Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/880

 Burning Distillate in Your Automobile Engine

Something the East can learn from the West By Edward C. Crossman

���Electric heated carbureter for heavy- fuel oils to start engine when cold

��ACCORDING to my oil refining friends, when you distill crude oil of as- phaltum base, you get first a high test gasoline, then a lower grade gasoline, and so on down until between kerosene and gasoline, you get what is known as "distil- late." It looks, acts and smells much like gasoline, but costs much less.

Distillate is being used by too many busi- ness firms with flocks of delivery and sales- man cars to be condemned as merely a pass- ing fad.

Its fatal weakness is that it will not start a cold engine, and in- asmuch as gas engines until they have started, are cold, the distillate is useless until some other method is used of turning over the en- gine and getting enough heat into the walls to make distil- late vapor stop con- densing on the way up the intake mani- fold. So owners burn- ing distillate either in

��Two -compart- ment tank, one for gasoline and one for kerosene, combined with the carbureter

��regular carbureters or in the many patent devices for utilizing the fuel, have to start on gasoline.

On the Pacific Coast, car drivers over- come by various means the reluctance of distillate to vaporize and to give power in a cold engine. The first means is a power- ful starting and high compression motor, the combination developing heat through mere compression alone like a Diesel engine, until the distillate be-

��Heated Kerosene Into cylinders

��Two-way valve

control rod

���Heated kerosene full up

Heated Kerosene into cylinders

Exhaust

��Both fuelsup same pipe but only one at a time

��idmitted by Y J suction of motor

��Details of the double tank carbureter and heating arrangement using kerosene for fuel

��gins to fire. The sec- ond is by water- jacketing the intake manifold with the heated water from the cylinder cooling sys- tem and heating it again by paralleling it to the exhaust manifold.

It is a common scheme in California to burn half distillate and half gasoline, making a mixture

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