Date:         Wed, 4 Jan 1995 14:38:41 -0500
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         DerekDrew@aol.com
Subject:      Diesel + Gas = Explosion

Dan wrote me a note: 

> I've always wondered if you 
>could run a gas engine with a bit of diesel in it, I guess not.

>I routinely burn up old outboard gas in any 4-stroke w/o a catalytic 
>converter-- absolutely no change in running aside from a little more 
>smoke in the exhaust.  It probably doesn't even hurt the converter 
>since it is just oil burning.

>Anyway, I commiserate with your tundra story-- it's something I 
>would 
have done.

>Daniel Houg

This reminded me of a point I did not make well in my earlier post which
goes to why you would *never* want to add diesel to your gasoline. 

Diesel and gas are individually either too rich or too
lean to be explosive but if you mix them together the way I did 
you have a bomb on your hands just waiting to go off. I did not 
know it, but if I had caused the wrong spark during my 200 miles 
of 4,000rpm horror it would have turned our
72 bus into a James Bond ejection mobile. 

Luckily, you don't create too many sparks driving over tundra.

By the way, with the diesel fuel in there, my van had more power than
it ever had before or since.

derek