Running a mower on koresen or fuel oil.

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JR

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Michigan born but my heart belongs in dixie
Hi, I have a 8hp motor that I just rebuilt. Well I have the short block finished. Before I started I did some investigating and come across a little section in a briggs and stratton repair manual, and in this section it stated that a gas flat head with a few madifications can be started and warmed with gasoline and then be switch to run on Koresene. It also said that I would only lose 10% hp and saze about 15% fuel. I want to do this. What Sould I do to break this engine in? What oil should I use to break this engine in? How often should I change the oil? And what good oil should I use after break-in? Thanks for the replies and help.
 
You received tons of info in this thread:
Lawn and Small Engine » Break-In oil?

Why start a new thread
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Also, when gasoline was $1.25 a couple of years ago, kerosene sold for over $2.00. Although I havent bought any kerosene lately, I dont see its price going down, and I am sure it has gone up, as well.
 
In the U.K. Ford used to sell a Marine engine known as the Ford Watermotor, it was basicly a 4cyl Kent engine that could be started on Gas and when warm switched to Parafin (Kerosene), it was a Low compression Low HP engine, and would produce about 10% more power on Gas than Parafin.
In the U.K. at that time Parafin was less than half the price of Gas.
 
today because of this thread i went outside and ran my pressure cleaner on diesel. i had to richen up the jet about 1.5 turns but it did sucessfully run on diesel.

if you dont richen up the carb the engine wont even run so if you have a newer engine with no adjustable needles then you cant run diesel.
 
quote:

Originally posted by cryptokid:
today because of this thread i went outside and ran my pressure cleaner on diesel. i had to richen up the jet about 1.5 turns but it did sucessfully run on diesel.

if you dont richen up the carb the engine wont even run so if you have a newer engine with no adjustable needles then you cant run diesel.


Kewl!

What kind of things did you notice?

Sound?
Smoke?
Smell?
Power?

Do you know what the engine's compression ratio is.

Were you able to start it on diesel?
 
i was not able to start it on diesel i tried and the most i could get was puffs of white smoke. i had to put a little gas in the gastank just to get it stated and warmed up. once it warmed up and the little bit of gas ran out and the engine stopped, i filled the tank with diesel, adjusted the jetting and it fired up but this time it started on diesel.

it seems that it can only start on diesel once the engine is good and hot.

i noticed it had about the same power. it constantly had a little diesel smoke comming out the exhaust which was kinda cool. i enjoyed the smell of burning diesel. its a good smell. it definitly used more diesel compared to gas. the fuel effiecneyy is down. i think this is from the low compression ratio of the engine. i dont know what the compression ratio is, but all pressure cleaners and small engines have low compression.

i couldnt tell if it was smoother or quieter.

sence most lawnmowers and pressure cleaners are very low compression diesel is a perfectly acceptable alternative to gas. it didnt ping or anything and i ran it for a few hours at full load.

ill see if i can get someone to snap a pic of it running so you can see the exhaust.

diesel costs alot less than gasoline. if you buy off-highway diesel its about 50 cents cheaper per gallon.
 
Will a ohv run on diesel. I don't see why it wouldn't. Since I posted this topic I have been experiementing myself. I started with a friends riding mower. You see we have been thinking about this together for a while. The mower had a newer briggs and stratton 12 horse in it. he hadn't mowed the grass in a while so it was high. The mower had a little bit of gas in it so we started it up and mowed abought 10 minutes. We shut it off and pured some diesel in it, Hit the key and it came right to life. I was surprised it ran without playing with the jets alittle. It smoked a little and drove great. But we had to jet it alittle because it was sluggish when it came to mowing the tall grass. We adjusted it ounce and got it right, and it when to mowing with all the power that it had with gas. Plus it gave of a little bit of smoke, not a lot just when the going got real tuff. Mowed for a good three hour on diesel. And it smelled like diesel so that made that much better. When we were done, we let it cool and we learned that it has to be shut down on diesel. After that I went home and started my push mower up and warmed and put diesel in it. But the pusher has a carb on it that is not adjustable so it lost a little power. But I still kept a mowing. It never quit on me. As long as you don't have to mow tall grass it would be ok. And I couldn't stop myself after that. I got out my go-kart that has a 5 hp flat head briggs and stratton, ran it to it got warm and dumped some diesel in it. I adjusted the carberator a little and got it running good. Ran it for a good 45 minutes and filled it up again with diesel, and went out and gave it **** again. I ran it a good hour and a half and parked it in the garage because I had to be some where. The next day I had a little free time and was just in the shed my oil shrin and was just sitting ther with a friend. I thought let go out and ride the kart. And then I remembered that I left it last night with about a half quart of the big "D" in it. So I thought to my self lets just crank it over and see if the beast would come alive or fall flat on here face. I pull and it fired and belched ball of smoke and died. Tried it again but with a little throttle and it live a few second. After three or so tries it stayed running. It ran ruff for a minute or two and was a smoken son of a gun, but after it warmed up the smoke clear a great deal and it ran like it was a suckin the gas. Since then I try and shut it down on gas. If I can it I will live with the smoke at the next start. The go-kart was the end of my diesel bug till I get that engine finished that I mencend earlier in the posts.
 
