Micah Levy

Hi All,

I'm addressing this post to Bob Armantrout and anyone else who has experience with diesel engine conversions.

I have a Ford 1210 (3 Cylinder Yanmar diesel engine) from the early-Mid 1980s which is decidedly NOT appropriate for biodiesel.  I have spoken the the engine manufacturer about getting parts made of Viton B (do you know of any other materials?) and they have only the standard replacement parts that were made for the machine.

Does anyone have any leads, suggestions, experience they would like to share?

Thank you all!!

ML

Dear All,

I have a new Husqvarna chainsaw. The dealer said NOT to use fuel over 95 octane because it will run too hot and hurt the engine. Another dealer suggested several times that I go to the local airport and get their gas (no ethanol, 105 octave) to which I can add the proper ratio of oil and that it will NOT hurt the engine.

Do you have any experience with this?

Thanks for your time.

ML in MD.

OK Permies,

This is my first attempt at a post. Wish me well! (I would be very sad and embarrassed if this were deleted!)

First off, just in case you're not familiar with this fact (as I wasn't until recently), there are some that say that canola oil can be used in place of bar oil on a chainsaw. I bought a bottle of it at Safeway and have been using it. So far it seems to be working quite well.

So, this last Sunday I accidentally poured some canola oil into my gas tank. My experimental nature wanted me to keep it in the gas and run the saw to see what would happen. However, my more sane side prevailed (a rare occurrence and I opted against that. So I poured out the gas/oil/canola oil mixture into my discard tank and poured in some new gas/oil mixture into my saw. Now here's the really crazy thing: the engine on my saw ran better than it has ever run before. It was much faster and much more powerful. It behaved this way for the entire tank of gas.

So, the obvious question is: why? Here are some possible theories.

1. I was hallucinating.
2. Some of the canola oil remained in the tank after I poured out the bulk of the mixture.
a. This canola oil, when mixed with the traditional gas/oil mixture simply burned better
b. The canola oil that remained went through the system and cleaned out an otherwise somewhat gummed-up system

I have to do some more playing around with the saw and the oil to see how it behaves, but that being said, what do you all think? What are your reactions? Have you ever had an experience like this before? I can tell you this for certain: If I can determine that a mixture of gas/canola oil would lubricate the engine I would absolutely do that instead of using traditional petrol-oil.

Thanks for your thoughts.