Diesel in snowmobile experiment

[LAWN BOY]

We had the dumb idea to put some diesel fuel in my clunky 1989 SKI-DOO MX snowmobile. Apparently, a family friend on my dad’s side went snowmobiling with a group of people years ago and one woman accidentally filled hers up with diesel when they fueled up at a gas station. The guys didn’t notice until she was done fueling. She must not have had an empty tank of properly mixed gasoline, because she actually got good fuel economy and it ran good afterwards. The details of that story are unknown/sketchy, but that only grew my curiousity. My sled is junky and the motor is a tad low on compression and smoked a decent bit to begin with plus we have a good used better motor for it in the garage so I wasn’t going to be too mad if diesel wrecked it or something bad happened. I’ve been wanting to do this all winter, but I either don’t get to the gas station in time or the snow melts right away, what a weird winter here in WI. We finally did it today tho. Unfortunately, I can’t say the exact ratio because I’m kinda broke at the moment and the tank was almost empty of 50:1 super tech mixed premium gas, so I added almost a gallon of 50:1 Husqvarna gas, then an unknown amount of diesel, maybe 1/4 gallon of diesel. The snowmobile runs super smooth with the diesel and smokes even more than originally. It also idles high enough that it moves a little with no throttle. For personal reasons, I will not be posting any videos including this one on YouTube for 2 months, if ever. When I do post it on YouTube which I hopefully do, I’ll post the link here. For now, all I can offer are these pictures. We just thought this was a really neat experiment. I will ride it more tomorrow.

 

[Powerstroke Cowboy]

My older brother used to have a 1989 formula mach 1 583. That thing moved out good.

Did you notice any difference in throttle response and top speed?

Edit: Looks like a mosquito killer.

 

[LAWN BOY]

My older brother used to have a 1989 formula mach 1 583. That thing moved out good.

Did you notice any difference in throttle response and top speed?

Edit: Looks like a mosquito killer.

That’s cool, my uncle used to have a Mach 1, I’d like one one day.
Throttle response was good, and it accelerated maybe quicker, but top speed and full throttle seemed to be lower.
I actually do start it in summer to get rid of mosquitoes, lol.

 

[Arcticmiller]

Well, if a person makes their own “homebrewed” version of Seafoam you usually use diesel as a base. It’s a pretty decent cleaner, a cautionary tale though according to my studies on FAA materials (for aviation -an expensive hobby) diesel in plane gas engines can cause piston melting/overheating/catastrophic failure. I wouldn’t push it too much over 16/oz in a gas tank personally. The lower detonation temperature is probably why you were missing some top end.

I could be wrong, if so maybe someone else on here can educate us.