Ray,

Yes, there's a lot that's gone on in the diesel world for the last, what, 80 years? But when I first started working with stinky fuel, I asked why the ether was necessary. Would a diesel engine run without it? Why? Because buying commercial, diesel fuel was close to impossible. Mixing your own by getting ether from the Pharmacy was also impossible. There was also that elusive, amyl nitrate. Since those very early days, I discovered ether in spray cans, then MEKP and finally, Amsoil cetane booster, octyl nitrate.

But the question persisted and I just had to find out,,, on my own. What I found out, at least for me, is that a diesel will run just fine without ether. It's getting the *^%$#*& things started without ether that was the problem. Once started, they ran. But without ether, they were sometimes not very responsive to good throttling. The high compression required to run on no ether came back to bite you when you throttled back. The higher temperature swing between high and low throttle was the culprit. Ether smoothed that out perfectly.

Also, in the early days, I was told to be very careful that you didn't lose any of that magical pixy dust known as ether. Somehow, your fuel could go stale and you would never, ever be able to start your engine on that fuel again. Never ever. You had to bless it with the addition of the ether that was obviously lost. But how MUCH was lost? How could you tell? How much did you need to add? This made the care and feeding of diesels some kind of Sorcerer's Apprentice exercise. It was mysterious, magical, spooky. You had to mumble certain old, VERY old, incantations that the elders of Dieseldom deemed necessary. You were forbidden to use electric starters. You were never told why. JUST DON'T DO IT !!! YOU'LL BE S-O-O-O-RY !! You were told that even the wise old men of the Diesel Brotherhood would in frustration haul out the starter only to break their diesels EVERY SINGLE TIME.

So just like why not eliminate ether, I wanted to know WHY NOT use a starter. Well, what I found out was that all diesels are not created equal. Look at the thin crankweb of the Mills diesel. How 'bout that dinky rod? No wonder they broke. Shoot, I had a Mills break a crankpin off just by hand flipping. And I flipped that flipping thing till my shoulder screamed bloody murder. I once asked, why not make up a high ether prime? I was severely admonished. Not till I went to a 40% ether mix did I ever get a small diesel to start and run. And I found that a 60% ether prime mix helped a whole lot.

I eventually found out WHY electric starters broke engines, even modern diesels. Too often, SOME instructions would tell you to fill up your tank, take out the needle to the recommended, average setting, back off the contra, apply prime to the exhaust, (oh the humanity) and start flipping. Imagine, here we're talking about vapourizing, raw liquid fuel as an essential component and we then go and tell people to dump raw liquid fuel directly into the combustion chamber. Then we flip and flip while messing with the contra lever. At some point, by sheer luck, some ether vapours ignite under compression. But boy oh boy, buddy, you'd better have that contra backed WAY out. So most often, you get a bit of a burrp. So you apply MORE, raw, liquid prime into that all holy of holeys, the combustion chamber. But now, the engine has warmed up a bit from that first, prime burst so you now your perfect compression ratio has changed and you muck about more with that compression screw. Then you get another prime burst and you repeat. Finally, you get close. finally, you get a long enough prime burst to draw fuel into the carb and your OFF. And if you're lucky that the instructions were good, the needle was close and you could now play with the mixture and the compression ratio and settle down to a nice, pleasing run of your thoroughbred.

But even the old hands could become frustrated with their beloved little devices and too often hauled out the starter and promptly broke their little backs. But no one could explain WHY? WHY, I asked? JUST DON"T DO IT !! I was told.

Wellll,,, what I found out was this. The problem was, in fact, the caveat against using an electric starter in the first place. Yup, that's what I found out. Here's what's happening. Applying prime to the exhaust puts liquid into a sealed chamber that now tries to compress an incompressible medium. Only when enough liquid fuel is expelled by flipping and some gets vapourized by the activity do we get a burst. But it all has to go so perfectly and purely by guess and by gosh and by hope and sweat and tears. And if you don't get a prime burst after several tries, what happens is that that very volatile ether goes away to ether heaven and that low volatility kerosene and OIL stays in hell,,, the bottom of your crankcase. And thats about when that innocent starter gets hauled out. That starter that's "just following orders", does its job and flings all that EXCESS liquid up from the case and into the combustion chamber. All that uncompressable liquid. BANG goes your crankpin. CREAK goes your connecting rod.

