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I scanned this article from a November '94 RCCA and wanted to know if this diesel thing ever caught on and was ever available as a conversion of any kind?

I will never forget that smell

I never caught on but it did work if you didn't mind
Mixing your own fuel. Cold blooded engines for sure but once running they were torquey and you couldn't fowl a plug lol!

I forgot all about the diesel conversions. I remember that article though now that you posted it.

Had a guy come run with us one night that had a diesel conversion. he was from a distance away but he wasn't geared right to run with us but that thing had tons of torque. Only one I ever seen besides a 4 stroke that showed up a couple weeks later in a tmaxx.

Like mentioned above...couldn't forget that smell. Wasnt like the sweet smell of nitro

Todd

I never understood the reasoning behind these conversions. It just made it harder and more expensive to get fuel. Now if you could go to the gas station and just get a gallon of regular diesel for(at the time) $.85, that would have been something to cheer about.

No more $6.49 glow plugs....nuff said!
Lots of torque was cool. Fuel was a pita to make but was cheap.
Hard to run the engine too hot.

There were positive parts to the diesels. It just didn't catch on.

I don't know about making your own fuel, but I know the stuff they sold by the quart was much more expensive, iirc it was like $17 a quart back then. Also glow plus did not cost that much back then, most were $2-3. There may have been some "high end"that were more, but if you were using them you were throwing your money away anyway.

I would like to hear more about the home made fuel. How did you make that?

I'd like to see (and smell) a biodiesel GT.

Cook some onion rings then fire up your radio.

You beat me to it. I would think that if I could run a diesel on bio fuel or regular veggie oil, then you'd have something.

Out of curiosity, how did the conversion work?

justinspeed79 wrote:I don't know about making your own fuel, but I know the stuff they sold by the quart was much more expensive, iirc it was like $17 a quart back then. Also glow plus did not cost that much back then, most were $2-3. There may have been some "high end"that were more, but if you were using them you were throwing your money away anyway.

I would like to hear more about the home made fuel. How did you make that?

OS #8 plugs were $6.49 and I used my fair share. The fox or other cheap brands were crap in a car.

Hmmmm... I never had any problems with those "crap" plugs. I used to run MC-59's, that's what associated recommended, they worked great. #8's are a good plug, but definitely nothing special.

This was well before associated had an engine. It was OS 12 CZ-R back then or nothing (competitive). Sure there was Prafa and a few others but nothing ran like a CZ-R. Now, if your talking CZ-Z and such newer engines you are outside of where this conversion was made. I could never make the McCoy plugs work well but if you did that's cool

I am also talking about before the associated engines, MC-59 is what associated recommended for the cz's, yok's, etc, in the original gt manual. Granted, I am sure that probably wasn't the optimal plug for all of the engine made back, so they may have been over-simplifying it a little.