I forgot to say that my go-kart may be getting a new motor next year. I is one of the oil burning briggs and strattons. Well it don't burn a huge amount of oil. Maybe a half pint every hour or so. I was at a tool sale that travels all over. And the last time they cam to my area they were selling the cheap honda nock offs, I think there was a topic about these motors a while back on the site. I know they are not any where near a honda in quality but they were real cheap. For a 5.0 or 5.5 horse they only wanted something like 159 dollors and for a 6.0 or 6.5 horse they wanted only something like 189 dollars. These enging were both ohv. My question is do you guys think that these engines would run the same on diesel as do the flat heads. And I should say this because some one will start a fight over this. I know these engines are not the best but for that price I will be happy if they last only three quarter the life that a flat head briggs. I would almost have to think though that these engines would last as long as a flat head briggs would. It could even be posible that they may last longer then a Flat head.
 
The question here is, what is the point? I don't understand why anyone would want to use a fuel that's more expensive, more work to run, and creates less power. Do you have any idea how much carbon buildup you're going to have? (hint: ALOT) This just doesn't make any sense to me...
 
zmoz, its actually less expensive. if you read up there where i already said that offroad diesel is about half a dollar less than gas. on the other hand a gas engine running on diesel consumes more volumes of compared to gas because you have to richen up the carby to run on diesel so although its cheaper, it uses more. i think its probably a wash in terms of fuel economy versus price per gallon.

and as for the point, well there is no point really. its just kind of a fun thing to do. it doesnt really hurt anything, and you get some people askin, "is that a diesel?" so its just kind of a neat thing.


also id like to state that you guys shouldnt be doin this is any high compression engine because diesel has a real low knock index, somthing around 20 r/m-2 if i remember correctly. if you try running diesel in a dirtbike or car or somthing you WILL burn a hole in the piston. this messin around with diesel is only for lawnmower type low compression low power engines. you cant really hurt a mower engine runnin it on diesel i dont think.
 
Also what oil should I run in my go kart. I have been running a blend of 50/50 30HD and 20W-50 because I have like 3 gallons of 20W-50 that I don't have much other use for. I have only one more quart of 30HD left. So would it be ok to just run straight 20W-50 till its gone or mix it with something like a 30HD or 15W-40. With the 20W-50 right now I dump it like ounce a day. So the oil only gets like 5 to 10 hours on it on a hard day. I think the longest would of been a few weeks ago. It went all weekend. I guess close to 35 hours. After the 20W-50 is gone what should I use for oil. I was thinking a 15W-40. Also this motor is 7 years old and it uses a little oil, also it turns it pitch black in like 30 minutes.
 
I think the reason B&S mention running on kerosine is that in some third world countries petrol is hard to come by but kerosine is not.
 
quote:

Originally posted by JR:
But my last question wasn't answered I don't think. will an ohv air cooled engine run on diesel.

Bump the compression up, throw on an injector pump, and an injector (maybe a pre-chamber) and you are laughing.
 
I don't know if this will help, but . . . .
My father has three Case D model tractors that were built to run on "tractor fuel." Tractor fuel was a heavy form of gasoline. The way they worked was you had two tanks, one right behind the other. One was filled with gasoline, (the tank held about a gallon), the other tank was filled with tractor fuel. You would start the tractor on gas, run it a few minutes, and then switch over to tractor fuel. When I was in high school back in the 70's, you could no longer buy tractor fuel, but the fuel man told us we could make our own. Three gallons of gasoline mixed with two gallons of Diesel fuel.
Now, the thing that made it work well was the design of the manifold. The intake manifold ran inside a section of the exhaust manifold, (like a box that was about eight inches long and five inches square). This heated the incoming fuel/air mixture and gave the tractor fuel more "umph." We still have two of these tractors and still run them to this day on a weekly basis using this same mix and design. For a picture, you might want to check out a sight called "Yesterday's tractors." Go to the Case section, click on "J.I Case." There's a section of pictures. In the search section, type in "D" or "Model D" and you'll be able to see what I mean.
Hope it helps
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