Big Diesel, MPG increase ideas?

[ps2fixer]

Originally Posted by BLSTIC

Correct, I don't have them any more. The Mighty Boy was at 300,000km or something equally ridiculous for a carburettor equipped 800cc vehicle. The engine had a blown head gasket that entire time and may or may not have had a gearbox that did 5500rpm at 100km/h (no tacho). That car had no emissions standards. The Swift weighed in at 1000kg and was modern in every way. It's important to note that both cars were driven almost exclusively for short trips on a tight schedule in what was effectively the city and the driving was not particularly economical. The Swift could get as low as 5l/100km when I was on a road trip, with AC and lots of overtaking. This is about 47mpg.

I see, that makes a lot of sense. Over here for common cars that's affordable (under $5k), getting 35mpg+ isn't too common. The typical mid size car I'd say is around 30mpg or a little higher. The prius and some others would clearly be an exception, there's a whole social thing around the prius, I don't really care either way though. Kind of like the social pressure for a guy to own a truck, I don't have one for show, it's more about function, but a lot of guys buy trucks just for the appearance. The 2001 truck was clearly owned by a person with that kind of focus (20in rims, super wide tires, etc). It's not my style since I don't really see any benefits to it unless a person liked that style. I'm hoping to sell those rims and get enough money to buy replacement rims and a new set of standard tires for the truck. Of course that would be after I get it running and decide where to go from that point.

I wish there was more cars over here that were under 1.5L, the smallest toyota I'm aware of is the Yaris, I think it has a 1.5L, but the automatic transmissions had an issue, some plastic gear or something like that. Manuals are a dieing breed here too, most people that buy a brand new vehicle wants automatics even though there's a fair number of people in the used market that would rather have manual. Like the Ford I got, I'm pretty sure there is no manual option anymore. Here's what google tells me

2008 was the last year of the manual transmission for the F-150. Only available in the 4.2L V6.

@freebeard

That's an interesting point of view. Using my numbers (12 face cord per year), google says 20m btu per full cord, so 4 full cord would be 80m btu.

For diesel, 1 gallon = 137,381btu, or 582.3 gal of diesel to equal the wood (not counting burning efficiencies or anything for just raw/simple math). Using the lowest price on the website I found for diesel prices (I don't normally drive one so not sure what the typical price is), it shows the 12 month low was in oct at $2.36/gal, so $1374.28 for the heating bill. I also burn propane some, but not looking at that, the $ for btu isn't as good as fuel oil (similar to diesel). Anyway, the cost of me getting the last wood I got (around 2 years supply) was a trip of about 6 miles and a week of cutting and hauling. I didn't track fuel costs, but we burnt probably 15-20 gal of mixed gas for 3 people to have wood (the property owner is my uncle and he got 1/3 the wood), so that should be roughly 15gal of gas. We buy rect fuel for the chain saws, so it's expensive, about 3.60/gal, and the oil we got super cheap, I think it was around $2.50 for enough oil to mix up 5 gal, so overall around $4.10/gal and my wood took roughly 15gal, $61.50, plus fuel for the truck to haul it, let's say 1 gal per direction to include moving the truck and all the non-efficient uses of the truck. 2 face cord each load = 6 loads or 12 gal at around $2.50/gal if I remember right. That comes up to around $91.50 out of pocket cost for a year of home heating, or about $1282.78 out of pocket savings.

I used to burn purely propane for heat, it has came down a lot in price so that should be interesting to check too since the 1/2 week of work counts for something too (remember I got ~2 years supply for 1 week of work). My last fill up was about $1.45/gal for propane, it's a 250gal tank but they fill to 80% so 200gal. I burn around 3 tanks a year. That's $870 which is quite affordable for this year. I've been more lazy and have been letting the propane burn more because I figured it wouldn't be too bad of a trade off since hauling wood is a lot of work. Still though, the wood source is close and the week of effort saved me around $1500 worth of out of pocket price.

Another figure to look at is the price of wood. I looked at a few listings and it appears to be $60-70 + delivery charge per face cord. So $720-840 plus delivery. Pretty on par with propane prices, except the fact wood stoves require actually attending to them and such (I'm almost always home, so that's not a problem, and the propane furnace fires up if I leave).

