Diesel?

Topic: Diesel? (Read 1667 times) previous topic - next topic

Diesel?

June 24, 2005, 06:48:34 PM

I may be sorry I asked but the rising gas prices and the fact that I'm looking to change engines anyway made me wonder all of a sudden. Is it possible to drop a diesel engine in a Thunderbird? If so how difficult would the conversion be and what would be a good donor car? I do know that some Ford trucks that take 302s like mine also took diesel engines.....the advantage I'm seeing is that diesel is around half the price of gas right now and potentially alot less if I started brewing biodiesel at home....plus if I did that the car would be "green". Probably just a pipe dream but a little healthy discussion never hurt. Have at it.

Re: Diesel?

Reply #1 – June 24, 2005, 07:20:42 PM

Ask and you shall receive.
http://www.lscclub.org/diesel/

Had the sam thoughts but was more thinking about turning a Diesel Mark into a drag car.

3in. exhaust belching black smoke going down the strip. :giggle: :rollin:

Re: Diesel?

Reply #2 – June 24, 2005, 09:27:36 PM

Must be the heat or something, 'cuz I was thinking about this today after filling up with 99.9 cents/liter regular unleaded (that's almost four bucks a gallon, folks). I don't know if I could live with a BMW/Mark VII diesel (115 horses would suck ass), but it would be interesting to see if a 6.0 Powerstroke would fit in there (although I'm almost certain it wouldn't, and I know a 7.3 or 6.9 wouldn't!) Then again, the BMW turbodiesel wouldn't suck any worse than a CFI 3.8 and would probably be torquier. I wonder if there are any easy mods for that BMW engine, such as cranking up the boost?

Granted, with a Powerstroke you'd have to upgrade the whole drivetrain, as a stock 7.5" rear wouldn't handle the 500+ pound feet of torque, and a stock 8.8 would probably be pretty stressed as well...

Re: Diesel?

Reply #3 – June 24, 2005, 09:29:48 PM

Does the 300 come in a diesel version..?

BTW, have you considered a propane conversion instead of a diesel engine? If so, let me know.. I've actually done a LOT of reading on it.. and I'd love to see someone else do it. (I'm thinking about doing it to one of my cars, maybe even the EFI 300/sedan delivery project, just to make it even more unusual) I may have even found a part that might allow for injecting propane near the fuel injectors on a SEFI 5.0/5.8. I'd elaborate now, but I don't wanna derail your thread too much if you're just not interested in it. Anyway, http://www.fueleconomy.gov lists LPG at around $1.40 per gallon with a listing for regular unleaded around $2.20-2.30 per gallon. Might be a good time to contemplate something like this if gas goes up from there.

Re: Diesel?

Reply #4 – June 24, 2005, 10:23:41 PM

Quote from: Bird351

Does the 300 come in a diesel version..?

Nope...

I ran a '81 Olds Cutlass station wagon with the 350 Diesel(the one GM had a bazillion law suits over), from '88-'93. The thing was just a basic model(had cranspooge windows and manual seats)but was a really comfortable ride. With only 105 hp it was a dog(I did jack up the injection pump timing for a little better power), but gave 25+ mpg in town and

33 highway.

It was snow white with serious tinted windows(was from FL). After I put the Olds rally wheels on it, was a fairly sharp ride.

Re: Diesel?

Reply #5 – June 25, 2005, 01:01:22 AM

Just the sort of discussion I was hoping for. I have in fact considered propane before, but it gets pretty cold here in the winter and I've heard propane vehicles don't take to it well. Then there's the problem of finding fuel if you leave the city. Though in the past 2 days with gas prices soaring I've been looking into pretty much every conceivable method of beating it.

-Various fuel saving devices: Spent hours looking at those and finally found a Trade Commission report that laid it out pretty well, the few that do work don't work great and only at the cost of exhaust emissions.

-Biodiesel: Haven't heard a downside to that. Supposedly it can be made at home pretty easily and with a properly tweaked diesel engine you can even run straight vegetable oil. But of course you need a diesel engine (hence this thread).

-Ethanol: Can supposedly be made in your backyard as well if you can build the still and commit some time to using it. On that I've heard everything from "makes your engine last longer, run cooler, etc...." to "washes oil off inner engine surfaces and causes wear". Supposedly quite a few vehicles made in recent years are compatible with it but stations that dispense E85 (85% Ethanol, 15% Gas) are sparse with only a hundred in the US and just the one in Canada. I'd be tempted to experiment with a still but the startup costs are more than I'm willing to piss away right now.

And I guess putting a truck diesel in the car might be more trouble than it's worth. The Mark VII looks interesting but maybe a little low power. *sigh* Don't suppose I can just put glow plugs on my 302 and drive away huh?

Re: Diesel?

Reply #6 – June 25, 2005, 01:04:47 AM

There's a star I can't remember the name of actually...she has a an 80 something El Camino running on biodiesel....anyone know about that?

Re: Diesel?

Reply #7 – June 25, 2005, 01:22:17 AM

If you're worried about being stranded with propane, there's a couple things you can do. First of all, you can make the car dual-fuel, but that sacrifices performance on one fuel or the other. (propane is apparently best run with compression ratios that your average 87 octane user would consider to be sick.. like 10-11:1 or more) Perhaps if you met it halfway and designed the system to work on mostly propane with a side of 92-93 octane, you'd be OK. (and you can always tweak the system with usual performance mods to make up what you lose when converting to propane) Second, you can get (or make) adapter hoses that allow you to use a plain old barbecue grill type propane canister as a gas can of sorts.

I thought about running one or a pair of big toroidal (donut-shaped) propane tanks laying in the trunk well of my T-bird, with perhaps a small-ish Summit fuel cell or even the stock fuel tank for the 93 octane.. but new toroidal tanks seem to be pretty expensive. (like $900 each) I'd also like to get in touch with MSD over this, because supposedly they're big into making electronics for alternate fuel applications as well as the usual multi-spark boxes everyone knows and probably loves. I'd love to have a setup where I could run a mix of the gas and propane at once, especially with forced induction.. to use the propane as a ized intercooler of sorts. (same thing they claim nitrous does.. although the blurb in the Summit catalog says nitrous is much colder than propane)

If you're worried about propane's cold weather properties, they do make warmers for the propane injection systems. I think they use engine coolant.. but in a dual-fuel setup that's fine, because I gather that they usually start out gasoline and switch to propane when they warm up.

I tried digging up some links for you, but I'm kinda falling asleep here so it's rough to concentrate. (that's why this is more rambling than usual) I'll work on this in the morning if I remember. I found a site in Canada that sells a lot of propane stuff.. even "propane cams" and what not. I just can't find the link amongst three pages of other stuff.

Re: Diesel?

Reply #8 – June 25, 2005, 10:55:33 AM

Around here, diesel is quite a bit more than gas. :hick:

Re: Diesel?

Reply #9 – June 25, 2005, 05:04:24 PM

It is here too.

Re: Diesel?

Reply #10 – June 25, 2005, 07:44:05 PM

Here it's about 2 cents/liter (8 cents/gallon) cheaper, but ya gotta look at the MPG's AND the price of fuel to determine if you're saving money

Re: Diesel?

Reply #11 – June 25, 2005, 11:40:34 PM

Or how about just putting together a 302 w/ EFI on it.... (I know ME recommending a 5.0 to someone...

). Do the homework and the underhood work and don't futz around with carb this or that.....do the swap and do it right. Properly tuned and geared, that will give you decent mileage and still give you a power upgrade over what you have currently.

I don't think the diesel or alt fuels is the way to go for you.....

Keep it simple....