Butane vs Propane in cold temps

Agreed, but I did not expect problems in warm summer weather (over 20 degrees C)

It was popular enough to be in the manual for my Citroen BX17RD (2* at about 1 to 10 ratio)! I never tried it, I used to buy diesel additive in a small tin and dose after each fill. Stopped when they started claiming to sell winter diesel.

nib

I remember in my first job when we had a fire safety demo, seeing the difference between the flammability of petrol and diesel. On a hot sunny day, the lecturer laid out two shallow metal trays on the grass, each about 1 cm deep and about 1 metre square. He applied a flaming rag on the end of a pole to each.

The one containing petrol ignited before the rag even touched the surface, so it was the vapour which lit first and then ignited the liquid. No surprise there.

However the one containing diesel refused to ignite. There was no significant amount of vapour, even though the diesel had been standing at about 30 deg C for a few hours, and when the rag touched the liquid it went out. The only way he could get the diesel to light was to bubble nitrogen (chosen to be relatively inert compared with oxygen or atmospheric air) through it, to create small droplets - but even though those burned, they didn't ignite the pool of diesel for a long time. One it was alight, it burned very fiercely with filthy black smoke. Likewise, a perfume atomiser of diesel produced a very impressive "flamethrower" jet because the atomiser acted like a fuel injector and produced a mist of droplets which could be ignited by the burning rag.

Ain't science fun :)

Well that's what comes of pissing on the fishermen to do a deal with the EU...

Ive been driving pretty much all diesel for around 13 years. No problems on icy morning starts except its a little rougher till it warms up Additives + glow plugs make light work

It becomes a vicious cycle.

I like my fish from the cabinet when the batter has had a chance to go a bit soggy. This means the fish needs to have been cooked in advance and left in the cabinet.

"Back in the day" this was no problem. And they stack the cabinet as the queue moved so you nearly always got a nice steamy batter fish.

Then the price went up, the queues slowed and no one will cook fish unless it's ordered. Meaning it is now "nice'n'fresh" and totally not what I wanted.

I've not had fish from a chippy since before 2020 and lockdown.

On the odd occasion I use a chippy it's either a fishcake, roe or kebab meat (?!).

I'm also in the Midlands where rock salmon gets a "You what ?" :(

Isn't diesel used in ANFO ?

It needs to be vaporised to go remotely 'bang' in air. ANFO has the oxidant Ammonium Nitrate ( Fuel Oil ) to help it along

Almost anything will go bang if mixed with ammonium nitrate

Yes: Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil.

The other big advantage of cook-in-advance is that it will have cooled down a bit since the temperature at which it was cooked, so you can eat it there-and-then, instead of having to wait for ages for it to cool to an eatable temperature.

I've had diesel cars since the mid 90s (Peugeot 306 with 1.9 non-HDi engine, Peugeot 306 2.0 HDi and Peugeot 308 1.6 HDi, and my wife's two cars - Honda Civic and Honda CR-V were/are diesel).

I've never had problems with starting or running when cold. The only problem is that when the oil is very viscous, the starter motor has trouble turning the engine to get it up to firing speed - but the actual ignition of the fuel and the running when very cold is faultless. Much better than the petrol-engined cars that I had which suffered engine-fade as I tried to accelerate, if the engine was very cold.

The Honda Civic used to give out a lot of blue/white cold-diesel smoke when it was very cold weather for the first few minutes. It was definitely incomplete combustion of diesel, and not the very different smell of engine oil burning.

As far as I know (I've not driven behind my Peugeot to see its exhaust) it still has clean (non-sooty) exhaust during acceleration, after 17 years and 200,000 miles and it still goes very well - good acceleration when needed, fuel economy almost as good as when it was new. The only problem is a bit of hesitance and flat-spot at about 25-30 mph around town, if I approach a slight bend, or ease off the power for a moment, and then accelerate (gently) out of it. Still a bloody good car.

Some years ago it needed a new diesel particulate filter and catalytic converter which cost £1000 in total. Ouch! Given its age, I'd have got next to nothing if I'd sold it to the garage without those fixes, so I bit the bullet and kept it. I'm glad I did.

The next big bills will be new cam-belt once that becomes due, and at some point it will need a new clutch since the bite point started to rise about 10,000 miles ago (up until then, the auto-adjustment compensated for gradual wear). But there is no sign of clutch slipping at all: it will still do a hill-start on a 1:3 hill (Rosedale Chimney, near me *). And it's not done badly: 200,000 miles on its original clutch - unless it was changed (highly unlikely!) in the first 18,000 before I bought the car as an ex-demonstrator.

(*) When the car in front of me ground to a halt, I had no option but to stop as well. The driver ahead of me panicked and kept rolling further and further back, eventually using up the very generous gap that I always leave when going up there, so I had to get out and drive his car to the top (**) and then go back for my car!

(**) I stalled the first time - unknown engine, unknown clutch bite point - but I didn't roll back an inch because I know how to hold a car on the handbrake until the engine starts to pull the car uphill, unlike the guy whose car it was. Being a petrol engine, it needed a *lot* of throttle to pull the car, unlike my diesel which pulled away at about

In message <1087no6$140kd$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Chris Holmes snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

We are in Aberdeenshire where outside temps fluctuate from +33 to -18 (that we have noted) and use orange 47kg Propane cylinders for our gas hob. Never a problem, and a pair of cylinders lasts several years.

Yes but the AN is what supplies the oxygen.

And the old fish oil will work well in the diesel, at least in older ones, leaving an aroma behind. Newer ones need the oil diluted with Deisel.

I hope this picture is viewable. This is a typical tank pair outside a rural house. These are filled by truck delivery.

The weird part of the picture, is this size always appear in pairs :-) As if, maybe, it has something to do with the tank filling ritual. Like, run off one cylinder, while the truck fills the other or something. I've never known anyone owning a setup like this, to ask about the pair thing. Maybe at low temperature, you can "freeze out" one cylinder, and switch over to the other for a while.

The next size up, is a horizontal tank, there is only the one tank, it might be equal to three or four of those tanks, and that is used on a farm, where perhaps some of the farm equipment runs off propane too. It would be a truck fill.

The farm one is 1000 gallon. According to this page.

If you have a large commercial operation and need a greater supply of propane, we have tanks ranging from 2,000 to 60,000 gallons. "

I don't think propane is particularly cheap. And if the delivery truck doesn't show up (unreliable distribution scheme), that can be a stressor. We've had rail strikes, where they had to get creative to keep the propane tanks filled. It's OK if your propane is "mostly decorative" and you don't have a daily consumption pattern.

And be careful with those little barbeque tanks, and the positioning of your barbeque with respect to the house. A neighbour four doors down, their outdppr barbeque lit the side of the house on fire. Two fire vehicles showed up, a pumper and a ladder truck. The ladder truck, the boom was maintained horizontal, and swung in near the property, and the firemen used an aerial attack on the fire (run along boom, carrying hose). As it would be harder to run a hose all way round the house and fight the fire from ground level.

Paul

Nothing weird about that. In the UK you would have an automatic changeover valve that switches the supply when one tank empties. This would be on swappable tanks rather than ones that are refilled in situ but the same principle of maintaining a constant supply would apply.

Unlikely on propane unless you live somewhere really cold.

Tim

Still seem rather small to expect a delivery company to regularly top-up

Do you have USA gallons, or UK gallons?

Yes, here I think the starting size for an installed tank, rather than just using multiple exchangeable cylinders is 1200 litres, they can be 'buried'.

I've caught & skinned plenty of those ie dogfish or huss. Gloves & pliers recommended. Not quite as bad as skinning skate wings though.