In a world where the only thing that matters is money, in theory the propane would probably be the best option, or start a wood processing business to pay for the propane and sell wood to other people.

I should mention, the wood we get is standing dead ash, it stands for several years and is effectively ready to burn when cut down. We have a LOT of wood land in the area, so finding trees to harvest for fire wood generally isn't too hard. I knew a guy down in Detroit and he said the firewood prices down there was $140 per facecord. I guess there's some limitations on how far wood can be hauled, so it has to be atleast source from the same county, not sure if that's a state law or a local law. The standing dead ash trees are from ash bores (beetle) that killed them. I still have standing dead trees on my 5.75 acres that I need to finish cutting down. Just have the very back section to clean out, but it's right in the swamp too. We recently had the local dam wash out so the water table seems to be lower than normal.

I also have a bit of the mpg go in me for the firewood stuff to. Besides the gas powered chainsaw, I have an electric one too since the running cost is much cheaper. It works well for cutting up stuff from my own land, but the batteries don't last super long when I'm at another location. Besides that, the chainsaw I have isn't a little play toy, it's a serious professional model that gets the job done right away. Long ago we used to run farm use saws and sometimes home owner grade saws, and most of the day was spent cutting wood. With these professional saws, the wood cutting time is cut atleast in half, maybe even less time cutting.

Even though the wood hauling is work, it's also pretty fun, plus it saves money so it works out alright. The whole reason for buying the Ford is that I'm planning to buy a skid steer and besides the ton of work on my property that needs to be done, I'm sure there's other people in the general area that would pay to have similar work done. It's kind of a new branch for my business, but first I want to do the work on my own land to get used to the machine and make sure it's within line of what I enjoy and that I can learn to control the machine well before trying to do something for someone else and find out the machine can't do it, or my skill set isn't good enough to finish the job. Worst case, the skid steer should resell for about the same price I paid for it plus get work done with it (renting one is quite expensive plus you still need a way to haul it), and the truck should sell for as much or more than what I paid for it.

Also on the wood usage, I'm in the middle of re insulating my trailer house since they are known to have poor insulation. It wasn't horrible but it's going to be better than new. It might not be an amazing house, but it's mine and paid for (no debt). How it got it is a whole story, but simply put, I worked with the last owner, and he gave me a deal I couldn't pass up including effectively 0% interest.

It's kind of weird pretty much being encouraged to do math, one of the other site's I'm on generally people comment about not following the math (atv related stuff, generally electricity, watts, amps, volts etc related).

It's nothing special, but I built my own thermostat using an arduino, basically it controls two fans, the wood stove fan to push heat into the house, and a fan that blows under the house to ensure the pipes don't freeze (-10f nights for a week and my pipes can freeze even with the fan on 24/7 so I need to rework that system a bit). I'm thinking to take it a step further some time and add controls for the wood stove too, air adjustment, and monitor the heat output and burn time etc. Maybe would be neat to set it up for fall/spring to auto start (like a wax based fire starter wrapped with a restive wire that gets red/orange hot when powered).

I've also thought about attempting to convert the wood stove to also burn waste oil (used motor oil, fryer grease, old fuel oil, etc). There's a lot of fuels people use, and a lot of them are switching to natural gas as the piping gets installed and expanded out from the city. Used motoroil goes for about $1/gal if the person charges anything at all for it. Old fuel oil was going for around $0.50/gal last I checked (few years ago). Fuel oil is like diesel, if it sits long enough it can have algae grow in it. I've read it grows in the moisture since water will sit at the bottom of the fuel.


@me and my metro

Thanks for the numbers, it's interesting to see what other people get with atleast similar trucks and their gear ratios and such. I suspect one of the biggest upgrades you could do with that truck would be a turbo for power and fuel econ. The cost of the turbo I'd guess is more than what benefits it would give for short term though (say ROI of 2 years).

