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Posted by David Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Thursday, March 03, 2011 at 13:02:51 :
In Reply to: Re: gasoline flathead to diesel flathead conversion posted by Paul (in NY) [12.64.152.237] on Thursday, March 03, 2011 at 08:27:29 :
I've got a J.D. 2010 tractor with an engine that was designed from the bottom up to be made into either a gas or a diesel model. The block is identical. The injector pump on the diesel version goes where the distributor goes on the gas version. The head and crank are different, but the pistons, rings, and sleeves are the same. It's a real dog and I've never gotten any useful work out of it. Not very many were made and almost none are still around. I know there's something seriously wrong with my setup because after many days of futzing, complete rebuilt of the engine, injectors, and injector pump, it still seems to only run on 2 cylinders and smokes like crazy. It's probably not as bad a design as the infamous Olds diesel, since it was designed from the get-go to be a block that could be set up for either gas or diesel, but it's still a compromise and it doesn't work.
There were those old diesel engines that had a carburetor and spark plugs, that you'd start on gas, and then when they warmed up, switch over to diesel. They worked pretty well, but they weren't trying to make a good gas engine out of it -- just one that would run well enough to warm itself up. The only real success is the military multifuel. In that case, it really is totally a diesel engine thermodynamically. It's just a diesel engine with some clever German tweaks to let it burn a wider range of fuels.