kerosene in cars

[beef_bourito]

planes run on kerosene right? what's the octane rating of it? couldn't you run crazy boost on a car (provided you reinforced the internals) with that or is it cheaper to buy racing fuel or nitromethane. for a street racer couldn't you just have a secondary tank with kerosene, flip a swithc when someone wants to play, and that switch pumps up the boost, timing, alky injection, and switches to a new fmu then burn whomever it is? I was just thinking that you could have a totally stock sounding car and at the flip of a switch you have a strip monster racing a slightly modded street car.

[Zgringo]

Originally Posted by beef_bourito

planes run on kerosene right? what's the octane rating of it? couldn't you run crazy boost on a car (provided you reinforced the internals) with that or is it cheaper to buy racing fuel or nitromethane. for a street racer couldn't you just have a secondary tank with kerosene, flip a swithc when someone wants to play, and that switch pumps up the boost, timing, alky injection, and switches to a new fmu then burn whomever it is? I was just thinking that you could have a totally stock sounding car and at the flip of a switch you have a strip monster racing a slightly modded street car.

Jet and turbine airplanes use Jet-A or another grade of hi-grade kerosene. Kerosene is nothing but hi-grade diesal fuel and unsuitable for gas burning cars. Now Avgas is a different story. Avgas comes in different grades.
115/145=purple
100=blue
100LL=green*
87=red
*100LL is low lead gasoline, the rest all have hi-lead contants and will screwup your catalic convertors plus your engine hasn't been setup to handle leaded fuels.
Now some avation aircraft engines have whats called a AD (airworthiness directive) which allows you to use 87 octane auto gas instead of avation gas.

[beef_bourito]

ok, thanks for the info, i thought it was like 106 octane gas or something, i guess i heard wrong.

[MagicRat]

Kerosene has been used in engines for decades.....not out of choice, but because at times kerosene has been much cheaper and more available.
Kerosene burns slowly and very inefficiently in car engines. You lose a significant amount of power and you put out much greater emissions on kerosene.

[Zgringo]

Originally Posted by MagicRat

Kerosene has been used in engines for decades.....not out of choice, but because at times kerosene has been much cheaper and more available.
Kerosene burns slowly and very inefficiently in car engines. You lose a significant amount of power and you put out much greater emissions on kerosene.

Do you have any idea what it takes to run Kerosene in a engine designed for gasoline?
In a Carburator car you had to have 2 fuel systems, 1 for gasoline, the other for kerosene.
Heres how it works. You start the car on gas, when it gets hot you switch off the gas and turn on the kerosene.
The kerosene line is wrapped around the exhaust manifold to preheat the kerosene before it enters the carburator. To shut down you reverse the proceedure. Shut off the kerosene and turn on the gas and let run till all the kerosene is cleared out of the carb.
Failure to follow these proceedures and chances are you wont get the car to run.
To attempt to run kerosene chances are you'd get the car impounded or put in jail or both. It smokes worse than the worse diesal truck you've ever seen.

[curtis73]

Diesel, Jet fuel, and Kerosene are all very close cousins. Although Kerosene has a few more BTUs than gasoline, its incredibly more difficult to get burning, just like Zgringo said.

Kerosene would be a good alternative fuel for diesel engines, but its not so hot in a gasoline engine.