Different tractor fuels

Hello, I have been reading alot about antique John Deere Tractors, some of them were "All Fuel" tractors, some ran on "Distillate" can someone explain to me what these different fuels were? thank you.

They were less volatile fuels than gasoline, and in the early years were much cheaper. Depending on the grade they wee similar to kerosene. When crude oil was refined by distillation a fixed percentage of the crude oil boiled at different temperatures and these fuels did not have a lot of uses, therefore were a surplus and much cheaper than gasoline. There were various problems associated with using them, but the cost savings was substantial and most tractor makers developed ways to use them. With the development of catalytic cracking during WW II this all changed. A much higher percentage of gasoline was available from crude oil and the cost advantage of the lower grade fuels disappeared. Therefore many of the older distillate or kerosene or all-fuel tractor were re-fitted with higher compression pistons and cold manifolds to get the maximum power available from using gasoline. Ironically there are more BTU's of energy available from a gallon of kerosene than a gallon of gasoline, but due to the anti-knock properties of gasoline an engine can develop more horsepower on gasoline. This is not a very scientific explanation, but is is the basics of the issue.
Paul

All fuel tractors ran on gasoline and distillate. They had two tanks, usually a small one for gasoline and the larger one for distillate. They were started and warmed up on gasoline because it took a hot intake manifold to vaporize the distillate. The intake manifold generally was heated by the exhaust manifold far more than for straight gasoline.

Gerald J.

One night I was in a hurry after dark and put some diesel fuel in our MF 35 gas. It ran ok on it once it got warmed up. I guess that is similar to what they used to run into with the distillate.

So distillate is somewhat like Home Heating oil and Kerosene?

You must have still had a bunch of gas in the tank and I bet it smoked a lot. Dave

Home heating fuel is either #2 or #1 diesel. Kerosene is lighter yet with naptha gas/white gas the next step.
Jet A-1 and JetB are an ultra clean, very refined version of kerosene and naptha.Yet economical to purchase, cheaper than kerosene at TSC etc.
#2 diesel is just too heavy to burn unless the engine is very hot and working very hard with a hot manifold.Even then it will dilute the crankcase oil.

it was completely out of gas and it did smoke pretty bad. I put it in there by mistake but since it was running on it I burned about 3 gallons through it, mainly to see what it would do.

There used to be many cheap fuels used in tractors. Poorly refined petroleum called "low grade distillate", alcohol, vegetable oil, etc. Deere certainly wasn't one of the first innovators with multi-fuel engines. There were many complex vaporizing systems, as well as "hot-bulb" engines that could run many fuels. "Distillate" could be many things. Same goes for products that were sold as "tractor fuel." If it could be vaporized, it got used.
"Hot bulb" engines were popular in Europe, in tractors and even a few chain saws.

Around the 1920s, Shebler made a popular "vaporizing" single carburetor setup for multi-fuel engines - and that's the system most Deere tractors used.

Kingston made a two carb setup for kerosene, distillate, gasoline, etc.

Fordson had a good system and used a Holley "vaporizer" carb.

Many Model T Fords also got adapted to run on the cheap fuels. But, many of them also got made into tractors.

Back in the fortys and fiftys we used green tractor fuel or distillate in farm tractors, 10-20 McCormic Deering and B Deere. It was somewhat better than kerosene as it did not knock as bad as kerosene did on heavy loads at high temperatures , but not as good as gasoline. I think it had a higher cetane rating than kerosene.
Joe