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This way lies madness Posted by Ari [Email]  (#2847) [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Ari) on Wed, 20 Nov 2002 13:42:46
In Reply to: convert 9kt to diesel?, nt moore, Mon, 18 Nov 2002 18:59:07 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
It can definately be done. Remove the Saab gasoline engine, and stick in a diesel engine.
Oh, you meant converting a gasoline engine to diesel? Easy to do. Make it run reliably for more than a few months? Very hard. Make it run for a long time? Probably not.
During the gas crisis in the late '70s, a few manufacturers jumped on the diesel bandwagon by simply converting gasoline engines to diesel. VW and GM come immediately to mind. Now, whatever you may say about their engineering talent, big car companies have lots of experienced engineers that have been working on this stuff longer than you or I. In both cases, the results were dismal failures. The engines had astoundingly short lifetimes, and ran poorly, too.
A diesel engine has both different fuel injection requirements and stresses. The stress from the detonation rattles no only the pistons and bearings, but the extra vibration shortens the lives of all the accessories attached. You'll need a different head design, and there are much greater stresses on the attachment bolts to the block. There's a point - the head bolt size, pattern, and threading aren't just arbitrary; that has all been engineered as a function of the stress on the head. In a diesel, there are much greater stresses - 3 times the compression ratio and constant detonation. Why assume the existing head bolts (and just as importantly) thread inserts into the block will hold?
And you just can't squirt diesel fuel in like gasoline; not only is it a different viscosity, you need to time it entirely different.
So, can it be done? Sure, anybody that's watched Monster Garage will have to agree. But will it last more than a few weeks before it consumes itself and anyone within the flying distance of a thrown connecting rod? Probably not.
If the idea is to save money on fuel, spending a lot of time and money on reworking an engine, only to have it fail in short order, doesn't make sense.
It makes much better sense to buy a car designed as a disel from the get-go, then modify it to run on french-fry tailings.
posted by 192.249....
, Wed, 20 Nov 2002 13:42:46 <-- Viewing This Message
, Tue, 19 Nov 2002 21:05:24, Tue, 19 Nov 2002 02:46:32, Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:55:30, Wed, 20 Nov 2002 06:31:16
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