Kelly, Greg, Graham, Stewart and all,,

A great many thanks for the wonderful input.

Vexing local issues have had me distracted for a bit. Those are receding into the background and all this excellent input and data has got me back on track. We are learning a lot. In the end, it appears that I got quite lucky in the use of (1) Benol from Klotz, (2) my particular brand of kerosene, (3) Amsoil cetane booster.

Using my benchmark .15, I tested the Aviation oil, Amsoil, MEKP, kerosene, lamp oil, Coleman fuel, naphtha, JD ether, all in various combinations and percentages, some 16 in all. Reviewing my rough notes, a number of conclusions have been drawn. First, an appropriately sized starter can be used to great advantage, if used properly. Secondly, ether is good. Some or lots can help. It smooths out the engine and allows the top end and idle and transition to be found and maintained more easily. However, it's not absolutely necessary. It IS if you're running traditional diesel engines with the required starting and handling procedures. As noted, Benol's apparent high cetane number and ease of mix with kerosene helps a lot. Something about the two molecules complementing each other. Amsoil has been found to be quite superior to MEKP. I tried the local brand of lamp oil compared to the local kerosene and the lamp oil was inferior. Adding Coleman or naphtha hurt. The engine would not start. CP was flush, full down and no go. It MAY have started if we didn't have the copper gasket running interference. But that would have been an extremely high compression ratio.

Taking off the head revealed that the CP was flush with the bottom of the carrier. So a simple disc was installed and with a bit of fussing, the engine fired off and ran. Once up to temperature, it ran as well, or even better than with the head. This could be due to the elimination of that bit of clearance between the carrier and the CP. Something like the threads of the glow plug in a glow engine, interfering with combustion. The flat disc provides a very pure, and extremely small, combustion chamber. Keep in mind that in this .15, the piston does not quite reach the top of the cylinder deck. Add in the washer AND the very small slop in both ends of the rod and some of the clearance in the crank to case fit and we have, what appears to be, virtually no combustion chamber at all. At least in comparison with glow. In this case, at least some (10%) ether helped a lot.

There are some idle and throttling issues without ether. A two needle throttle, as in the .40, seems to help. A three port, (AME) compared to the five port, (Big Mig) was found to throttle equally well. No advantage in this area was found, unlike our glow experience with the .06.

At the end of the tests, the engine was torn down. The top of the piston was carboned up considerably. A rough, gritty-like carbon deposit had to be scraped off. The conrod, on the piston end, developed some slop, the other end was still good. The stain on the top of the piston shows how efficiently Norvel's porting delivers fuel into the combustion chamber. Kelly's suggestion to use Cool Power oil may eliminate some of these issues. Got some on order.

It's my thinking at this point, that some unique aspect of engine design, along with specific ingredients, can make a no ether system work well. With all the diesel engines out there, traditional and modern, we just might stumble on that magic combination of high power, ease of start and perfect throttling that we want, on an all kero fuel.

If everyone had a local source of ready to go diesel fuel, none of this would matter. But that's not the case with the majority of diesel lovers. If fuel wasn't such an issue, I'm sure that of all those that love engines, many more would be attracted to this truly unique experience.