O.T. DIESEL IN OLDER MOTORS

I was in town for coffee this morning and the talk turned to the new diesel fuel. What they were talking about when they took some of the lube out of the fuel, what should the people with older pumps that were designed for the outlawed fuel use to protect there pumps and injectors. As far as trusting your supplier to put additives in how do you know? What I am asking is What would be OK to use to add lube and not hurt the pump or injectors?

Bob

I go to Walmart and buy 2cycle oil in the gallon jug. Add maybe an oz per gallon of diesel. It sure works on my JD4320.

I'm not that trusting and there's little concern for owners of older equipment with mechanical distributor pumps that are most prone to low-lube damage. I buy the Walmart Super-Tech two-stroke oil in gallon jugs and add it to all my diesel.

Some people are just not satisfied unless they can dabble in a little soccery or witchcraft . They figure adding $5 of Elixer to the tank will give their machine $500 more in performance.

Just courious!! How do you know it makes a difference?? I have been burning heating oil in my Kubotas for the last 2 years, with no problems other than more fuel filter maintainance. I'm suspecting some bacterial issues, as the fuel is two years old now, and stored in a 275gal tank in the celler.
Loren, the Acg.

No need to do anything

1 qrt. of type-A in 25 to 40 gals. of no. 2 -- works great and add a gallon of straight unleaded for the winter-- no jell and plenty of lube for everything-- plus the type-A will clean your injectors-- on the old diesels we used to fill the replacement fuel filter with type-A and start the engine - it would smoke to who-s ville and back then we shut them off-- let it set over the week-end monday take-off with clean injectors and run like a new one

Governor gets sticky! It otherwise runs just fine.

When the injector pump gets warm/hot and I try to idle the engine down, like for a turn at the end of the field, the engine will slow down until it stalls. And then it is impossible to restart until it cools. Once I even had to take the cover off the pump and twiddle the linkage inside, for it to start. Adding the 2cyc No more problems.

Don't pay any attention to that malarkey.

Allan

I saw a study where one of the best additives, for lubrication only, was vegetable oil. Was that study partially funded by the bio diesel lobby? I don't know. I did get some and try it out of curiosity(wondering about plugged filters and such) without any trouble. Did it do any good? I haven't a clue.
Sometimes an engine will tell you what it needs, like onefarmer below. The one that has bothered me is my Cummins L10 truck engine with mechanically operated injectors. They were all replaced at one time. Fuel is supposedly treated for or by the place where I get it(they use it in their own fleet) Every little while an injector will stick. For a while, I treated the fuel also. Then another injector stuck, so I quit with the additive.(I tried more than one) This summer, after an injector stuck on a foggy morning in unfamiliar territory, and a tow bill, I started adding some veg. oil with every fill up. I will keep it up until something else happens!
I just got a new to me, small, low houred tractor. After idling to warm it a little, I speeded it up to find it smoking, skipping, popping, and just running terrible in general. After getting over my initial fear, I got some Power Service additive, filled it on up with my fresh fuel, and ran it at PTO RPM on the mower I intend to use it with, and it has cleaned right up and straightened out.

Allan's got it nailed. NO worries.

'Course, that's kinda BORING, compared to all the unsubstantiated DRAMA! (Like a bunch of teenage girls on BookFace).

I was told by 2 reputable injector service specialists that 2 cycle oil should be added to older rotary pumps [ Stanadyne Roosa Master and Cav ].. They relied on lubrication from the fuel back in the old days.. The fuels today aren't slippery enough.. I use 6 ounces of 2 cycle oil at every fill-up on my Military M-1028 Chevy truck.. For some reason inline pumps aren't as picky .. Don't know why.. I think I'd still use 2 cycle in them too.. Can't hurt...

Re: Adirondack Case Guy: Not long ago, heating oil in NY was the same as off-road and farm diesel. Had better lube then diesel at the pump now. So, no big surprise you did okay with it. I've used it for years. Bet you won't do so well now! Last year most suppliers in NY switched and now heating oil is separate from farm fuel and has NO lube added. Might get away with it in n in-line and/or piston pump injector-unit. Not in a rotary.

