What Happens If You Put METHANOL in Your Diesel? 

About 35 years ago Detroit Diesel.ran an experimental program for city bus engines running on methanol. These were 6V92 engines. The diesel fuel versions were 277HP with engine life of about 350,000 miles. The methanol engines were also 277HP but required about double the fuel to be injected. The heads looked the same but had glow plugs from the Chev 5.7 diesel. There was a glowplug controller with LEDs that flashed when the glow plugs were energised. The heat of vapourisation is so high with methanol that it would absorb the heat of compression from the air and not fire in a cold engine. The engine running sounded like a blown alcohol drag engine. Once it did a run and the cylinders were well warmed up it idled smooth as silk, for about 2 minutes when it had cooled the cylinders and the rough idle came back. The early testing gave engine life of 50,000 miles due to the high quantity of fuel being injected washed the cylinder walls. Many additives were tested in the fuel and got engine life up to 100,000 miles. Eventually the engines were converted back to diesel fuel but initially the methanol heads were used. They ran fine during a run on the route, but would not start after being shut off. The fuel system would have to be primed again. The methanol heads were engineeredcto retain heat, which boiled the fuel sitting in the fuel rails. The heads were then replaced with diesel heads and no more problem. Tractor pullers will be rebuilt fairly often so ring and cylinder wall life is not the same concern as a daily driver. It was an interesting experiment. The idea had come about to reduce soot emissions in city use. That part was successful. I think diesel engines converted to run on natural gas would be the answer. Large industrial engines can be had in diesel or natural gas fuel versions.

the reason the bottle ran so fast is that its returning the excess back to tank thru the return line

the knock on initial start up is likely an airlocked injector since you ran it out of fuel, sometimes reving it will clear it, but its usually easier to just crack the injector lines and let the air bleed off while its running.

I recall that, as a truck driver, I used to put 5 gallons of super petrol (gasoline) in a 50 gallon tank of diesel. Made the diesel engine run real well and produced a flame out the exhaust stack about 3 feet long. It was better seen at night.

I noticed the heat coming off your head when you were doing the heavy duty ratio calculations for the mixture. I was afraid the fuel might ignite before you got to use it.

M10 will more than double your torque output at a given RPM low in the range compared to straight diesel. As you increase RPM, the torque improvement decreases to double the output. As you increase to M20, output advantage drops, M30 drops even more. To get a stable mix, you might try two to one butanol to methanol for the alcohol blend. You might also try lubricity additive like Stanadyne. Watch out for any vehicle fuel components using aluminum: methanol will corrode it severely, so need anti-corrosion additive. Methanol can also eat some seal and oring materials. Need to change out to methanol resistant seals and orings ...

Quick tip! When you pour from a 5 gal bucket with a spout, if you lay that bad boy on its side with the spout at the 12 o’clock position and then slowly roll it, it’ll pour ezpz nice and controlled like

back in 1986 I rode with a trucker up Cajon Pass in California which is a real bitch in a loaded bottom dump. He had many miles on the engine and it seriously needed a rebuild, but it went up that hill like it wasn't there, 60 mph plus. He had a 20 pound propane bottle on the floor and when he started up the hill, he turned on the propane bottle that had a hose going directly into the air filter, the pyrometer temp went down, the stack was clear, and the speed went up.

I have a water/meth kit on my 6.7 powerstroke. 2 nozzles that add up to 1080 ml/min. Makesa big difference

We use a AEM water meth system on our diesel hauler. It adds quite a bit to the seat dyno.

Next.... blend methanol with 20% nitromethane and put that with diesel :D

I saw your seafoam video AGES ago and never knew. Never knew. Now I’m helping a buddy out w his 6.7 and wanting one myself…. Man. Crazy circle it is. 🤘🏻 love your videos bro. Keep it up 🤘🏻🇺🇸🇺🇸

For measuring, go metric and use a scale. 1litre =~1kg.

You two looked like Cheech and Chong pouring gas from a trash can into that T-Bird.