So, if you had used the starter in the FIRST place, and NOT filled the tank in the FIRST place and NOT opened the needle in the FIRST place, that starter would have allowed you to find the compression setting pretty quick. But ONLY if you had primed into the INTAKE. That's where the fuel goes. You feed a cow where the TEETH are located, not the OTHER end. And if your compression setting isn't just right, that small bit of prime will be vapourized and go out the BACK end, just as nature had intended. The starter assures that. Virtually none will remain IN the engine. So now you cinch up the compression a bit and feed your device, once again, at the intake end. You repeat this until you get a nice, prime burst. You can do this forever and no harm will be done. Here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmdlIRI1RNg I spent an entire afternoon, doing just that. Sure ran good on the prime. But as it was spinning backwards, fuel wasn't being drawn into the engine.

So now, you open the needle, but only open it say one full turn if your instructions say 1 1/2 turn. Why? A diesel will run, if too lean, a glow will not. So if you get a start and the engine is lean, it'll run till you get on that needle and back it out. Where a lean setting can pay dividends is where you get no instructions or they happen to be wrong, or your particular engine is funny that way. OR, when you have no way to really tell if your fuel is up the line to the carb. Most times, we use neoprene because that plastic, see through stuff is stiff and gets brittle. So most times you choke the engine and flip a few times and hope the fuel is up the line just right and also hope that you didn't flip one or two many times and you get some serious, excess fuel into your engine. Then you ADD more fuel when you prime and then despite your best efforts, you can't get a start and now that starter gets hauled out and bites you out of spite. So, I never choke my engines to get fuel up the line. I let a small number of prime bursts do that for me. Shoot sometimes I don't even need to prime. http://www.youtube.com/user/hopeso#p/u/104/af4dQNa60_w Along with a leaner needle setting, you'll never overload your poor diesel engine with that horrible, uncompressable, liquid dynamite.

Finding out why starters broke diesel engines and why ether really was required has led me to the conclusion that diesel engines are no more difficult nor more delicate than glow or gasoline engines. Here, http://www.youtube.com/user/hopeso#p/u/67/FJb7aZFMVwY I start a PAW cold without touching the compression screw. Note the ice cube. Also note the prime boiling in the intake. That's because it's mostly ether with a bit of oil. It's a traditional, PAW engine, the one that you are never, ever to use a starter on. The neat thing is that when you use an electric starter, you really don't have to play with the compression screw. That's because you're priming into the intake and not the outake. Here, http://www.youtube.com/user/hopeso#p/u/65/zkNb63u1tHo I start the same PAW on a NO ether fuel WITH starter WITHOUT touching the compression screw OR the needle. Note the very high ether prime just POURS out of the bottle into the intake. That's some serious, overprime, but that's what a starter can do for you if you do it right AND if your starter is sized for the job. Note that it stalls, initially. That's not because of hydraulic lock, the engine hasn't even turned over yet. That's because of the high compression that's needed to run a no ether fuel and the starter is sized just right. Both the needle and compression were found earlier, the engine was stopped and allowed to cool. Using a starter and a high ether prime allowed prime bursts to warm up the engine to the point that the engine eventually caught, warmed up some more and transitioned into a run. Applying a heat gun would accomplish the same thing. Heat, heat heat, it's all about heat with diesels. Your old timer was on to something but he could have accomplished the same thing my just heating up the engine either with a small torch or a bunch of prime runs.

And mentioned elsewhere, I had made up a VERY tight, Norvel, AAN engine that would start by hand, also without touching the compression or needle. That this was possible leads me to believe that Norvel got it very right as far as effectively vapourizing the fuel into the compression chamber. Perfect compression seal a big factor here too. And this is where a long stroke can help. Piston speeds are relatively higher and this slows compression leak as you flip. I had converted a Mills to glow and found it VERY easy to start by hand, often on the first flip and this I attribute to higher piston speeds holding the compression better. A starter does that automatically.

Hope that doesn't come across as a rant but,,, [sm=bananahead.gif][sm=punching.gif][sm=bananahead.gif] what the heck.