I knew a guy way south of me (like 3hr drive) that had a GMC diesel. He wanted a truck box off one of my parts trucks, but he couldn't make the drive with his truck because the fuel cost would kill the deal. I recall it was a military truck, around the same era as yours. I remember him saying the top speed was pretty low so 4.56 or maybe something like 4.88 gearing I'd guess. I didn't give much thought on it. I never got to sell him the box even though I had a couple times I would be in his general area for other deals. I'm not scared to travel for the right deal, like my dad's T100 we went something like 1500 miles to get his truck, but it was rust free and locally it was worth about $4000 more than the asking price at the time for our local market (rust free vehicles have a huge inflated value when they are older). Like my F250 box, there's ones listed from Texas for $2000, I paid $3400 for the whole truck just because it had a little rust which is repairable and quite minor vs other trucks I saw priced for more, and the guy was a bit hard to deal with so I suspect he lost some potential buyers from that too.

[wjohn]

Hey, it could be worse - you could have a dually. I have an '03 Dodge Ram 3500. It's got the Cummins and 6-speed manual [Edit - does at least have 3.55 gears], but otherwise it's about as bad as you can get for fuel economy - 4x4 without locking hubs or a disconnect, quad cab, dually, with a flatbed on the back. It does have stock size all-terrain tires. The truck weighs right around 8000 pounds and it's an aero nightmare. Not exactly apples to apples with your truck, but the best I've gotten was 22 MPG driving mostly 55-65 highway/interstate, and the worst I've ever gotten was 15.7 MPG pulling a 2000 lb. car on a U-haul trailer at 60 MPH. Actually I did get 14-ish once (I'd have to pull out the log book) but that was because my accelerator pedal position sensor was going out and the truck was either getting fuel all at once, or not.

I bought it to be a truck, though. I can't haul 3000 pounds of stuff in the back of the Civic, or tow a 17' disk harrow around with it.

I think the thing that surprised me the most is how much my fuel economy shoots up in town driving. I anticipate stops and coast a lot, and aerodynamics aren't much of a factor at 30 MPH. The speed limit on most highways out here is 65 MPH so I try to stick to that and not hold up other drivers by doing 55 unless they have plenty of chance to pass.

I am curious to know what it would get with highway tires but I need the traction often enough that I won't be trying that expensive experiment.

Good luck with your truck. I would've had no issue going with a 7.3 if I had found a nice enough one when I was in the market for a 3/4-1 ton.

[freebeard]

I figured it wouldn't be too bad of a trade off since hauling wood is a lot of work. Still though, the wood source is close and the week of effort saved me around $1500 worth of out of pocket price....

I like stacking firewood. Good clean exercise. It sounds like you have good reason to proceed (clearing the land).

It's kind of weird pretty much being encouraged to do math, one of the other site's I'm on generally people comment about not following the math...

You'll notice I got you to do the heavy lifting for me.

[ps2fixer]

Originally Posted by wjohn

Hey, it could be worse - you could have a dually. I have an '03 Dodge Ram 3500. It's got the Cummins and 6-speed manual [Edit - does at least have 3.55 gears], but otherwise it's about as bad as you can get for fuel economy - 4x4 without locking hubs or a disconnect, quad cab, dually, with a flatbed on the back. It does have stock size all-terrain tires. The truck weighs right around 8000 pounds and it's an aero nightmare. Not exactly apples to apples with your truck, but the best I've gotten was 22 MPG driving mostly 55-65 highway/interstate, and the worst I've ever gotten was 15.7 MPG pulling a 2000 lb. car on a U-haul trailer at 60 MPH. Actually I did get 14-ish once (I'd have to pull out the log book) but that was because my accelerator pedal position sensor was going out and the truck was either getting fuel all at once, or not.

I bought it to be a truck, though. I can't haul 3000 pounds of stuff in the back of the Civic, or tow a 17' disk harrow around with it.

I think the thing that surprised me the most is how much my fuel economy shoots up in town driving. I anticipate stops and coast a lot, and aerodynamics aren't much of a factor at 30 MPH. The speed limit on most highways out here is 65 MPH so I try to stick to that and not hold up other drivers by doing 55 unless they have plenty of chance to pass.

I am curious to know what it would get with highway tires but I need the traction often enough that I won't be trying that expensive experiment.

Good luck with your truck. I would've had no issue going with a 7.3 if I had found a nice enough one when I was in the market for a 3/4-1 ton.