Re: Allan in NE, David g, Bob, Buick-Deere . . . very uninformative blanket statements with no useful content. All one needs to do is read a CAV or Stanadyne document about what their lube requirements are for mechanical rotary-distributor pumps. Then see if the fuel you are using meets those specs. Some does not - plain and simple.

Or read the service bulletins from Stanadyne re premature wear on the transfer-pump blades and the special kits Stanadyne offers for use with low-lube fuel.

Or the many documents re. failure of Stanadyne rotary pumps in the US military that suffer head & rotor wear in GM diesels.

I've seen that most people on this forum (that comment) send their pumps out to be fixed and rarely attempt to repair themselves. Yet - these same people are experts on injection pump wear? Good grief!

It goes like this. The major metal moving parts in a distributor pump e.g. a CAV, Stanadne/Roosamaster, Diesesl Kiki, Bosch VE, AMBAC, Rotodiesel, etc. - can last over 1,000,000 road miles or 30,000 engine hours. Who - at this time - will know if their pump life has been cut in half or to one third? Not many I suspect. If you buy a so-called "rebuilt" pump - it likely already had parts with very high hours. So when a pump craps out - we rarely know how much use the parts inside have and what the cause is.

Now - to the rare situation where someone has a brand new (not rebuilt) pump and it gets a scored head & rotor or ground up transfer-pump blade - then we have something to diagnose.

You naysayers - yes- you will spout out whatever makes you feel good but that changes little. To the guy spends a little extra adding lube to to his/her fuel? Something wrong with a little insurance? Hey Buick-Deere. Do you have fire insurance on your house? If so why? Is it on fire? The reasoning much different with adding lube to pump diesel that just about always has less lube then the older diesel fuel. I guess by the naysayer's reasoning -it's fine to spend lots of money on "rebuilt" pump but silly to use any sort of insurance to preserve the life of what we've got that works at present?

The reality is that this "lost lubricity" in the ULSD fuel has to be replaced with lubricity additives by law.

There are hundreds of millions of pre-2007 diesel engines in this country. If ULSD is such a problem, where are all the failures?

This forum should be FULL of people complaining how ULSD ruined their engines from the past 6 years. Where are they?

REALITY is that it's "much ado about nothing."

Well said! IHC told MoDot back when we were having trouble when the low sulfur fuel came out before the ultra low. The trucks in hot weather the throttle would not work sometimes when letting off coming into a curve to add a quart of dexron to 50 gal of diesel. Fixed the problem. We didn't have to worry about red fuel because of government. Had a farmer that had a New Holland tractor that was near to new RPM would very low then after a time it would just speed up on its own. Acted sluggish on the governor he added some dexron and no more problems. Like you said insurance.

The low lube has the worst effects on rotary
distributor pumps and NOT on inline or separate
plunger pumps. So that narrows things down a bit.
Considering many highway vehicles stopped using
mechanical distributor pumps in 1995 - they were
well used by the time low sulfur fuel came out.
Once it did - there have been many pump failures.
But I suspect many attribute it to high miles and
not to low-lube fuel. As I said before - many who
have had pump problems are clueless as to why or
even what part of the pump failed. They just send
to the pump shop and pay the bill.

Are you really saying there's been no pump
failures over the years you've heard of? Exactly
what planet do you live on?

Hey!!! is this an every other week topic now? I thought that it was on the monthly schedule.

DJ Maris, I GUESS I've been pretty lucky 'cuz I don't buy snake oil and have probably as many old diesels as you do, and nothing has died (yet) on a diet of whatever the fuel guy drops off.

(quoted from post at 17:42:09 12/05/13) No need to do anything

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xactly.
All my 4 diesels trucks are pre 99
most of my 7 diesel tractors are early seventy's.
I never had a single problem with injectors or pump.
But maybe the farm bulk diesel i use is better stuff than what sells at service stations

I've posted the link to the fuel additive lubricity test some guys had run on several occasions. Biodiesel was the best but cheap 2-stroke oil was about the best bang-for-the-buck and easiest to find. It alone at a 200:1 mix was enough to lower the wear scar to where the engine manufacturers would like to see it, when mixed into fuel without any other lubricity additives in it.

But but bbbut that's impossible