Secret of Diesel

Diesel engine became popular and eye catching like the contemporary designers in a department store. Nearly every car and many brands are offering diesel engine even in their cabrio models, actually Porsche has a diesel SUV! Life without diesel is nearly impossible and hopefully they don't make black smoke and annoying noise anymore :)

However diesel engines have a secret! Diesel engine has a different principle than the petrol engine. Diesel doesn't need to have a sparkplug to make combustion. In petrol engines, sparkplug is exploding the petrol and rotates the cranks shaft. But in diesel, just a high compression is enough to make that explosion. Why I am telling all these thing? Because, diesel has a really unknown disadvantage!

Diesel engine can run without diesel fuel! Yes, that's true. Even the engine oil is enough to run diesel engine. Actually, many people knew this. However the critical point is; any mistake made while filling the engine oil ends up cracking down the engine. If the engine oil is more than necessary, engine will start to run by itself and you cannot control the engine. Unless you put into gear and screw gearbox or until the engine oil finishes! Therefore, diesel engine should have a emergency button to release engine oil in these conditions. Don't think that, this does not happen that often but it happens and when it happens you really don't want to see that! Also, worn out diesel engines have that risk. As the engine oil is involved in combustion, after sometime engine can run by engine oil, you can watch it on video below.

Recently Volvo announced that, some of their diesel engine is accelerating without throttle response. This means, engine oil is on the game! I think Volvo knew this also. Believe this is worse than Toyota's throttle problem. Once the engine starts to run with oil, that's game over!

Pictures are taken from;

Volvo Website