Ironically, a dually was in my list of machines to buy, like you said, a truck for being a truck. If you don't haul anything that actually requires duals, you could run single tires in the back, 2 less tires of wear to expense for, and the lower rolling resistance of 4 tires on the ground instead of 6.

About the only thing I kind of wanted was a truck that was new enough for my OBD2 reader (scan gauge 2). Instant mpg is kind of nice to have, but with out it, it's still possible to learn and improve on tank to tank fills.

It's interesting you got so much worse mpg while hauling a vehicle. With my T100 hauling a Camry or another Toyota pickup (not T100, the smaller ones), I generally got better mpg while in tow than empty. I think it's because of the things you mentioned, basically preserving momentum when possible and planning ahead more. I didn't really try to push the T100 for mpg too much, but no areo mods, driving 45mph home one night from my parents, I hit around 25mpg average. In my tacoma I could hit about 27mpg doing the same thing (also 4x4, manual, but standard cab, same engine). One difference is, I used a car dolly, I suspect you used a car hauler?

So far it seems diesels like high gearing. I'm kind of glad the red truck has 3.55 instead of the 3.73 or 4.10. My dad would prefer the 4.10, but he generally goes all out with loads too.

Does your Dodge have a double overdrive transmission? The Ford 6 speed is creeper gear, 2nd - 4th are normal gears, then 5th for over drive, 6th for a 2nd over drive.

Kind of a funny short story with this truck so far, I'm used to my T100, there's a tiny incline where the 2001 parts truck is sitting, and I wanted to try to jump it with a known good pair of batteries from the red diesel. Since it's on an incline, natrually it wants to roll back down the hill. With my T100 I can just pop the clutch and the tires will dig a small hole and it will sit there just fine (parking brake cable broken). I tried the same thing in the ford and well... that engine weighs a lot more, so it still wanted to roll down. The parking brake pedal on it is real stiff, so it's probably rusted up (most domestics get like that here, and if you force it, then the parking brake is stuck on). Kind of funny though, generally speaking, the Toyota ones don't get stuck on, it's just the cable that rusts in 2. Out of 20+ Camrys (1992-2001) I've never seen one with a parking brake that doesn't work. Yea... my dad and I kind of have a personal junk yard. I've sold parts, used parts, etc to fix up machines. It's quite handy having parts on hand to swap to test if something is bad or not for quick diag instead of grabbing actual specs and doing proper tests.

Back on the Ford, there was another F250 that was a lot more rustier for $3750 with the 6 speed manual, might have been worth going for that instead but generally speaking, the body's condition is the biggest thing in this area. That's why the parts truck might get a Tundra body, they seem to hold up to the salt fairly well, and a replacement body isn't crazy priced like the Ford body is ($5000 for a cab + box), a whole 2000-2005 Tundra can be bought for that kind of price in really good condition.

To confuse things more, my dad also has an F350 sitting with a gas engine that was "rebuilt". Thing has no power and was probably rebuilt like 200k miles ago. It was a nice truck at one point in time, but it's pretty trashed now. He bought it to tow in a school bus and a big dump truck. I got the drive the school bus, the engine was locked up and it was a manual bus, so the clutch was the brake, talk about a brain teaser. He also scrapped a 6 ton bulldozer when he had his 96 7.3l diesel going. Scrap prices were up back then, something like $300/ton, so timing was pretty good for scrapping those things. Anyway, that F350 is like an 87, and the top of the cab rusted out around the lights, so the interior is full of mold and stuff. Besides that I think the box is pretty good, dually box. I was tempted to throw an engine in that and swap another cab over if the red F250 deal didn't work out. Lot of work, but out of pocket cost wouldn't have been too bad. We have no clue how many miles are on it, the odometer rolls all the numbers when going down the road.

Originally Posted by freebeard

I like stacking firewood. Good clean exercise. It sounds like you have good reason to proceed (clearing the land).

You'll notice I got you to do the heavy lifting for me.

