Mixing gas with diesel fuel?
 

I had a guy tell me yesterday that you could mix 1 gallon of gas to 5 gallons of diesel and it would increase the power output of a non-turbo diesel such as my '88 7.3. He said it makes the fuel burn a little hotter, creating more power. How does this compare, with say, injecting propane to get more power?

Your injectors and IP will be short lived 'cause of lack of lubrication! That's a 20% mixture, even VW back in the '80's only recommended a 10% mixture to lean out the diesel for winter freezing problems.

So, what if I mixed it at only 10%? Or I only added about 1 gallon to every tank fill up?

If you do it, be sure to add a little tranny fluid for your experiment to help lube the pump.

Not true. People think gasoline has more power only because it's more volatile. The distillation end point of gasoline is 380*F. The distillation endpoint of #2 diesel fuel is 680*F. Diesel has more BTU per gallon than gasoline and will always burn hotter.

Years ago I filled up with diesel winterized with gasoline. It not only made the engine more noisey, but had a lot less power on the hills.

Yeh, and I bet the pistons are about ready to come out. I had one knucklehead put 5 gal of diesel in the tank of the 18 wheeler. got about 10 miles from the shop and let loose. took the top right off the pistons. "Hey mr. boss, she was runnin fine til it made this funny missin noise."
Why the heck do you think rudolph diesel spent so much time perfecting the diesel engine???? You want to burn gas/diesel mixture in your truck, you go ahead, but ya better carry a shovel along to pick up the parts when they come out. And I dont care what anybody says about some stupid ratio of fuel to gasoline. There is my nickle and I feel a lot better. Gooooooood day.

Only in the most dire circumstances of say, 100 below zero, in an effort to avoid freezing to death if you could make it fire, would it be advisable to put even a drop of gasoline in the diesel tank.

Research the propane injection--that seems popular and probably works.

Kinda like putting moth balls in, sure, run like a raped ape til the pistons melt down. If it worked that well, the fuel would likely come premixed that way, but instead, the winter blends are No. 1 straight or mixed, no gasoline. Diesel is bad enough about lube, gas is worse, so bye bye injection pump.

This is from Diesel Injection Service, a large, multi-location diesel shop in Texas:

If you want more power, go find some #3 diesel.
It is a heavier fuel and produces more power, but you better have it out of your tanks before the temp drops to 35 degrees or you will be gelled up so bad you will wish you never heard of it.

Disel engines are obviously mad to burn disele fuel because not only is disel burns hotter but it is designed for the very high comperresion of a disel. That mixing of gas crap is just that crap it does nothing for the disel engine at all excpet tear it up and make you mad. I wonder why they say "Diesel fuel only" in the manual?

My dad has a 90 non turbo and he puts kerosine in his once in a while in the winter time usually about .5-1 gallons per tank. especially when there is about 100 gallons left in the tank of summer blend

well I know you can burn kerosene with no problems in a dielse. and vice versa they are very similiar.

Keep gas with gas engines and diesel to diesel engines. If you are worried about gelling of the fuel in winter add some methal hydrate.

30 years ago in the trucking and heavy equipment industries they used to add gasoline to the fuel in the winter to stop the fuel from gelling. It was not to increase the power, it was to dissolve the parafin in diesel fuel that causes it to gell.

If you ever saw a container of straight number 2 diesel at 30 below you would wonder how it ever got through the lines. But if you did not blend something else in with it, it would not. This is gelling.

Now in the modern era, fuel is blended in winter months to prevent this from happening, but, if you get a sudden artic blast of cold air or your temps drop to way below normal suddenly, the fuel is blended for 10 but the actual temp is 30 below.
Now you need to put some addatives in the fuel to make up for the extra cold. Today there are a dozen products on the market that will take care of this.
30 years ago the only thing you had to add to the fuel was kerosene or gasoline. Also 30 years ago everything was high sulfer fuel that lubricated everything, but today this is non existant. So now the gasoline or kerosene add the problem of no lubrication for the pump and injectors. And the engines then were not the computer controlled ultra power plants we have now, so it was still not a problem.

Today gasoline belongs in gasoline engines.