Paraffin in a Diesel Engine??

Question

Not cars I know, but and engine of car parentage

My Grandad has an allotment/freehold where he has some sheds and out houses paraffin, he uses a small diesel engine of dubious parentage (ex car - but what is anyone's guess) to run a small generator/alternator set, which in turn power some lights, kettle and what not ( nothing too frequency sensitive).

Anyways, he has been using red diesel in it, all kosher as its hardly on the road, but he has about 50-70litres of paraffin from when he used to keep greenhouse heaters running on it.

He want to put the paraffin in the engine, but I have heard that using things other than diesel can cause damage to the fuel pump. But now I have googled for it I can only seem to find issues with, bio-diesel and unmodified veg oil causing probs....

Should he be ok to put the paraffin in?

TIA

Tom

mrcheerful · Accepted Answer

yes, but mix it with red diesel, about 20 percent paraffin.mrcheerful

Philip THornton-Evison · Answer

A mixture of 90% paraffin and 10% lubricating oil  will be quite OK to use.RegardsPhilip Thornton-Evison

Grimly Curmudgeon · Answer

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Tom Burton" saying something like:

All diesels will actually run perfectly ok on kerosene, but it's the injection pump that's at risk due to the low lubricity of kerosene. To counter this it would be good to use up the paraffin at a dilution rate as suggested by mrcheerful of 20%.

Paraffin in a Diesel Engine??

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