[Vwdiesel] Diesel working on liquid propane

[Doyt W. Echelberger]

Getting it to burn is the name of the game.

Hoover used forklift hardware to turn the liquid propane into gaseous fuel. 
Large problem was icing up of the carburetor. Then he had to find places 
for the propane tanks. The propane burned so cleanly that the oil never got 
dirty. He figured that using propane would roughly double the engine's 
service life and greatly decrease maintenance costs.
"Gasoline is a solvent. It washes the lubricant off your valve stems and 
cylinder walls. When it burns it generates a number of by-products that 
reduce the life of your engine by altering the chemical composition of your 
lubricating oil. Gasoline atomizes into a vapor, not a gas, and even then 
imperfectly. In manifolding of any length there is some degree of 
stratification in the fuel/air mixture and the combustion process itself is 
imperfect, prone to destructive detonation when any one of a host of 
variables is changed. Gaseous fuels do none of these things. Running on 
propane, your oil looks green and new after ten thousand miles (assuming 
you've got shaft seals). Valve-guide and cylinder-wall wear is markedly 
reduced on engines burning gaseous fuels and with an octane rating of over 
100 detonation is seldom a problem. The bottom line is that when you get 
rid of the gasoline you extend the life of your engine."  Bob Hoover, 1997.

He was about 15 years ahead of his time.

Doyt
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>
At 11:12 AM 10/12/2010, you wrote:
>In a message dated 10/12/2010 5:12:18 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
>doyt at buckeye-express.com writes:
>
>>I also have several dozen articles by Bob Hoover on using propane as a fuel
>>for air-cooled VW engines.
>>He spent years experimenting with propane and building systems to make it
>>happen.
>
>
>   A friend of mine keeps bringing that issue up!  He has a couple propane 
> forklifts,
>used to own a type 3 so the related neurons gang up every once in a while.
>   Technically no engine can run on liquid propane, it won't burn.  :-D
>      Loren