My experience with diesels was virtually nil until I was forced to play with stinky fuel by Raj in Singapore and Tom Anderson in the US. Both wanted me to cobble up throttles for various Mills replicas. At first I balked then got intrigued. My previous attempts at diesel were on TD .049 conversions and Davis fuel. That was the stuff you bought in a quart can and then you mixed in an equal amount of kerosene. I never got more than a pop or two out of that poor ole, Cox engine.

So after attaching throttles to a Mills replica, naturally I had to learn how to start one so that I could test how well a modern, two needle throttle, on an old, steel/iron, sideport Mills would work. By this time the Internet was around and SMALLnet was populated by a multitude of accomplished (mature) modellers and many were diesel fans. Here and elsewhere, I learned that you could mix pretty good fuel. But before that, at a funfly in a distant city, I actually MET a stinky fuel fan and he donated a quart of honest to gosh diesel fuel. His blend was composed of Jet-A, lab grade ether, castor and the magic, amyl nitrate.

At home, I spent some three hours to get that Mills going. Once I had it all tuned up, it idled forever and throttle response was instant. I was amazed at the sound without a muffler along with the fuel economy. After that, it took only a few flips to get it started.

Several years later, I was converting very modern Norvels and having a lot of fun.

My success with conversions and modern, small engines hinged on one thing. LOTS of ether in the fuel, as much as there was kerosene, a blend of 39% ether, 39% kerosene, 20% castor and 2% ignition improver. MEKP worked well enough but the icing was the use of Amsoil cetane booster. Lots of folks helped out in getting to that point.

The thing is, I always had very good throttling, seemingly no matter what engine I used. Ether is hard to get and expensive. Playing with the ether content bit by bit revealed that the more ether, the easier the engine started. The more the ether, the better the engine throttled.

This is why. The less ether, the higher the compression you need to start the engine when cold. As the engine warms up, you need to back off on the compression. If you're running flat out, this is not a problem. However, if you throttle back, the engine cools and now demands a higher compression setting. That can't be easily done on the fly and now your idle and transition suffers. A high enough ether content allows a start at a lower compression setting. This setting now becomes more ideal at lower throttle and cooler engine temps. This characteristic of ether, compression ignition, is carried to the extreme with fixed compression diesels. They require an all ether/oil fuel. No kerosene in sight.

Stewart is correct about possible rod failures in car engines as they typically use only 12% or less oil content and typically, that is a synthetic oil. If you're going to try diesel in a car, that's something that will have to be worked out. At one time, early in my diesel adventure, I posted that diesels are designed to run slow with big props at large torque. I got promptly and rightly corrected that diesels can spin it up and surpass even glow if they had to. I proved that one day with a Brodak .06 conversion. I switched from the usual 8 X 4 prop to a 5 X 3 and once that little guy lit up, it WAILED. By the time I got the tach to it, the crank blew. But man did it wail. My ear for high RPM speculates 22K or more. Never did that again, must try it on a Norvel.

I've been flying homemade diesel fuel for ten years. If not for being able to make it, there is no way I could be flying diesel at all. In fact, with no hobby shop for 200 miles, it's easier for me to fly diesel than glow as far as fuel availability goes.

This formula WORKS.

John Deere ether, 39%
Hardware kerosene, 39%
Klotz Benol castor 20%
Amsoil cetane booster 2%

This formula allows for easy starts and excellent throttling as long as that's what you get on glow. As well, the needle settings on glow will be close to what diesel will demand. This makes it far easier to get going, at first, without breaking anything. Diesels ARE more sensitive to hydraulic lock but you can also do that with glow. If you always never flood your engine, you'll do fine. Two drops into the intake is all the prime you need. Pretty much guaranteed once you find your compression and needles.

The reason this thread was started was to stimulate discussion by showing that ether wasn't essential to RUN diesel, just that it was essential if you were trying to hand start. As illustrated on YouTube, a number of times, with a variety of engines, http://ca.youtube.com/profile_videos...=hopeso&page=3 if you use an electric starter, an etherless fuelled engine WILL start. A high ether prime can help a lot though.

If you try this in a car, I'm speculating that you may have to cut back on the heat sink head. Pure compression ignition depends a lot on heat. Run too cool and you MAY run into problems. However, here, http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...arch&plindex=1 I fly in the winter with an engine that has had some cooling fin area cut back. This was done because the Norvels have far more fin diameter than standard engines. Since the video was taken though, I've flown stock Norvels in the winter, on diesel, with no problems at all.

My experience with a high ether fuel is that once the compression and needles are set for the day, you really don't have to play with them anymore, much like a glow engine. Ether seems to act a lot like nitro in small engines.

If you fly as well as drive, you can get limbered up first on an aircraft engine. That might make the learning curve somewhat flatter.

What brand of .18 are you working with? Can you post a picture?