What other fuels burn in diesel?

It's actually my Deere R that has the pony motor. My Farmall M has a distillate head and will run on a wide array of fuels. I generally use kerosene once warmed up. Runs well on straight gas too.

Been there and tried. Common rail duramax. Filtered used motor oil. Ran around oil at 75% and 25% diesel fuel in warm temps. EXCELLENT fuel price and it ran excellent until it didn't. Bad thing was I started chewing out injectors @ around 2000miles. In all, injectors 4 times. 1 cylinder head, and countless labor hours to get it back on the road. The couple hundred in fuel savings didn't equate to my repairs. There is a reason my tdi gets only diesel. Oh yeah, its Saturday and I'm bored too.

Mike_04GolfTDI said:

You can drive cars pretty well forever with no fuel, according to TV shows like The Walking Dead. Seven years in, cars have not run out of fuel.

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Yeah, how do they keep that gasoline from going stale and gumming up???


I guess everyone hurried up and dumped Sta-Bil in their gas tanks before abandoning their vehicles on the side of the road!

my son who is retired Marine, said in his FOB in Afghanistan used 1 fuel for everything.. Jp8.
They also replaced pumps and injectors on his vehicle like crazy.. But have to consider they run 'battle conditions'.. and all stops and safeties were removed. He told me in his 1 year deployment, his vehicle was re-pumped and new injectors 3 times.

Cummins had a neat system in the 60's-70's.. you threw a valve open, and it pumped oil out of the engine into the fuel tank.. "up to 10% was recommended"
and then you opened another valve to top-off the oil from your on-board supply,

Only had to change the filters.
When I really get pinched with the wrong fuel in my tractors (sudden winter blast) , I'll pour about 10 gallons of kero into the tanks to get rolling again.

Ranch said:

my son who is retired Marine, said in his FOB in Afghanistan used 1 fuel for everything.. Jp8.
They also replaced pumps and injectors on his vehicle like crazy.. But have to consider they run 'battle conditions'.. and all stops and safeties were removed. He told me in his 1 year deployment, his vehicle was re-pumped and new injectors 3 times.

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in the humvees they count on engines every 2500 miles
6.5s are kind of disposable, but they were designed with exactly that in mind, cheap drop in diesel engine.
got a 7.3 IDI all worn out that I run on 15 gallons ATF and 5 gallons gasoline. Convenient because it has 2 20 gallon tanks, and each one will provide 200 miles. I can say that it gets 50 MPG on gasoline.

ETA: on tdis, they don't do too good. Might do better with big nozzles. Less BTUs means more fuel is needed and dirty fuel means poop builds up.

I tried running my TDI's on a WMO/diesel mix, they started smoking badly after one tank, even running 1 gallon to 12 gallons diesel whereas my 6.2 will run on anything.

My wagon currently runs Jet A and HHO.

turbovan+tdi said:

I tried running my TDI's on a WMO/diesel mix, they started smoking badly after one tank, even running 1 gallon to 12 gallons diesel whereas my 6.2 will run on anything.

My wagon currently runs Jet A and HHO.

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what color was the smoke? blue or black? were you mixing it thoroughly?

When I run about 10% used engine oil in the big Cummins, i'll get a slight 'haze' of blue @ idle, but soon as it's heated up and working, it's all clear. I'm seeing 1 or 2 lbs increase in boost, I think the oil burns a little slower, and more heat energy is making it to the turbo.
My small Cummins 5.9's, pretty much only get 1% 2 stroke.

Ranch said:

what color was the smoke? blue or black? were you mixing it thoroughly?

When I run about 10% used engine oil in the big Cummins, i'll get a slight 'haze' of blue @ idle, but soon as it's heated up and working, it's all clear. I'm seeing 1 or 2 lbs increase in boost, I think the oil burns a little slower, and more heat energy is making it to the turbo.
My small Cummins 5.9's, pretty much only get 1% 2 stroke.

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The big trucks are ok with oil, its the little engines that have issues. I've made my own brews for years but no matter how I do it on the VW, it just blows blue smoke and stinks.

I am going to try hydraulic oil next, that stuff burned so nicely in my van.

Many years ago I used home heating oil (.58 a gallon) in an old '74 Mercedes Benz 240D. This before you had to sign for the fuel and before home heating oil was dyed.

The Benz ran fine, until the weather got REAL cold, like near Zero.

Car wouldn't start and sat for two weeks until weather warmed up.

Went back to Diesel until Spring, but by that time the car had nearly rusted away.

I recently ran dry, in my 2003 Golf. I know, I know... bad planning. I was fewer than 100 miles from home when the light came on, and had done 100 miles on the low fuel light before, so I figured I could get there. Car died in freeway traffic with three miles to go.

I was carrying kerosene, for the backpacking stoves I use, but it was no help - there was air in the injector lines and I didn't have my special 17mm wrench to crack the lines open. Got towed home, the car now has a gallon of kerosene mixed with a full tank of D2, and runs/starts fine. I'm adding B20/R80 every 50 miles, to help the lubricity and soon the kero will be used up.

But lessons learned: Don't run dry, and if you do, have the right tool on hand to break the air out of the injector lines.

OP from 2011

belome said:

So, say the earth ended or you were stranded in the wilderness 100 miles from civilizations. What souces of fuel 'could' be burnt in our cars?

