That's right, we have not found a substitute for ether. What we HAVE found was that ether isn't absolutely necessary. We have Klotz Benol castor lubricant that will blend and stay blended with kerosene as long as the temperatures are reasonable. As in, any temperature that's comfortable to fly in, will allow you to run a no ether fuel.

The problems were starting, which has been solved with the application of a high ether prime and the careful use of an appropriately sized starter, and throttling, which has as yet to be adequately solved.

I can't imagine why an after run oil of any type would hurt diesel starting. But you never know,,, what was in that after run oil?

A collection of highly volatile liquids were tried and as was found, auto ignition temperature is/was the problem. Interestingly, WD40 made a good substitute for kerosene.

A good veggie oil may, in some way, help us. After being alerted to OS's new .55 that will run on their special fuel, which is composed of ETHANOL and a vegetable based lube, http://www.os-engines.co.jp/english/bio_eng/ I assumed that they were using the oil made by http://www.renewablelube.com/ so I called them. As it turns out, they never heard of OS. After a fascinating discussion with Jacqueline, the president of the company, I sent to her some information about our engines, glow, diesel and some links to this and other websites and threads. Hopefully, I'll have some of their two stroke, BioLube to play with. Get this, they are making a SYNTHETIC lubricant using vegetable oil feedstock.

Back to the original intent of this thread. Way back a great many years ago, I came across a fellow that was running a model engine in his backyard. I had just started in the hobby at 12 years of age (45 years ago) and was amazed to see it run with no glow plug. My only engine at the time was a Cox .049. For many years after, all I read about diesel was that they were very hard to start and adjust, that they throttled poorly and that the fuel was composed of fantastically exotic ingredients that no hobby shop on the planet except one, carried it in stock. So I lost out on a great hobby adventure until it was almost too late. But after my articles in Flying Models, I was asked by several folks to add throttles to their diesels. Not content with just doing that, I was compelled to run them and test throttling performance. Since then, I've concluded that what holds too many people back from trying and enjoying diesels had a lot to do with the difficulty of getting fuel. When AJ Coholic alerted me to the fact that MEKP would work as an ignition improver, I now had a real chance at getting diesels to run well. And with the discovery of JD Starting fluid, I now had a fuel that ran as well as the only commercial fuel I had ever had any experience with. This was graciously supplied by Dave Larkin during a trip to Ottawa. Forever grateful to Andrew and Dave, (and others) I have never had so much fun with engines in my life.

One thing led to another and one day I premixed some Klotz castor and kerosene in proportions that would allow me to just spike it with a proportion of ether and have a small batch to run as needed. That volatile ether with it's capacity to bleed through plastic was always so fickle. For some traditional engines, if you lost too much you had grief nearly guaranteed. My strategy allowed you to avoid this potential problem. One spring, I grabbed the wrong jug of fuel and proceeded to try and start the no ether and no ignition improver fuel. It took a lot of doing but by gosh Martha, I got a start and a run. All by accident and here we are today. Early on it was pointed out that castor won't blend with kerosene without ether. As it turns out, KLOTZ castor will, as long as it doesn't get too cold.

I'm hoping that RenewableLube's oil will avoid that problem and just maybe there's something about a blend of fuel using their oil that imparts unexpected benefits such as ease of starting and good throttling. I hope to be able to report on that in due course.

PS,

I have yet to fully explore the use of Morgan's, green synthetic oil as used in their Cool Power fuel. Kelly, (RingWinger) swears by it and I promise to give it a try in a no ether blend this year. I now have a decent supply of Norvel .15s to trash and with solid rods from OS, at least THAT weak link in a dieselized Norvel has been solved.

Oh yes, and here's an interesting tool for determinig what's coming out of the tail pipe using various fuels. C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\TOOLS\Combustion.mht