Mabye put a injector in the intake of even a carb, run the methanol through that way. The diesel might act as a pilot light kinda for the alcohol. Not sure how long the injection pump will last without diesel or oil to lub it. See if you could run a propane mixer on the intake

I would add a little bit of ATF in the diesel for a little bit extra lubricity. Just don’t get caught with it in your tank on the road because carbs for mistake it for red diesel for agriculture use.

No doubt the system is very well aerated. It will take a fair amount of time to get all the air out of the pump, lines, rail and injectors. You should have refilled system with good diesel, then run it long enough to get all the air out. I bet much of your fuel was shuttled back to fuel tank, through fuel return.

I'd like to see more on this. Maybe drive it for a few months to see what happens. Document and report any changes such as increased / decreased fuel economy, possible damage to fuel system, engine, etc. 90% diesel should be enough to keep things lubricated but Dan Snyder is right, methanol (or any alcohol) absorbs water like crazy. I doubt the water separator would do much good. Something to keep in mind.

Yes good job showing telling of what you are doing , keep up the good work. See you the next time see ya bye.

The methanol super stock diesels use a different cylinder head with spark plugs and if I remember right they change the pistons also to put the combustion chamber in the cylinder head instead of the piston. Basically a gas engine built on a super tough diesel block

This experiment is great! Here in Latvia we use ethanol (on petrol cars) after ethanol chiptuning. As far as I know my friends Honda is knocking first minutes. Engine warms up, knocking disappears. I would say, your methanol knocking really might be due to temperature. I don't get it, why you dont use LPG as fuel in USA, Octane is 108-113(they mix propane/butane in winter and summer differentially), so my Honda H22A is chiptuned for LPG (liquid petrolium gas) as fuel. If chiptuned, lpg gives more power, than Latvia's petrol (octane 98). My Honda was champion in local street drag-race. And Diesel engine can run 50% LPG 50% diesel. We do that (rarely) that in Latvia as well.

Are you planning a part 2 with the other vehicles? I'd like to see that!

Two things. Diesel ignites with the heat of high compression so it is a very different fuel to gasoline that requires lower compression and a spark, so methanol is not a replacement fuel for Diesel engine. The diesel you get in winter in cold climates is not the same as summer diesel as it has anti gelling agents and the like mixed in that may not play well with methanol. Using kerosene would have been a better choice for the test. All that said methanol injection at the air intake is a possible benefit as long as the amount is small enough that it doesn’t ignite before the diesel is injected. This can really bump up the power and reduce pollution and reduce the amount of diesel needed to be injected for a cool burn . If you want economy you need to reduce the fuel injected but that increases heat and pollution, methanol injection cools the charge air as well as reducing the lean burn of the initial fuel spurt.

I was thinking that you might need to see about changing the injection pump timing if you go with higher mixes.

Loss of lubrication and the low boiling temps of alcohol also the lower btu of alcohol come to mind as an issue .

I mean methanol is expensive but some ethanol or e85 with summer blend like a gallon or 2 in your truck would be cool

towards the end of WW2 the german Wehrmacht converted many of their Diesel trucks to methanol. Diesel was hard to come by and Methanol less so as it was an intermediate product of synthetic fuel production from coal. They put a carburetor on the intake and used the Diesel injection on idle/low load as ignition aid. My grandpa told me about it.

It might be a good idea to add a small percentage of caster oil as you would find in model glow plug engines to protect the fuel pump Keep up the good work

When mixed with fuel it will run lean which is causing the fuel knocking. Needs to be sprayed into the air intake for it to really burn right

I've been thinking about something like this a lot lately on my weird cummins swap. Did you ever give the snow kit a try? M10 to diesel would get expensive quick but I wonder if a fog system could be a little more sustainable 😂 edit: and better for the fuel system as well of course!

Maybe add something to the fuel to lube the pump a little more for reliability. I wonder if there’s a benefit to this over water meth injectors or if that’s a better option

it's because the compression is so low, it would hydro lock at 40 psi other wise. so they make the connecting rods short enough that it runs on gas and only when the forced induction starts going the ecu sends diesel in.

