[bigscoot]

Hello Everyone,

I was referred to this forum by someone over at It Is the Ride forum. I am in my senior year as a mechanical engineer and for my senior design project I am on a team working on building a 50cc diesel engine. We have a supermileage program here at school that competes in the Shell Eco-Marathon every year and the engine is going to go in a car and run at the marathon. I'm not sure if any one is familiar with the Eco-Marathon but the cars are all small one seaters. The diesel category is new and the recent years and not many teams have cars that are running diesel. The ones that do are pretty much all running stock 219cc or bigger engines. We are trying to be the first school to put a 50cc diesel into a car.

As of now we are thinking we are going to start with a Yamaha Zuma 50cc engine. We like the head on that engine quite a bit and we run that engine using gas in another one of our cars. The biggest challenges we are seeing right now is the fuel injection/pump system. We want to swap pistons to increase our compression ratio to around 20:1. We are also hoping to put our fuel injector where the spark plug originally was.

I am wondering if anyone here has any advice to offer? Has anyone tried to convert a gas engine to diesel? I realize most of you probably are working on much bigger cars and engines but any feedback on the challenges and feasibility of this project would be appreciated.