It's not quite clearing the land, just the dead trees so the healthy ones can bush out and some new growth might sprout. My property was very heavily select cut around 10 years ago, almost to the point of being clear cut. I have 2 very large trees, and one is half dead. The other is a massive oak tree, I can see it from my house above all the other trees, around 1200 ft away. I'd say it's around 5ft diameter trunk, maybe 6ft. Not many trees survived this area, the small "village" I'm in was known for mainly being full of lumberjacks.

Here's a photo I've seen locally before. I suspect it's a local photo but not 100% sure, it's atleast from Michigan. If you thought my dad's truck was overloaded, what about that 2hp sled?



Here's another photo from 1900, steam power was used a little in the area. At the bottom of the lake that the dam's levi washed out there was a Steam powered "shovel", dams were built in 1923 if I remember right.



Here's the steam shovel, top left of the pic you can see the washed out section of the dam, it has two spill ways.



Here's a better view of the machine, the boom is off it and the cab rusted away long ago. The story on it was that it got stuck in the lake bed (before it was a lake) and the owners went on a hunting trip, by the time they came back, the lake filled up too much to retrieve it.



Kind of off topic, but some of this stuff I think is pretty interesting =).

On the math thing, I wouldn't expect you to do the math for my situation, unless of course I asked for help xD. Want to validate the numbers?

[ps2fixer]

I just remembered something for a long time ago. Was there much research done on mixing normal gas with diesel? I remember the concept being the gas would help the diesel burn more completely. I guess a pretty similar concept to LPG. Back when I was reading about it, the mix was done in the fuel tank. I'm recalling up to 20% mix, but not 100% sure if any solid testing was done on it or even where the source to the idea was located.

I think the same concept worked for gas engines too (maybe that's where the idea was from?), basically the gas would ignite the diesel and the diesel contains more energy to it's a bit of a power increase and I think it was ment to help bottom end torque. Clearly gas engines are quite short stroke, so I'd guess the benefit wouldn't be a whole lot except maybe in a vehicle with a manual trans.

I've been reading a bit more about water injection in diesels. Has anyone on here done this and have any kind of figures to follow in their foot steps with? I see that methanol/alcohol are options too with similar effect, or mixed with water. It might be a solid option to source windshield washer fluid and test with that since it shouldn't freeze with the temps we see here.

I'm probably jumping the gun a bit early, I still have to get the title transferred on the truck and a plate lol. The front tank seems to be around 15 gal, so I might end up driving it a bit at first to get a reasonable base line for just my driving style (as I learn the truck). Grill block will be early since it's cold here already, knew about that mod long before ecomodder, but it wasn't for areo, it was to reduce the cooling effect on the radiator to keep the engine warmer and get quicker warm ups.

[oil pan 4]

If you are talking about gasoline don't do it.
Diesel is formulated to burn upon immediate contact with hot compressed air. Gasoline is formulated to resist burning on contact with hot air for a tiny fraction of a second.

[Isaac Zachary]

My owner's manual for my 1985 non-turbo VW diesel said to put gasoline in the diesel fuel in the winter to prevent it from gelling. But nowadays they put an additive in for that at the pump. Just keep driving the vehicle regularly so you don't end up with diesel from July in January. Nor come home from Arizona in the winter without fueling up once you get home.

[ps2fixer]

Yea, the gas isn't to be put in a high %'s, it was low numbers like 5-10% max 20% or something like that. Pure gas in a diesel isn't good, just like pure diesel in a gas engine.

On diesel in gas, the first thought I get is the octane rating would drop since diesel has a low octane. I had to do the search, so here's google's suggested answer.

Diesel fuel has an octane rating of 25-40. Mixing 2% diesel fuel into gasoline will lower the overall octane rating by 1 point. Getting 10% diesel contamination lowers octane by 5 points, which is enough to create problems in most engines.

It's effect is a little worse than I expected (assuming google is correct). I guess the it depends, and what car/engine you have and fuel matters a lot. In my area "reg gas" is 87 octane, most "common" gas engines can run on 85 octane (California's reg gas and probably other locations). My T100 and Lexus manuals state min 87 octane, recommended is 91 octane, but they are 9:1 and higher compression.