We need some VP racing M5 haha that's what I run in my racing units ...it has just a smidgen of nitro in it 🚀🤠highly highly corrosive though methanol will Reek havac on aluminam and fuel systems..lots of maintenance .

5:22 heyyyaaa...if you rotate the can so the spout is at the high point (not at the bottom) when you're pouring it outta those cans...it won't slop and splash around so bad, and you get to tip it over further before it comes out too......jus sayin'

Custom heads with an ignition system is used on those tractors. And the compression ratio is brought way down.

also if you let it sit for a while it will seperate and when it runs on the pure it will cause issues with injectors pumps and burnt pitons

Hey Dude!! Pour with the spout at the TOP of the can!!!!!!!! You better try it --- It works!

Bet that garage has great smell of diesel and that methanol that combination can't be beat great getting occasional whiffs of that stuff.

I believe it would run better with more fuel, as in adjusting the fuel pump, with more methanol! Have you thought about propane injection??

when poring from that container use spout on opposite side. better control especially new container

tip for barn hunters... methanol is hands down the BEST carb cleaner available. nothing else washes that black and brown goop off like methanol. no scrubbing required. its not cheap here anymore(best im seeing is AU90/20L?), but its still better than the crap in a can.

4:40 Please do not use two diffrent units when caculating a percentage. It should be done either by Volume or by Mass.

Had a Suzuki side kick knocked like u dribbling a baseball and we fixed it by putting transmission fluid in the fuel tank half quart every fill up by 3 quart u could hardly hear the knock hopes that helps u can always try and see if that will help Meryl out

It should be a gallon plus 26 oz. Other wise it'll be more than 20 percent alcohol! You should add a little Marvel mystery oil!

So bit of history on this idea, people have made their own diesel fuels for a long time, but it was almost a movement in the 1970s when experimenting with WVO because of the fuel shortage and needing a solvent to break up filtered veg oil to get it to flow better. Percentages of anywhere from 2-20% Methanol was a common additive, depending on your locale in the US and time of year. I helped a friend do this with a diesel Merc and he also chose to run 20% in a northern climate, though it is not uncommon for even commercially available diesel to have a methanol blend for colder markets (once upon a time, it was a distinguishing additive between #1 and #2 diesel before advanced blending with various nitrates). How much carbon you see exiting a diesel is largely a factor of burn efficiency. If you're burning closer to peak thresholds, very little carbon/soot exits the tailpipe, you're getting more power out of your fuel, but knock chances are higher under hard use like towing. Thus you will see people under the thinking that having a saturated fuel rate is 'safer' for preventing engine damage on 'tuned' engines, when in reality, they aren't burning all the fuel injected into the cylinder and it's blowing right out the tailpipe.

How about modern diesel engine? The one with commonrail injector...

Add some 2 stroke motor oil to the fuel for extra lubricity to the pump and injectors

Germans did exactly this in cold climates and when they could only access water contaminated diesel in the war. They had a lot of diesel planes as well as trucks. Russians used and still use the same method. Methanol is one of the most effective ways to make water be absorbed into the fuel and not be a big problem (until it rusts out a pump anyway). So no fuel bug as no water/fuel layer for the bug to grow. Methanol has less specific energy than diesel, but a greater expansion coefficient, as a fuel replacement option its rubbish volumetrically unless you have massive tanks, like a ship for instance. Buuuut... In low concentrations it vastly improves the atomisation of diesel fuel as it lowers the surface tension of it. This makes combustion more efficient. Here in NZ its often used to get cars that wont pass emissions tests normally due to smoke, more likely to pass by less reputable people. These days Used alongside/instead of acetone to make cooking oil more usable as a biofuel. It can be used as the special additive to turn cooking oil into biofuel. I've used it to treat normal diesel at 1 teaspoon to 2gal. Or in my lingo 0.7ml per litre. A 40litre car tank was 35ml of methanol. 2500litre boat tank was a 2litre bottle of acetone or methanol to treat. Enough to react out any legally allowable water content from a fuel stop plus any condensation from the tank breathing. At 10% I'm guessing that most of the power benefit from running ethanol is starting to be lost by its lower specific energy,and the ability of the pump to get enough fuel delivered. Every engine will have its best value though. P.S. half your oil change interval or even more often as methanol and ethanol both cause a lot more steam to be generated in the combustion process. Which can make it into your oil through blowby and the likes. Aussies used diesahol (looks like milk) as a substitute for diesel as it runs cooler than diesel in the deserts. Upgraded tank sizes to cope with desert distances and lower energy per gal though. Aussies also used LPG Fogging systems to improve power and efficiency of diesels as well. Good luck :)

