The Medway Handyman wrote:
Cerberus . wrote:
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.

I wonder when diesel fuel first became available then?

Bit like the tin opener not being invented for several years after tinned
food became available.


Earliest IC engines were quite peculiar.

I THINK the earliest was the gas engine..designed to run on 'town gas'
featuring red hot ceramic glow plugs to assist the ignition..a sort of
compression ignition engine: that predates the diesel a bit I think.

Then I have seen paraffin engines: paraffin was in use for lamps from
IIRC the mid 9th century onwards. Also alcohol engines. Moderm model
aircraft engines are alcohol engines with glow plugs.

I would guess that te sort of kerosene/paraffin type fuels were in use
before petrol was actually. The methane type gases from refining were a
waste product and burnt off at refineries and oil wells for a long time..