It's a bit of a different topic, but diesels are the engine that can run on several fuels. From my understanding, fryer oil that wasn't used for animal meats can be well filtered and directly put in older diesels (mechanical injection pump style ones) as long as the fuel is heated to I think it was 180f before hand. That means it has to burn diesel on startup, and for shut down it has to have diesel ran through to clear the system. The car of choice was an 80's VW with the 1.6L diesel non-turbo. If I remember right, the mpg was better with the fryer oil and the exhaust smelled like french fries xD.

It could be interesting to tap into that idea, but at a mix instead of direct. Even at 5-10% if the fuel is free and the only cost is time + filtering a batch, it could lower fuel costs by that much. Probably a lot more work than what I'd get benefit from, but it's an interesting concept I wanted to try a long time ago. Of course, would have to bench top test the fuels first, and ideally have a small single cylinder diesel engine to test it in, or something like a VW engine with the mechanical injection pump.

I've been into so many different branches of tech, alt fuels, etc. There's a lot of neat ideas out there. I know for gas engines it's possible to burn wood as a fuel, but the areo is pretty bad, adds a lot of weight, and the engine looses something like 60% of it's power. People say the issue it burns slow in the engine, so it seems like a longer stroke engine would be more ideal, like a diesel, but I suspect the wood gas has a poor cetane number. Not really planning to take things quite that far even though I've thought about it for home heating. Wood chips are pretty common in this area, I can get truckloads for free from atleast two locations (city and a golf course). A down draft gasifier I think would be the best way to consume it as a fuel, pipe it into say the wood stove, and burn it in a burner like a propane furnace has. It would require a fan to create the movement of air. I think making a drip oil burner would be a lot easier and I know a guy that was trying to make biodiesel that got free oil locally but it had animal fats in it, so he had problems with the fuel and gave up on the idea pretty fast. He has a small fleet of diesels for a septic business.

Alt fuels can be pretty interesting. Really wood stoves are just about an alt fuel, it's just somewhat popular in this state. The trade off is manual work and tending to a fire vs paying the extra and basically forgetting about it till you get low on fuel. A side benefit, my wood stove doesn't require electricity to function, so in a winter storm and no power, I still have heat.

I'm pretty sure the ultimate dooms day vehicle would be an older diesel with a mechanical injection pump (one with no electronics). I suspect the 85 VW diesel is that way. I'm not a dooms day prepper, but some of the concepts and such are interesting. Seems like they'd look into shipping containers and grounding them, the floor is wood so not sure if that kills the effect or not.


I'm skirting around some pretty close to snake oil topics, better stop while I'm ahead xD.

[Isaac Zachary]

I've known a few who have done the veggie oil diesel, one in particular.

A word about octane
Before talking about that I just want to mention that while diesels can run on several kinds of fuel the reason gasoline doesn't work is because of it's high octane. Gasoline needs to be hotter to ignite. So what happens is the injector fills the combustion chamber full of hot fuel, then BOOM! It all detonates at once and bye, bye engine. Diesels work by injecting fuel that starts to burn almost immediately. That way it burns as it's being injected. This controls the burn. Gasoline engines control the burn by a spark that starts the flame at one point and lets the flame travel to the ends of the combustion chamber. But if the engine is too hot, CR too high, too much boost, too much advance, too low of octane, etc., then even a small amount of gasoline that hasn't been burned yet can spontaneously detonate and potentially cause serious damage.

The reason LP and better yet CNG work is because they have such a high octane you could use them with a diesel like CR and spark ignition. Only you don't need a spark if you're injecting diesel fuel anyway since the diesel ignites immediately and starts the combustion process. You also add very little LP or CNG to reduce the potential of damaging the engine from detonation.

Bio diesel
A couple things to think about.

One is, yes, straight filtered veggie oil can work if heated up enough.

Second, if you process the veggie oil and "crack" it to take the glycerin out it becomes much more liquid and will work at temperatures down to about freezing. But that also introduces methanol which can eat certain rubbers and metals.

Third is once you get a contract to take away a restaurant's used oil for free, you have to take all of it. My buddy ends up getting way too much and can't hardly use it all, even driving a pretty long drive (+60 miles) every day in his Dodge Ram.