start up diesel knock, usually clears with right adatives in fuel

Just an FYI , those throttle linkages are known for not giving you full throttle. Try looking at it and seeing if it hits the throttle stop on the injection pump.

get rid of smoke and get more power.? Propane into the intake on top of the diesel. i use it on my 1989 7.3 ford works great.

Very interesting. Beautiful Mercedes! But why is the steering wheel so crooked? Greetings from Bad Kreuznach Germany

And this is why people use propane injection on diesels and not methanol. You can control the amount of additional fuel added, and yeah the setup is more expensive, but it just works.

You should add 2 stroke oil for additional lubrification, like european Taxi drivers.

Can You tray use gasoline injectors to add metanol to intrake pipe!

Yea back in 2000 I went to the semi diesel truck drag in Mexicali and these Mexican guys mixed methanol in their diesel in a 8v92 Detroit

I'd assume with ethanol and methanol being solvents and diesel being a fuel oil, that the oil would dissolve into the ethanol, simlar to what it does in gasoline.... Would also exxplain how something like this *can* work considering a diesel fuel system needs to have at least *some* lubrication to work reliably. it doesn't take much to sieze up an entire fuel system with a solvent for fuel in a diesel engine.

Isn't this stuff extremely toxic?

The methanol pulling tractors run on spark plugs 🤦‍♂️

Cannot see the pump lasting very long running it that way but definitely gave her some get up and go

wow look at all of that power he is spinning his wheels in ice..

I run 10% methanol in a gas engine for a roughly 30 hp gain but be careful it also increases your head pressure so more isn't better if you value your rings. 10% is pretty safe on a healthy engine. And yes before it's said that is above what the fuel manufacturer puts in the gas at the pump

Power Up Gen49D in the fuel will fix any lubricity problem from the methanol.

You need a binding agent like acetone. Its foggy bc its not blending

Yes this is why I purchased a diesel in 2022

you need to hold the 5 gal can the other way...spout on top when pouring

What happened to part 2 please

This is truly interesting! Thank you .

I always wanted to know how this would work? You tube is a mind reader!

Black diesel next? With meth? Used oil thinned down with methanol.

My bet is its too thin. You can mix some engine oil or even vegetable oil with it to thicken it

Diesel and Methanol or not miscible - you need to use micellar medium to make a micro emulsion.

They add spark plugs where the fuel injectors used to be they don’t just straight run methanol.

As far as BTU a gallon. Methanol has about 55% less energy may be why it had the knock sound because its running lean. Maybe modify the injection pump to richen it up a little.

I had a friend back in the 70's who had a newer, at the time, Mercedes, not sure what engine. I took a two year diesel mechanics course back then and was used to hearing glow plugs, glow plugs, glow plugs at school. One of the teachers who was a retired mechanic himself had an early 60's Mercedes that he bought brand new. It had almost a half million miles on it and he never changed the spark plugs once. I'm serious. He never put a single spark plug in that car. He said that he had only flow timed it a several times just to show classes how it was done, changed the oil, filter, air filter at the proper intervals and replaced several batteries over the years. He had done other service to it like grease, rear end gear oil changes, clutches and steering and suspension parts as needed but almost nothing to the engine. He obviously took care of it. My friend's car didn't have glow plugs. He lived in Pa. and I asked him how the hell he got it started in the winter without glow plugs. He said that there was a chart in the owner's manual giving temperatures and percentages of gasoline to diesel blends. The colder it was, the more gasoline you used up to 30%. The only problem was if it got cold where you added 30% gas then it warmed up substantially for several days in a row, you either didn't drive the car or you had to drain the tank and use less or no gas at all depending on how warm it was out or risk blowing the cylinder head off. Sounded like a lot of work for a luxury car to me. Put back the glow plugs.

