Internal Combustion

J3a-614 · **Posted:** Thu Aug 05, 2010 2:25 am

Howard P. · **Posted:** Thu Aug 05, 2010 7:14 am

And a few hours (or more) after the match is struck....

That diesel is ready for work in 15-20 minutes, from the time you push the button. And the end-of-the-day sequence is even shorter. No shovelling in of a bank, etc.

Howard P.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Thu Aug 05, 2010 9:14 am

J3a-614 wrote:

These next ones are British diesels in preservation. What stands out is how hard starting (and smokey!) these units are, especially when compared to the American units shown above. Can anyone here suggest why this would be so?

I'll tell you what:
Go out and try to start up a 40-50 year old Austin-Healey, MG, Triumph, Jaguar, or Land Rover in the dead of winter after it's been sitting for several months idle. Get back to me if you survive the results.

To heck with that anti-British bias. Do the same for a similarly vintage American car or pick-up truck. Please note that they must be typical American storage conditions--nothing from Jay Leno's garage or an auto museum. Shoved in a garage, no fancy rip-down or prep for storage. A car that needs "lead additive" to the fuel to make up for the missing leaded gasoline.

I remember the fire department in my home town being called for a "garage fire" that turned out to be a guy trying to start some vintage sports car and filling the garage and neighborhood with a similar smoke screen to those seen in the British videos. (Trying to remember if it was the guy with the Alfa Romeo or the triumph TR3A....) I heard a similar story of someone who tried to take care of a piston-ring problem by "flushing" the oil pan, and then running the engine momentarily, with straight kerosene. You didn't think one four-cylinder engine could produce as much white smoke as ten EMD's or Deltics, but you could follow him all the way to the garage on satellite photos with the smoke screen he trailed.......

Ron Travis · **Joined:** Sun May 15, 2005 2:22 pm **Posts:** 1543

As Mr. Mitchell has mentioned, the issue with the British engines is the ambient temperature. Just one compression cycle of a diesel has the ability to raise the air temperature in the cylinder to ignition temperature, depending on how warm that cylinder air is to begin with. If it is not warm enough, the compression-heating of the air does not reach ignition temperature, but it does warm the cylinder walls somewhat. So the next compression cycle begins from a slightly warmer base point.

So the cranking has to warm the engine to the point where ignition begins, and all the while, fuel is being injected at each power stroke, but it fails to ignite. So, before the engine starts during cranking, that white smoke is unburned, vaporized fuel. And after it starts, there is still a lot of unburned fuel making white smoke until operating temperature is reached. I generally like the smell of diesel exhaust, but that white smoke from a cold diesel is murder.

I like that authoritative sound of a diesel starting to fire.