[ps2fixer]

Yea, pure gas is no good in a diesel. The gas would ignite off before the piston hit near the top as a very bad pre-detonation/spark knock. A gas engine can't get anywhere near 17:1 because of those problems, I think the highest is around 13:1 and that's with very high octane fuel.

Also, diesel doesn't fire off with a spark very easily but it can run in a spark ignition engine as a mix. I looked for a video of a gas car being filled with diesel, but a PF video came up so I knew it would be interesting. Besides some cold start issues, a 50/50 mix of diesel and gas runs in a lawnmower, way more than I'd suggest. Also keep in mind, push mowers generally are pretty low compression, so have a low octane requirement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXLWLXz0iY4

I don't know what the mix was, but my dad's friend had his son fill his diesel up and he put gas in, instead of diesel. Truck did run, but very poorly. For fun I looked for a video of the opposite effect, gas in a diesel. They don't say what the mix was in either case, just the tank was low on fuel and they added 5L in of the wrong fuel which I suspect is over 50% of the wrong fuel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL9-i9tcESU

This is more inline with the story I was told. My dad's friend moved to GA from MI using the same truck. It was an F250 or F350, 7.3L diesel, can't remember the year, I was like 14 at the time, probably mid 90's (it was a newer truck at the time).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXwFpPhug8Y

The contract issue is interesting, the guy that I talked about lived way up north and he got 2x 55gal barrels filled with used fryer grease from a restaurant that serves beef and other meats deep fried. His wife was the manager there, but she left before they got the oil, but maybe she had some connections yet with the workers. I'm not one to sign a contract unless I read it, so if it's a mandated I must take the oil, I'd want to find out how much oil they need removed per year.

I do understand the cracking a bit, basically taking a complex molecule and breaking it down into a simpler one. I watch a lot of science based youtube channels and such so I hear and see the context of that term somewhat often.

Here's a channel that does a lot of things against "common sense", like who fills a container with propane and "burn" oxygen, but if you understand the process of burning, it's quite safe if done right. Below is the video, way off topic but still burning related so slightly engine related. I've had training on a gas that combusts with oxyegen with no spark or heat source. If I remember the figures right, if it's 90% or more pure, it will not react, and below 30% it won't. The gas I'm talking about is the man made gas called silane... byproduct of the fire is sand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jmX-TUQkx4

Here's a quick silane video. The plant I worked at made it as a secondary main product. They stored silane under high pressure to have it in tanks as a liquid (takes up much less space). However, trucking it, they have to transport as a compressed gas due to the high risk of the material. I was told a figure that each semi tank full is worth well over $1m and it's not even in liquid form. I was responsible for fixing their computers, printers, and very basic networking (patch cables, computer to wall box, etc).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXCBnznxxIk

For propane, I've read a little on them, and the ideal compression ratio is somewhere around 13:1 and is about 104 octane (race fuels can go over that but extremely expensive). Diesels are higher compression than ideal (atleast for spark ignition). I've heard of people running propane in their diesels, but I never asked the question if it's pure propane, or if it's mixed. I suspect a diesel could run on pure propane though, just not sure if the ignition point is too early or not via compression. It's an interesting alt fuel to look into as well. Bulk LP is cheap, even if there's a degrade in power the price difference is nearly 50% cheaper than diesel, should be cleaner burning, no fuel gel problems (extreme cold), etc.

This all makes me want to get a cheap (and old) VW diesel to experiment with. I have been wanting to get a generator for the house as a backup power source (one with electric start and such), I figured converting a gas engine to LP would be a smart move since I plan to have a pretty large tank on hand so in the event of an extended power outage, I could have reliable power for quite some time. With a battery bank, I could effectively P&G the system to extend the fuel usage. I've had power outages a lot this year and last year, probably 7 full outages in the last year where the power actually went off completely. For power flickers that can make a computer die, I've had countless of those events, it was so bad nearly daily my internet would drop out. I put everything on a large UPS and now my internet and computers have been nearly fault free. There's a lot of power related work being done because of the dam washing out so I guess it's kind of expected to have unreliable power. If batteries were cheaper, I'd be off grid with solar power + wind, but the costs are too high for my area currently to be a solid investment. It's getting close though.