Would Kerosene work? Could you steal Heating Oil from a hunting cabin???

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Well the original diesel engine was designed to be for farmers to have fuel for their equipment.
So build a still and get some corn or soybeans or ? You would need acres if you do much driving.

BobnOH said:

So build a still and get some corn or soybeans or ? You would need acres if you do much driving.

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alcohol is one of few things that won't really run in a diesel

belome said:

So, say the earth ended or you were stranded in the wilderness 100 miles from civilizations. What souces of fuel 'could' be burnt in our cars?

Would Kerosene work? Could you steal Heating Oil from a hunting cabin???

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First off, it depends.

One what specific type you have. CR will be a bit picky in their acceptable fuels while the others would be more forgiving.

In general you can burn:
Diesel (Duh)
Kerosene
Jet A (local/regional airports would be a good source since few people are going to think of them and even when their tanks are 'empty' you probably have a hundred gallons or more below the pickup, filter it after recovery)

For non-CR you should be able to burn with a warm running engine:
Motor oil
Vegetable Oils
Heating Oil

You will need to switch over to one of the above and 'flush' the system before shutdown or you might find it hard to restart the engine.

I would also grab any and all fuel lubricant and cetane booster I could get my hands on.

almost all heating oil is ulsd, red diesel too.
They gear up to make one thing and it is much cheaper to pass the extra cost of refining further on to the consumer than it is to switch over to making something else.

Motor oil works better when thinned with any sort of flammable solvent. In my IDI I use gasoline, but you could use kero or diesel.

If you could figure out a way to get it in there, discarded coffee grounds and egg shells have enough BTUs to make the engine run.

Anyone ever see the cotton ball demonstration?

Some guy out there actually has a used coffee ground gasifier fueling his car. I think it's a gasser, but gasifiers work with diesels too. They just need a small amount of diesel for a pilot injection.

While it does not make for alot of savings in a 50 MPG diesel, I was going to start using W85 in my older pick ups and big trucks to offset huge fuel costs (9 MPGs burns alot more fuel than 50 MPG's).

FWIW W85 is 85% used motor oil ( the W in W 85 is Waste motor oil filtered of course) mixed with 15% RUG (regular unleaded gas).

Supposed to burn OK but may need injector cleaning more often but some people run double dose of power service to counter that.

Anybody here running that now in a TDI ?

Andyinchville1 said:

While it does not make for alot of savings in a 50 MPG diesel, I was going to start using W85 in my older pick ups and big trucks to offset huge fuel costs (9 MPGs burns alot more fuel than 50 MPG's).

FWIW W85 is 85% used motor oil ( the W in W 85 is Waste motor oil filtered of course) mixed with 15% RUG (regular unleaded gas).

Supposed to burn OK but may need injector cleaning more often but some people run double dose of power service to counter that.

Anybody here running that now in a TDI ?

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An IDI might tolerate that for a good long while. I don't think TDI injectors would make much of it though. Far smaller hole size on a TDI injector than the garden hose nozzle of an IDI injector.

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I think you'd want a centrifuge and good filtering setup to clean up the used oil. Should work ok in an old idi diesel or a heui 7.3. Probably not advisable in a tdi.

oilhammer said:

If you could figure out a way to get it in there, discarded coffee grounds and egg shells have enough BTUs to make the engine run.
Anyone ever see the cotton ball demonstration?

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Nope, got a link?

Andyinchville1 said:

While it does not make for alot of savings in a 50 MPG diesel, I was going to start using W85 in my older pick ups and big trucks to offset huge fuel costs (9 MPGs burns alot more fuel than 50 MPG's).

FWIW W85 is 85% used motor oil ( the W in W 85 is Waste motor oil filtered of course) mixed with 15% RUG (regular unleaded gas).

Supposed to burn OK but may need injector cleaning more often but some people run double dose of power service to counter that.

Anybody here running that now in a TDI ?

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Tried WMO in TDI's, didn't work for me, belched blue smoke after one tank, even at a gallon of WMO and the rest diesel.

vanbcguy said:

An IDI might tolerate that for a good long while. I don't think TDI injectors would make much of it though. Far smaller hole size on a TDI injector than the garden hose nozzle of an IDI injector.

Sent from my LG-H873 using Tapatalk

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Nozzle size has nothing to do with it, people run Dmax's, and other CR diesels on WMO with no issues.

turbobrick240 said:

I think you'd want a centrifuge and good filtering setup to clean up the used oil. Should work ok in an old idi diesel or a heui 7.3. Probably not advisable in a tdi.

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Yep, the CF catch's a lot of crap but cutting with rug and settling really settles the junk. Seems to work fine in Dmax's, Powerstrokes etc but I found our little TDI's didn't like it, others have tried and it works,

Here is one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qe1Ueifekg

turbobrick240 said:

I think you'd want a centrifuge and good filtering setup to clean up the used oil. Should work ok in an old idi diesel or a heui 7.3. Probably not advisable in a tdi.

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FWIW I do have the oc 20 dieselcraft centrifuge set up but not used yet since I've been so busy working to start experimenting.

I have read that older mechanical and IDI diesels work best with alternate fuels but for the life of me I cannot understand why a DI diesel shuldn;t work as well....

I do run Wal mart tc3 2 stroke to lube the fuel system in my jetta but I'll start (soon) messing around the the w85 in my pick up and if that seems to work may try a little in the jetta...