Can petrol engine turned into diesel?

[vrooom]

even with specially designed head for diesel ?

e.g take a-series out of mini, and design a diesel based cylinder head. and run diesel fuel though it?

jay

[Trooper2]

Ford and G.M. did it in the U.S. in the 70's during the Fuel crisis', they where about as useful as a flamethrower at a barn fire! I'm sure you could do better in your garage.

[DeltaFox]

Youd need to change a few things like the rods and pistons...maybe even the crank.
Cr on a petrol engine for the road is unlikely to be more than 11:1 but a diesel is in the region of 22:1...thats a lot of compression!

[annodomini2]

I would have thought because of the lower rpm generally experienced by a diesel, the stress on the pistons/rod/crank would be reduced, but the piston shape needs to be different?

[love machine]

It will knock the bearings out in minutes.

Why? is the question.

A mini is a go cart, so why would you want to make it more like a Rayburn?

Sorry to come across like an arse, but that is the most daft idea possible. Having said, there are a lot of monkeys wrecking good machinery.

If you were hellbent, you could look at the effort of Manx Racing (crossflow engine on mini gearbox) and whack a diesel on there. Problem would be the narrow welly band would ideally require lots of gears. Thought about running LPG out of orange bottles?

Don't put a diesel engine in a mini, give it to someone who appreciates a decent car and go and buy a Citroen Visa D or something equally shite and wallet friendly........

The diesel>petrol conversion is possible (think Ford Essex)

>> Edited by love machine on Saturday 19th February 13:53

[stevieturbo]

You could...if you changed the head, crank, rods, pistons, added a fuel pump, injectors etc...

In fact you could, if you changed the engine.

Why anyone would even contemplate converting a petrol engine to diesel is beyond me, and would be an expensive, and a total waste of time doing it.

[vrooom]

im just curious if that is possible. Im sticking to petrol in on my mini. diesel.

[DeltaFox]

Just bung in a B series sherpa van diesel engine....

[lanciachris]

ive seen a jaguar v12 converted to diesel. although those are very high compression engines to start with

[speedy_thrills]

vrooom said:

even with specially designed head for diesel ? e.g take a-series out of mini, and design a diesel based cylinder head. and run diesel fuel though it? jay

I’ve seen diesel engines converted to run as turbocharged petrol engines (Though actually it was more of a diesel block and pan than a whole engine).

I would suggest water injection of you want a few more mpg (not to mention a few more huskies under the bonnet).

[atom290]

Isnt the engine out of the Tourag diesel in essence the same as the one in the Lambo?

[Mikey G]

I noticed a while ago that the block and head of a 306 1.9 diesel was essentialy the same design as the petrol variant albeit with a cast block not ally. the distributor was replaced with a vacuum pump and the injectors were fitted into the spark plug holes. internally it was probably a different matter (ie pistons, rods, crank) as said above. Come to think of it i noticed the same thing on an old Vauxhall unit aswell which looked common to there single cam units of the time.

[Pigeon]

Yes, and BMC brought out a 1500 diesel version of the B-series. There's someone around with a project of converting a BMW boxer bike engine to diesel.

[love machine]

The whole crux of the matter with all engines is that more compression= more bearing loads= need bigger journals. I don't know how they plan to achieve this, if they are big enough for starters. Hence why diesels have giant munting journals! They aren't wasting material on purpose!

[Pigeon]

I think the BMW bike engine people are sleeving the bores down to get around that one.

[munter]

Wasn't the bottom of the 2.25 Landy engine the same for petrol or diesel?

[love machine]

The Ford Essex V6 was designed as a diesel IIRC and that is why the bottom end is gigantic! Properly Brunel style. No revs from that one!

[chuntington101]

i think the Jag I6 in the old XJs where designed as diesels, and so was the Pinto. i think its easier to go that way than the other as the stregth is already built in.

thanks Chris.

[Pigeon]

No, the XK was definitely designed as a petrol engine from the word go.

[citloon]

My boat has a Watermota sea panther diesel which started life as a 1.6 litre ford crossflow motor, it has custom made flat top pistons, injectors down the plug holes, a custom made timing chest with the timing chain driving a lucas injection pump, cold starting is taken care of by a lucas thermostart in the inlet manifold, apparently Watermota sold their design work back to Ford who used it to develop the endura range of diesels.