What exactly is Distillate Fuel and made a good find today

Have always wondered what it is, I know you could get
either distillate, kero or high comb gas in the h and m
tractors. Were there any advantages to it. Also took up a
load of scrap and saw an old wartime h in there, was pretty
stripped down but had a good distillate manifold and
shutter control rod. Got home and fould the manifold baffle
is FREE and in good shape. Overall the manifold is 99%
perfect. Jim

With early petroleum refining, there were components of the crude that did not like to distill out as gasoline (light aromatic hydrocarbons). Further it was not heavy enough to be diesel or engine oil. Because the processes we use today with catalytic cracking, and extreme refining technology, that intermediate liquid was more or less a byproduct that held much less value.
It was full of ash, (and sulfur from many feed stocks) as well as a low octane rating. It was thick enough that it didn"t vaporize/atomize well unless it was heated to 100+ degrees. There was energy in it comparable to gasoline, but it could not stand compression without detonation, and thus required low compression engines. Low compression reduces expansion ratio, and thus efficiency goes down as well.
It does burn, it will run a spark ignition engine, it was cheap (probably a dime a gallon at times) It condensed on cylinder walls and worked its way down past the rings leading to the necessity of draining a quart of oil out of the tractor each work day then refilling the pan with fresh engine oil to keep it from being diluted and ruining the bearings. But engine oil was also cheap.
It is not Kero. It is much lighter, and dirtier.
It is also not produced due to the improvement of refining, and if made would be way pricy and illegal due to pollution. Those tractors smoked as bad as an old diesel.
I hope this helps. Jim

if you want about twenty percent less power have your tractor set up to burn distillate. all you need to figure out what distillate is look in a farmall m owners manual. in that time frame gasoline was seventy octane they showed distillate at thitysix octane and kerosene at zero octane. so that would put distillate pretty close to half gas and half kerosene.

Randy you are right . I bought my John Deere D About 45 years ago and the old timers back then told me to mix half gasoline and kerosene and that would be as close to distillate as you could get. I noticed very little lose in power but stinks worse than diesel and had to run water injection to stop it from spark knocking. You also have to play with the shutters to maintain temp.

I have read here that jet fuel is a good substitute. It is more expensive than gas unless you can get it after it has been pumped off Air Force planes.

(quoted from post at 04:23:05 07/12/13) I have read here that jet fuel is a good substitute. It is more expensive than gas unless you can get it after it has been pumped off Air Force planes.

Click to expand...

Jet Fuel is nothing more than filtered kerosene. Randy is right on the money. It is a kerosene plus light ends(gasoline mix).

if it existed today it sounds like something good to spray on weeds lol wait the epa wouldnt like that either would they , wasnt around then but it sounds like it was almost more pia than it was worth

(quoted from post at 05:07:45 07/12/13) if it existed today it sounds like something good to spray on weeds lol wait the epa wouldnt like that either would they , wasnt around then but it sounds like it was almost more pia than it was worth

Click to expand...

Heck when refining first started, say at Titisville,Pa, they just heated a big pot of crude and dumped the light ends that distilled into the creeks. The were only after the lamp oils.
Never dawned on anyone as to why there were no fish in the creek. With the advent of engines they quit dumping the light ends and sold it as a distillate. "We come a long way" not really!