PwrSmoke
Full Access Member
In theory, there is enough of the latest lubricity additives in ULSD to not be a problem for us. The potential issue is that these additive are not mixed at the refinery but by the distributor or retailer. The refineries put out unadditivized, industry standard base fuel, so a regional Chevron, Shell, Terrible Herbst or whomever distributor can add their proprietary/advertised stuff into it and make it theirs. Therein lies the potential rub. Sometimes they go a little light on the stuff. Early on, fuel was gathered from various areas and tested. The results were across the board from just right, a little off, way off and even almost totally lacking. Human error, cheating... probably a little of both. Everything I have is from the '06-'07 era and I haven't seen anything recently. I spoke to my local Shell fuel distributor off the record in '09, and he said the name-branded Corporate entities were aware of the problem and pressuring their distributors to do it right but what about the fly-by-nites is my comment?
ULSD isn't really so bad as long as the lubricity is where it's supposed to be. It's a little down on BTUs versus the old #2 and has a bit less viscosity, but the average Cetane Index is higher than it used to be by a coupla points.
In '07, I had a great test set up where we were going to use a dyno mule to test the various fuels, including bio. It all fell thru at the last minute because (somebody) claimed the college's brand new engine dynos weren't compatible with the available diesel mules engines. They had a diesel dyno but it was really old and not very accurate. Diesel Crawler might have been at the school in question when this was being set up. Later, I was able to get the Diesel Club's puller engine on the dyno for a series of buildup stories but there wasn't time to test the fuel thing. The school has a running NA 7.3 but it's been doing nothing but idle for decades so who knows how it would do on full power runs, even if I could con them into adapting it to one of their dynos.
ULSD isn't really so bad as long as the lubricity is where it's supposed to be. It's a little down on BTUs versus the old #2 and has a bit less viscosity, but the average Cetane Index is higher than it used to be by a coupla points.
In '07, I had a great test set up where we were going to use a dyno mule to test the various fuels, including bio. It all fell thru at the last minute because (somebody) claimed the college's brand new engine dynos weren't compatible with the available diesel mules engines. They had a diesel dyno but it was really old and not very accurate. Diesel Crawler might have been at the school in question when this was being set up. Later, I was able to get the Diesel Club's puller engine on the dyno for a series of buildup stories but there wasn't time to test the fuel thing. The school has a running NA 7.3 but it's been doing nothing but idle for decades so who knows how it would do on full power runs, even if I could con them into adapting it to one of their dynos.
1/4 mile.
