deisel conversion to NG?

penoy_balut said:

There's a guy in the Phils. who runs his car with water.

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It's the same guy who lies all the time!.

Nigel Goodwin said:

It's the same guy who lies all the time!.

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Well Nigel,
I have heard a claim where an Aussie designed a car motor to run on water, it was back in the 60's but apparntley the black coats paid him a visit and it hasn't been heard of since. My father-in-law who is into vintage cars told me about it and showed me the article he had in his scrapbook and when I asked him opnion on the claim it said it was done but in his knowledge he didn't know how and he is a retired industrial chemist from the old school. I have asked him if I can scan the article and he said bluntly NO leave dead dogs alone.

Cheers Bryan

bryan1 said:

Well Nigel,
I have heard a claim where an Aussie designed a car motor to run on water, it was back in the 60's but apparntley the black coats paid him a visit and it hasn't been heard of since. My father-in-law who is into vintage cars told me about it and showed me the article he had in his scrapbook and when I asked him opnion on the claim it said it was done but in his knowledge he didn't know how and he is a retired industrial chemist from the old school. I have asked him if I can scan the article and he said bluntly NO leave dead dogs alone.

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There have been many such claims over many decades, yet no one has ever been able to show a working example! - those that have tried have been easily shown to be fraudulent.

The usual 'excuse' is that it was working perfectly, but people from the oil companies bought it and supressed it - what a load of rubbish!.

This area (alternate auto fuels) is a favorite of conspiracy theorists. The evil super secret government agency supressed the research. The evil oil companies bought the patent and are sitting on it so they can sell more oil. The second gunman killed the inventor, stole the prototype and stashed it in area 51 next to the alien corpses.

I don't know what is more amazing, the stories they make up or that so many people want to believe them.

Nigel Goodwin said:

You need to be aware of the SERIOUS legal complications in the UK, it's OK off the road, but for on road use you may fall foul of evading paying the tax on the road diesel!.

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Who's going to know?

It isn't red desel which stains the engine.

Hero999 said:

Who's going to know?

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They do tests! - it's VERY actively policed, you need to be careful in the UK.

City Busses run on propane. So do PG&E Trucks.

**broken link removed**

Getting back to the thread origin, there was a Cummins business in Clovis, NM about 20 years ago that did just that. They converted N series Cummins truck diesel engines to run on natural gas. I never was interested enough back then to ask the details of the conversion. They replaced the injectors with spark plugs and the injector pump with some sort of distributor or magneto but I don't remember if they altered the normal @15:1 compression ratio. With the high octane rating of CNG, it shouldn't have been a problem to leave it alone. I believe they capped the works with an IMPCO mixer/throttle body.

As for the conspiracy theorists: a couple of high school buddies worked in a General Motors garage where one of those 40mpg full sized Oldsmobiles was confiscated in the early '70s. The "black suits" gave the reason that it was an experimental prototype and it wasn't EPA approved for road use. I personally saw an electric car that subsequently "disappeared" in the early '80s and my Dad rode in a water powered car about the time the blokes in OZ and half of Europe were using firewood to power their autos. The car and it's owner "disappeared". All his friends and neighbors remembered it well but even close relatives didn't know what became of him, his wife and sons, or the car.

Not that the US Govt would have any involvement in protecting oil interests

On the first point, they would have had to change the compression ratio since diesel works by compressing the fuel/air mixture to the point where the heat is above the ignition point. NG/air mix combusts at a much lower temp and thus would cause problems for the engine. The more I've investigated, I think diesel to NG conversion is impractical.

On the second paragraph. Yeah, sure, whatever. plus there was second gunman on the grassy knoll, there really are aliens being held in area 51 and the tooth fairy is real.

philba said:

On the first point, they would have had to change the compression ratio since diesel works by compressing the fuel/air mixture to the point where the heat is above the ignition point. NG/air mix combusts at a much lower temp and thus would cause problems for the engine. The more I've investigated, I think diesel to NG conversion is impractical.

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Seemed a bit of overkill to me?, basically converting the diesel engine to be a petrol engine, then run it on gas - SERIOUSLY big modifications. Considering a diesel engine costs a LOT more than a petrol one, why not start with a petrol engine in the first place?.

On the second paragraph. Yeah, sure, whatever. plus there was second gunman on the grassy knoll, there really are aliens being held in area 51 and the tooth fairy is real.

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What do you mean?, the tooth fairly isn't real!

Nigel Goodwin said:

What do you mean?, the tooth fairly isn't real!

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Yup and let me tell you about santa claus...

hmmm, convert this one to gas???
http://www.ultimatestupidity.com/pics/1/diesel/

As you go around the UK you come across various old engines, in museums and even still in use - it's amazing what they run off, some use petrol, some diesel, some gas, some paraffin, some just off oil (like very thick diesel).

Here's a steam engine you can see running at Sheffield , it's seriously impressive - it was from a rolling mill, so moved large metal plates back and forth between rollers. As such it has to reverse direction VERY quickly, you wouldn't believe something that big could do it!.

diesel to ng conversion

Yes, it is quite possible to convert a diesel engine to run on natural gas, or even propane. I worked for Caterpillar for many years and they converted their diesel engines to work on natural gas. The secret is that diesel engines use a compression ratio of 22 or so to one. That is the secret of the cycle as the compression heat ignites the fuel mixture. Gasoline engines usually work at lower compression ratio to prevent pre-ignition, or "pinging". The diesel ignition works on a cetane value, whereas the gasoline engine works on an octane value. Caterpillar converted diesel engines to natural gas by merely adding thickness to the cylinder gasket to lower the compression ratio, and then replaced the injectors with spark plugs and a magneto. I installed many of these units for various purposes, as the more robust engine parts of the diesel engines would mean much more reliability. Incidently, the octane rating of propane is much higher than gasoline.

But did the power level drop? If so by how much?

The point in converting a diesel engine was not about power, but reliabity and convenience. The engines converted ran on natural gas. Most run of the mill gasoline engines have a compression ratio of around 7 or 8 to one. A diesel is more efficient since it runs at around 22 to one. Propane engines can run around 12 to one without pre-combusting. The harder the squeeze on the fuel mixture, the bigger the bang. The octane rating is a number relating to how much you can compress a mixture without causing it to self ignite. The cetane rating is how hard you have to compress a mixture in order to get it to self ignite. A diesel engine has the advantage of not making a mixture until the air is already compressed past the point of self ignition. When you use high octane fuel in a low compression engine you are throwing money away.

Diesals will burn pretty much anything if it's the right mixture of fuel to air. What about emissions though? In that case efficiency is important due to the massive amounts of pollution that can be thrown off, no matter how cheap or readily available the fuel is.

The purpose of this thread is to make a diesel engine converted to run on natural gas. In that event the polution would be insignificant because it would be a clean fuel to begin with.

Inefficiently burned natural gas produces as much or more polutants than regular diesal or generic combustion engines do when running efficiently, you seem to think there is such a thing as clean fuel =) It's all burned in one way or another it's all dirty.