Posted on 08/16/2005 11:28:00 AM PDT by Abathar
NAPPANEE, Ind. -- The high cost of gasoline may have driven them to do it. Picking the wrong fuel pump cut short their getaway.
Two men who tried to steal gasoline from a construction company instead filled the tank of their car with off-road-grade diesel fuel Sunday, police said.
An employee of Beer & Slabaugh spotted the men on the company property near Nappanee, about 20 miles southeast of South Bend, as they were siphoning fuel out of the car's tank, Elkhart County deputies said.
The two told the employee that a friend had put the wrong fuel into the tank and they were trying to empty it, deputies said. The employee noticed that the fuel was the distinctive red color of off-road diesel.
He called deputies, who arrested McKinley Chase, 21, and Dajuan L. Lord, 19, both of Gary, on preliminary charges of felony. They acknowledged the theft explaining their mistake and saying their car would not run.
Lord remained in the Elkhart County Jail on Tuesday. Chase was released on bond, a jail spokeswoman said.
You might as well risk it, if you're not already humilated by driving around in a pickup with "FARM USE" spray-painted in two-foot-high letters on each side.
Well, a kid I knew stole a motorcycle, and then siphoned diesel out of the diesel VW sitting out front.
He couldn't understand why the motorcycle wouldn't run.
Well.. I didn't bother telling him that with a tank full of diesel, a gasoline engine won't run.
You can do much the same thing with water.
Bring the engine to operating temperature...do not try to do this to a cold engine.
Dribble it through the carb slowly enough that when the revved engine starts coughing, you can stop the water. The idea is to let the engine almost, but not quite actually, die. It is a form of steam cleaning. You can tell by the exhaust when it's had enough treatment.
Works best with a small-spouted water can in one hand, and the other hand operating the throttle linkage.
The advantage is that the water won't wash the oil off the cylinder wall like the diesel does, but it does a great job of blasting carbon off the top of the pistons & the combustion chamber of the heads & the valves. Also, no oil change needed.
I have seen people sucessfully use gasoline in a diesel. You need to add a couple of quarts of oil to the tank though. First at diesel compression ratios gas will definitely ignite. The main problem is that gas provides no lubrication for the injection pump and it will seize unless designed for it. IIRC military diesels will run on gasoline.
I'm going way out on a limb here, but my guess would be to power off-road construction equipment, graders and dozers and the like?
I vaguely remember something about engines that will run on either.
I don't recall where I remember it from, and I don't know much about 'em.
But if I had to guess, I'd say that whatever design compromises had to be made to make 'em work probably also makes 'em less fuel efficient than the "normal" designs that are specificly for one or the other.
The Multi Fuel Engine had a compensator in the Injection pump that would adjust for the density of the fuel being used.
Basically consisted of a piston and a spring, the thinner fuels would flow past the piston quicker.
Hey, as a guy who likes to bathe in diesel I resent that smell remark. Ok, so I stink a little, but I still resent it!
Last year in Indiana we had some idiots steal a Mercedes diesel and then put gasoline in the tank. There weren't too smart either.
I have seen what happens when you run a diesel on gasoline. It normally requires a complete rebuild.
The piston tend to swell and start 'squeaking' in the cylinders. That is if the engine will even turn over.
The guy was knowledgable and said the main issue was the injection pump needed lubrication. The older injection pumps failed just from the modern low sulfur fuel. The specifically designed multi fuel engines had injection pumps that could handle the lack of lubrication in gasoline.
Will all diesel engines run on that mix? I don't know but that one certainly did with no issues. He is still driving the same truck.
Smells a little like just deserts.
Some place named after Japanese diapers, Nappanee.
I thought "Dajuan" was a mustard
$450 of which is the greenie fee for disposing of the mixed fuel I suppose... this sounds stupid. Simply siphoning out the tank and refilling it to capacity with pure gas should be sufficient once the diesel purges out of the fuel lines (pretty quickly if it's fuel injection as the pressure regulator cycles fuel back to the tank). The mix drained from the tank would probably work OK in a 2 cycle engine, adjusted to the right proportion with additional gas or diesel.
Does it produce a colored exaust? How the heck would a cop know what color fuel you are using in your truck?
They have a stick with a white cloth attached and they stick it in the tank. At a huge farm auction I was at they went through every truck that was diesel in the lot, dozens of them, and all the semi's there too. They caught quite a few people, they made a fortune in fine that day.
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