Didn't delay the injection timing any? No need to break a classic diesel car.

to get a 20% mixture you’re supposed to only do .8 gallons of fuel and 26 ounces of methanol. i do this all the time!

Any paper, or leather, or maybe even rubber gaskets or parts in your fuel system may shrivel up or disintegrate. In 1980s they put methanol in motor fuel instead of ethanol and most cars with carburetors ( which was most cars 1980 ) had major problems in fuel department. Most GM carburetors used accelerator pumps with piston cup made of rubber or even leather and they all deformed and wouldn't pump any more. I had a carburetor where all the paper material gaskets shrunk. Plus don't come into too much contact with that stuff, not good for you. ( but you know that )

A fuel lift pump pumps more fuel than is needed thus it will bi-pass fuel back to the main tank ..

Mercs may be OK but we have to know our own cars if they have rubber based fuel pipes and pump internals which will decompose with methanol.

Can you add methanol to your daily driver right before an emissions test to get better emissions for people that live in stupid cities?

We used to add methanol to our MX bikes, I would add 20% to my YZ250's, and they ran so much better, but than race gas is just that a mix of petrol and methanol.

Pre ignition knock

Ok you have fuel hanging over a motor your not sure will stay together and an open 5 gal of methanol sitting there and the exhaust blowing out of the hood……….what could go wrong?

Big big difference in methanol and nitro methane. Huge difference. Nitro don’t need much air and fires off heat and compression. Methanol needs more heat to ignite.

pure methanol mixed with some castor 927 two stroke oil will do the trick. 1.5 fl oz to 10 gallons. my bmw drag car runs on straight methanol and the castor oil has saved my engine more than once. i wont run methanol without ever again after the experience. i would bet you could add some used motor oil / corn oil to cut down the methanol and it would last. you just need to get the fuel mix to similar stochiometry as diesel fuel.

Shouldve added a little trans fluid for upper lube

20% petrol (gasoline) 80% diesel. My truck flys 20% petrol 80% waste oil (hydraulic, trans fluid, sump oil… settled for 6 months, take clean waste oil from the top of the tank or drum etc). More kilometres/miles and more power. Works in both straight mechanical injection and common rail. Dpf doesn’t like it tho

Try running the valve rack !!! Diesels dont run right unless the valves are adjusted properly

Alcohol is good for vehicles that dont get driven alot. The vaporization dries the cylinder walls and increases oil temperatures.

It depends on your electronics newer diesel engines the electronics can't handle methanol in your diesel.. Back in the nineties I used to run methanol in my cat diesel engines because they had a lot more power And better fuel mileage. One gallon of methanol to every 50 gallons of diesel Did that for 20 years motors lasted longer And ran cleaner

I’d love to see this on the Mercedes 3.0crd diesel the went in the Jeep Grand Cherokee WK

This is the only video I can find about this. How has it held up?

Meth injection is not the same as running methanol in your engine. Water/Meth injections only active ingredient is water. The methanol is so the water won't freeze in your tank. Water/meth injection is to lower the IAT's

At 9 mins in the video and you say it running rough is because you have changed how fast the fuel can detonate so timing is needs but hard in an diesel or change the pump time to suit the fuel time how fast it burns

Back in 1991 So Cal Edison was working on 100% Methanol in there Diesel fleet... If memories are correct Injectores didn't last very long...

I like how he said scie Scientist

A little inkahall in most things makes it more better good ;) lol

But also should you put additive or two stroke oil or even atf as lubricant for the injection pump and would it still work ? I put half a quart of atf in my truck every three tanks and it’s a 6.0 powerstroke and I haven’t had a bad injector since but I can’t say the same about the head gasket but that what I get for putting big injectors in it at 260 k and raced it a lot the overheated it after 30 k and put the oem injectors back in and now she sits with lifted heads at 306 k but she still runs and I haven’t had the time to work on it yet 😢

Wondering if acetone would