15:19 GMT, The Medway Handyman wrote:

Andy Dingley wrote:
On 15 Sep, 22:03, Roger wrote:

Diesel tractors don't run very well on petrol. :-(

They run fine on a mix of 1 petrol : 10 diesel, or up to 1 petrol : 3
diesel if pushed. In cold weather this is even standard practice
against waxing.

Diesels will also run on a mixture of old unleaded petrol, whilst
petrol cars are getting fussy about the poor storage qualities of
unleaded.

My mate runs his diesel car on vegetable oil. He reckons you should thin it
with white spirit in the winter.

He also maintains that the diesel engine was designed to run on vegetable
oil in the first place as diesel fuel wasn't commonly available in the late
1800's. Is that right?

I wouldn't have thought it would have been freely available considering
Rudolf Diesel didn't patent his engine until 1893.

Don.